Originally Posted by
sdsearch
Stop worrying about how much it costs, and start worrying about which airline actually will have availability for 3 people on the same flight. That's the tricky part.
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While you can certainly try for AA miles too (from two Citi AA personal cards applied for at the same time using the "two-browser-type trick"), it's far less certain whether they would be use to Australia for 3 people on the same flight, especially if you aren't booking 330ish days out.
Finding award space to Australia is difficult in premium cabin, but not as much in economy which is what the OP is looking at. I just checked a couple of random dates and Qantas had availability for these dates for 3 people in economy.