US Airways Dividend Miles (Pre-FlightFund Merger) - Australia Award Travel

I am interested in using my US miles to fly Business to Aussie land. My home base is Houston, Texas. My wish list would include the following if possible:

Wish #1: Stops in Hong Kong, Sydney, and Auckland

Wish #2: Stops in Sydney, Auckland, and South Pacific Island

Wish #3: Stops in Sydney, Auckland, and Honolulu

Are any or all of the wishes possible, and if so please explain award code needed and what airline within the US partner system.

Thanks for your help!

I can tell you that none of those options would be possible on United or Qantas. There may be a way to do it through *A, but I have no knowledge of those.

Stops in Auckland, Sydney and one other destination in Oz would be possible with Qantas. You might consider a QF award for that and add a *A award for the third destination. I did something like that to hit five destinations in OZ and NZ.

Sounds like a Star Alliance airpass is what you want, but too bad those are only available for sale.

You sould probably try to swing a HNL-SYD-AKL routing on Qantas, maybe, for a US Award.

Otherwise, consult the Star Alliance chart.

http://www.usairways.com/dividendmiles/redeemingmiles/star_alliance_award_chart_060104.pdf

Maybe you can do an open jaw ticket on UA from the mainland to SYD, returning from HKG. Then you'd have to use other star carriers (and another award redembption) to travel within Asia/Pac. But you'll also be booking roundtrip rewards and only using one end of them.

Call US and talk to someone about the Star options. We'd be interseted in hearing how this works out.

You sould probably try to swing a HNL-SYD-AKL routing on Qantas, maybe, for a US Award.

I'm pretty sure you cannot do that. You could do LAX-AKL stop SYD stop LAX and add a side trip to HKG or some other Pacific destination as a seperate reward.

I'm also fairly sure I've seen posts in the UA forum where people wanted to route through HNL and it was not allowed.

MikeLaw - It is possible to include HNL on a Star Alliance award to the South Pacific, but it is VERY difficult to get C availability on the available routings. Options include Air Canada (SYD-HNL), Air NZ (AKL-HNL), and of course there are several options on United to HNL from the mainland.

For UA/Star Alliance you only get 1 stopover so what you might want to do is buy a separate ticket to whichever stop wasn't included.

For example, you could book IAH - LAX/SFO - AKL - HNL - LAX/SFO - IAH and then purchase AKL-SYD in the middle. Or you could book IAH - LAX/SFO - SYD - AKL - LAX/SFO -IAH and purchase a separate excursion to a pacific island.

Good luck,
- RightD

Air NZ flies to all of those places (HKG, SYD, AKL, HNL and various South Pacific islands). I dont know anything about *A awards under US DM program so cant comment on how they would work.

Some of the pacific islands can be incorporated as stopover between LAX and AKL, or as a side trip from Oz/NZ. Fares to south pacific (on Air NZ or Air Pacific) are relatively cheap. Even cheaper are fares between Australia and NZ - plenty of airlines to choose between although NZ and QF have the most frequent service by far.