The question is whether to use only miles, or buy a ticket for a small portion of a trip.

Prompted by many articles and posts my wife and I decided we ought to book a trip somewhere to use up some of our Frequent Flyer miles. I asked my wife where she wanted to go and one of the places she mentioned was Egypt. Perhaps this was because we had some friends that were just there and had a great time. The two FF programs where we have miles is with NWA and AA. To travel to Egypt using NWA is 90,000 miles. On AA I was told it is 75,000. On the other hand it occurred to me that to fly to just across the Mediterrian to someplace like Greece or Turkey would require far less miles. Perhaps as little as 50,000 miles during off-season. I thought the flights from Istanbul, Athens, or even Cyprus to Cairo would be relatively short and could be found cheaply. Doing a quick search I found flights from Athens and Istanbul look to be available for less than $300 RT. Of course taxes and fees are a big part of the ticket cost.

Another destination might be Tawian, where the same sort of thing happen with fewer miles needed to fly to China/mainland or Japan.

Does it makes sense to use miles to fly to a European destination and then take a short hop on a regional carrier and perhaps save from 25,000 to 40,000 miles each.