I fly with my wife to Europe once or twice a year, a couple of FL to IL or WI domestic flights, and occasionally to Asia. I have a ton of Amex points, Delta miles, United miles. I have never been able to figure out the best way to use them. We want to fly Business.
I booked a Ft Myers to Warsaw Poland on Delta for travel at the end of April and had to pay a $2500 each for upgradable refundable Coach and Delta wants 50k miles each for the upgrade.
It seems that there should be a better way. I just can't find it.
Should I be looking for NYC to FRA and filling in the other legs separately?
I would love a little lesson!
You've gotten great advice already. Something else that might help you with your planning is the value of miles. For me it is 1.5 cents/mile based on my travel patterns (coach & lots of intl travel). For you it is probably different, but either way that allows you to compare whether it is worth to use miles or cash in various situations.
I travel the routes you mention but almost always in coach so my advice may not be very useful. As a general rule I found Skyteam better for Transatlantic travel and Star Alliance for Transpacific travel. If it wasn't for LH blocking, Star Alliance would be the best across the board. You could rely on the inefficient DL award search engine and search for different pieces or call. With Star Alliance, you could use the recommended ANA search engine but ignore LH. I also got some helpful ideas from Continental's award search engine. Good luck.