I would welcome input on this First Class 16-segment ticket I have on hold with American. I am using 280,000 miles for a trip with 34,710 countable miles. My dates in certain places are fixed because of tours I will be booking. I did my best to avoid British Airways to keep the total surcharges to $454.20.

April 3rd Connection MIA-DAL First American
April 3rd Stopover DAL-NRT First American
April 7th Stopover NRT-PEK First JAL
April 23rd Connection PEK-HNG First Dragon
April 23rd Stopover HNG-MNL First Dragon
May 2nd Stopover MNL-HNG First Cathay Pacific
May 5th Stopover HNG-JNB Economy Cathay Pacific (two-class plane)
May 7th Open Jaw JNB-CPT Club Exc British (Comair two-class plane)
Land CPT-LVI
May 31st Connection LVI-JNB Economy British (Comair two-class plane)
May 31st Connection JNB-MAD Business Iberia (two-class plane)
June 1st Stopover MAD-RAK Business Iberia (two-class plane)
June 9th Connection RAK-MAD Economy Iberia (two-class plane)
June 9th Stopover MAD-TLV Business Iberia (two-class plane)
June 30th Stopover TLV-MAD Business Iberia (two-class plane)
July 8th Home MAD-MIA Business Iberia (two-class plane)

Is British Club Executive the highest class on their two class flights in Africa? If so, I am downgrading on 3 flights (only one of which is transcontinental). Can anybody speculate as to the availability of Business Class opening up on Cathay HNG-JNB in the first week of May (I have some flexibility)?

Also, I would love to travel JAL from North America to Tokyo but First Class has no award availability from now until early April (I have a little flexibility in my departure - can depart anywhere from March 31st to April 3rd). I also have flexibility on departure city because even if I go through JFK my total countable miles will only increase to 34,997 (checked with American) keeping me under the 35,000 mile threshold. Does anybody have insight on how JAL handles First Class availability? In addition to asking the American Airlines agent, I used British Airlines' award availability but no JAL flights showed up.

The difficulty with this ticket is that once I use the miles for the ticket I cannot switch my outbound airline from American to JAL; so I will re-hold it every five days. Are there any tricks to this process or just merely tell the American agent to re-hold the ticket?

Thanks for any insight.