Austinrunner

I'm generally a fan of using American Airlines (AA) miles to get oneworld awards. I just used 180,000 AA miles to get a first class oneworld award for the following itinerary (a couple flights were booked in business class because the aircraft do not have a first class section):

LAX-HKG (Cathay Pacific)
HKG-BKK (Cathay Pacific)
BKK-DEL (Cathay Pacific business class)
NBO-LHR (British Airways business class)
LHR-LAX (American Airlines)

The total mileage of this itinerary was 19,841 according to AA and 19,839 according to Great Circle mapper. I used the websites of Cathay Pacific, AA, Qantas, Iberia, and British Airways to find availability. The only catch is to be careful when using the AA website because if you specify first class but none is available, the website will return a list of flights that actually are business class. You have to pay attention to the boxes at the top of the webpage.

The flights I picked were all booked quickly by AA. The only problem I had with AA reservations was that they initially insisted that the DEL-NBO land leg had to be counted in the total mileage. After enduring a quick, rude, and undeserved "I don't want to argue about this" and "if you don't like what I'm saying, call back" response from a supervisor, she put me on hold for about 5 minutes and then came back with profuse (and somewhat repetitious) apologies.

According to Expedia, this itinerary would have cost $23,985.50, which works out to 13.3 cents per AA mile used. The total taxes were $140.00 (just a connection in LHR), and the reservation fee was $20.00.