I am planning to book 3 awards to Sydney from 3 different cities (NYC, LAX, SFO) for Dec 2013 leaving weekend before Christmas, returning Jan 1, and am trying to plan my strategy so I maximize my chances of optimizing my miles, flights routes and dates so that as soon as the awards become available, I can swoop in immediately and get seats

The following are our balances:
AA 170k
UA 150K
US 40K
SPG 60K
MR 80-100K
UR 40K
AS 35K

I would like a business class ticket from NYC and economy from LAX/SFO as the LAX/SFO are direct shorter flights and the people traveling from CA don't have as many miles. I am not willing to pay any fuel surcharges for these tickets (so BA out of the question).

My plan currently is as follows to book these 330 days in advance:

From NYC: Transfer 60K SPG to US. Use 110k US miles for a business class award. I don't mind flying through Asia on this. I know this is bookable with UA miles, but costs 135K for business class and I also want to save my UA miles for the more complex open-jaw/stopover routings

From LAX/SFO: Use 37.5k AA miles each way to try to get the direct LAX/SFO-SYD segments and back so that these can be combined with the 1 way stopover in LAX/SFO for another North American destination (TBD, but flexible). I could also try going through Fiji or Asia on this (though I don't think Air Pacific or CX shows availability on AA), but prefer not to route through Hawaii on HA as that will demolish the additional destination.

A few questions:
1. Which routings should I try to look at for the *A segments?

2. I read the Qantas flights become available a year out, but are not available on AA. Any way to get these without fuel surcharges? I can't seem to find the Qantas flights on AS and am already planning to use my SPG points to transfer to US so don't think there is any way to get AS miles.

3. I searched on AS and saw Delta also has direct flights LAX-SYD for 80k roundtrip in economy so I could transfer MR to Flying Blue and getting a one way on Delta that way (assuming it's 40k).


Any comments or tips on the plan would be great!