NimbleNinja

I have been hoarding miles for years and am close to a million miles total. It is finally time to put all my miles into an epic trip.

I've been reading FlyerTalk for years on how to get miles but I have to admit I am pretty behind on actually using them.

Here are my miles:
AA 191,774
BA 358,731
UA 95,534
Ultimate Rewards: 245,318
Starwood 27,421


I'd love to do a Circle Pacific trip with some branches off along the way. I realize none of the circle pacific tickets are allowed to be purchased with miles. Also apparently the AA amazing RTW ticket i've been dreaming of is no longer a reality.

However I think i've got enough miles to make my trip with my girlfriend no matter what.

I'd like to plan a trip for 2 (my gf and I) hitting south east asia, to Australia/NZ and then up south and central america.

Where do I start? Should I look at fitting the trip into a RTW star alliance booking? Should I do one way awards using all my one world miles?

Any advice for what framework to start with and then get into the specifics of country by country flights?

ktkw

So basically you need these tickets (I am assuming you want to start + end in the U.S.):

1. U.S. to South East Asia
2. South East Asia to Australia
3. Australia to NZ
4. NZ to South America
5. South America to Central America
6. Central America to the U.S.

Depending on how you want to spend your miles and what class of service you want to fly and whether or now you want to save miles for the future or just blow it all. Assuming you want to use all your miles have the best flying experience/trip:

*When I say use SQ miles these are transferred from your UR points

1. Use SQ miles for SQ F from US to Singapore 91.4k x2
2. Use AA miles for CX J from SEA to Australia/NZ (or even tahiti/fiji) 35k x2
3. This is easy and you have many good options: 10k AA miles in Y, 10k BA miles in Y, 17.5k AA miles in J, 12.5k SQ in Y, 17.5k SQ in J
4. Use AA miles for LA J from SYD-SCLfor 50k x2 (This will be a hard redemption in terms of finding availability)
5. Within South America and going back to the US it is relatively easy to just use BA Avios or United miles in Y.

Within Asia you can use Avios on MH and CX, within Australia with QF, within South American with LA, JJ and going back up also with AA.

Alternatively if you cannot find availability via LAN from SYD-SCL another good way it to take SQ F from GRU-BCN-SIN as one redemption which is 96k x2 in F. This would look like this:

1. U.S. to Central America: Use Avios to Central America
2. Central America to South America: UA Miles or Avios
3. South America to South East Asia: SQ F GRU-BCN-SIN 96k SQ miles x2
4. SEA to Aus/NZ: CX J or SQ Y/J using either AA or SQ miles
5. Aus to U.S.: AA miles 37.5/62.6/72.5 for Y/J/F

NimbleNinja

Thanks for such a detailed reply! This is a great start and a HUGE help for us.

farbster

I would recommend using a points booker. They should be able to provide the best usage of your miles and it would be worth the money in my opinion. And much easier!

guv1976

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry: BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.1030 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

"Use AA miles for LA J from SYD-SCLfor 50k x2 (This will be a hard redemption in terms of finding availability)"

Since the OP wants to fly to NZ from Australia, there's no need to backtrack to SYD: the LAN flight operates SYD-AKL-SCL. (But yes, it's a tough award flight to get in J.)

TravelinSperry

There is a deal right now where you can transfer 20,000 Starpoints to AA and ultimately receive 30,000 AA miles. Might be a wise use of your Starpoints if you need enough to bump up from Saver level to AAnytime level.