My wife and I are trying to put together a five year anniversary trip to Bonaire but are running into some hurdles. We tried going on miles but we can't get all the way there so it looks like we'll have to buy the last leg into Bonaire.

It looks like the best deal is from Houston on Continental for $609. We will be coming from Seattle so that would work well. Is this what all of you experts would recommend or is there a smarter route?

Eric, that's about what I paid back in April so it should be a good price.

we are paying $793 from Seattle RT. in Sept,

we have tons of Alaska Air miles but we could not
use them on Continental all the way to Bonaire (and yes, if you had Continental miles there were a number of seats available using mileage--learned that "Partner Airlines" have different options, had the airlines check through March 2009 and there were no seats available using alaska air miles on Continental to Bonaire)

it is very convenient to go from Seattle via Houston.

You didn't mention your dates but I would grab those tickets because with all the changes and complaints about AA lately, the cheap Continental tickets should be disappearing fast. We booked our trip for Feb/March 09 last week. We went with Continental this time althought before we always liked AA via San Juan. Continental was quite a bit less expensive this time. Sure glad we went that route considering all the schedule changes AA has now made.

Take it! that is a great price.

just found and booked cheapest AA flight on Expedia for March..always thought going direct to the airline would be the cheapest...but I guess not..saved abt $ 200 for the two tickets...this is going to be a crazy time for buying anything,,,good luck

I paid $480 per person r/t...Houston to Bon on CO about a month ago when I purchased ours. Probably one of the best prices you will find. The longer you wait to book, the more you are likely to pay.

Grab those seats. We're paying $722 each for r/t next week.

Over the years I have gone every which way. United/ALM, AA and CO (never did the AJ thing) with stops in most us cities (Miami, St Louis, Detroit, Chicago, Newark, JFK, Denver, Dallas, Houston, Charolette, etc.) and a few outside the US (Haiti -- thanks ALM!)

Some are better and some are worse. All are painful and my best price ever (not using miles) was around $500 and my worst (in coach) was just over $900.

I suspect you option is probably a pretty good one given the recent price increases. One thing: I would try and structure your ticket in such a way that you only have to pay any bag fees once each way.

Major options currently available:
a) SEA to MIA(might be an intermediate stop)to CUR on AA. The Divi Divi to BON. (7 days a week)
b) SEA to DFW/?? to SJU to BON on AA/AE. (3 or 4 a week)
c) SEA to IAH to BON on CO (1 or 2 a week)
d) SEA to EWR to BON on CO (1 a week)
e) SEA to ?? to ATL to BON on Delta. (1 a week)

From SEA, you really have only three choices in terms of schedule: leave during the day and finish with a red eye into Bonaire (CO), leave late evening and start with a red eye and get in the next day late afternoon (AA via CUR, Delta) or evening (AA/AE via SJU), or overnight en route.

If you pick option (a), you need to get the early flight from MIA to CUR. You can take the late flight from CUR to MIA (you will likely have to overnight on the return leg) or the early flight (requires you to fly to CUR the night before).

These are roughly in ascending order of price. Price wise, I have also had decent luck calling up Caradonna and asking about package rates.

The CO options have a lot going for them but I find the red eye second being painful. For me it is a toss up between (a) and (c).

OK, so now we are at the using miles and price part. When I booked my tickets a month ago (for Oct/Nov 2008) on CO, my options were:
1) First class for about $1380 -- including all taxes and fees and allows three bags @70# each. (This is what I picked in the end)
2) Coach for about $800; or
3) 70,000 miles and $20.

The price difference ($600 vs $800) for using miles to get to IAH versus using the ticket does not seems like a great value to me. To that end, here are some other ideas:
i) See what a coach ticket on CO would cost from SEA that would be eligible to use miles to upgrade to first class;
ii) See if there is anyway to pool your miles together so that you could use miles for one of the tickets;
iii) See if there is anything cheaper from ATL (Delta), MIA (AA), SJU (AE) or EWR (CO) (and use your miles to get there)
iv) Run all options from YVR or PDX or SEA to CUR and/or BON
v) Is there a way to use miles to get to AUA?
vi) Save your miles for another time.

I just booked our flight for Sept 26th to Oct 5th on Continental, $723 each for RT from St Louis. Continental web site listed only 4 seats left for flight from Huston to Bonaire. Whether this is true or not I dont know just bought them anyway. Price was about the same for AA. This will be our first trip with Continental, have taken AA and AJ in the past. Never any problem with AJ but AA last march was a challenge. Looked like another challenge with AA for Sept trip. We dont need anymore of those.
Just wanted to get there with the least amount of trouble. We cant wait to get back.