Welcome to FlyerTalk.

Award availability is tricky. You're wanting to find 5 seats on the same flight for September, just six months from now. You're starting from -0- in terms of miles. That's a very difficult challenge. You might be better off setting a goal for accumulating miles this year for travel next year, particularly if you stick with your goal of Bali.

You might want to play with routes and award availability now just to give you a sense of possibilities. Let's say you stick with Bali as your goal. You can get there on both OneWorld or Star carriers. (I don't know SkyTeam very well, and Delta is notorious for high redemption levels.) Within each alliance you need to choose an individual carrier where you will amass your miles. Let's say you decide on AA for OneWorld and UA for Star. You can check for award availability on the AA and UA websites. Start with one person just to see available routings. Then, when you see something, push it up to 2, 3, 4, 5. Check for one month out, for two months out - because that is what you're looking at by the time you amass your points and need to book for Sept. This gives you a sense of your challenge, as you won't be able to book until points are in your account. You also need to research the number of miles required per ticket so that you understand your mileage goal.

You can pursue accumulation of AA and UA miles in parallel, given your strong credit. UA has more possibilities in my opinion, since you can get not just the UA card but the Chase Sapphire. Further, if you own a business, you can get the Chase Ink. Both you and your husband will need to apply in order to double your mileage potential. Both UA and AA allow one way redemptions. Thus, if you could actually find 5 seats, you could book one way on OneWorld using your AA miles and one way on Star using your UA miles.

I encourage you to choose a more attainable goal for this year. I honestly don't think you could begin today to amass points, then find award availability for 5 to travel to Bali in September.