Originally Posted by
TAWS
This is where you would want to book with miles since you can get an award ticket for an extended stay without paying extra. You also don't need to book that far in advance if booking with miles. You might consider buying 100,000 miles from US Airways for ~$1500 (through their current promotion that ends Sept 15) and using the miles to book a Star Alliance flight when you find availability, which shouldn't be too hard as long as your flexible on the dates.
I believe it is 60k miles for a RT ticket to South America and 100K for biz.
Iiiiinteresting! I was thinking it might be better to try to do this with miles. I am trying to get one of the citibank AA cards (ideally the 75k bonus one, but if not the 30 or 50k)...so then I would need to buy between 25k-70k more miles on AA to get a biz class flight (which I think would be better, as I understand those can be changed without fees- and I am *constantly* changing my tickets). I won't be able to buy anything before the 15th anyway- how much does it cost without a promotion to buy miles usually? Any pitfalls to avoid in terms of buying and then redeeming miles for this kind of flight?
Thanks!