Okay, great ideas. We're trying to minimize out of pocket costs and also we know we won't be using any miles to fly internationally for at least another couple of years, so we feel comfortable "burning" the miles on this trip and taking a couple years to build up another stash.
It looks like the Alaska Air CC with the companion cert might be a great option for 2 seats on one AS flight. So that's 2 seats, one way. Seems like you guys are saying that I could combine AA and Avios for the remaining 2 seats on the same AS flight?
Not married to the UA flight but it seemed easy to redeem 40,000 UR Points x 4 = 160,000 miles. Are you guys saying it would be too tricky to get 4 F award seats on the same flight?
Thanks so much for the help. I knew Flyertalkers would come through with some great ideas.