Don't forget United/Star Alliance, which requires 65,000 miles. I applied for the Chase United MileagePlus Explorer card last year, which only requires $1000 minimum spend, and am using the miles to fly LAX-TPE next week. Originally we had a sweet LAX-SFO-TPE route, but United pushed back the start date of SFO-TPE service, so now we're doing LAX-SFO-HKG-TPE.