Singapore to Tahiti RT, J/Y ticket, 40,000 UA miles* x 2 + $215 (pre-devaluation)
Singapore to Tahiti RT, J/Y ticket, 40,000 UA miles* x 2 + $215 (pre-devaluation)
SQ J, 777-200, SIN-PVG
NZ J, 767-300, PVG-AKL
NZ Y, 767-300, AKL-PPT
NZ Y, 767-300, PPT-AKL
SQ Y, 777-200, AKL-SIN
* Outgoing = 25K in J, Return = 15K in Y
Booking
As mentioned in the intro, this was the first ticket we booked and everything else was constructed around it. Now, let's think about this for a minute. Singapore to Tahiti. This is a 15+ hour route if you take the most direct route; the only way to get there is to fly to Auckland and then to Tahiti (NZ is the only *A member to fly there). That's double the distance of the LAX-PPT direct service. Yet it is only slightly costlier (in Y) than or the same (in J) as a domestic USA award. I consider this an outstanding use of soon-to-be-devaluated UA miles. It was also one of the oddballs of the old UA chart since it costs significantly less to fly onward to Tahiti than if you just fly to New Zealand. But hey, worked for us.
On the way back we found no J flight, so we took the most direct Y flights. Luckily on the way there we found J on 2 of the less likely *A partners: SQ and NZ. Both are notorious for not releasing premium seats to partners. But as you can see there are exceptions. SQ does release J to *A for some short and medium hauls, while I'm guessing NZ made PVG-AKL available because it uses one of their older products. If I had status with UA (i.e. various change fees waived), I might be inclined to watch for better last minute seats, but as I have no status we just booked the best available at the time, which was 5-6 months out.