I’m planning to do some sort of northern hemisphere trip next year and was wondering if people could share some comments, redemption suggestions and saving strategies based on what I’m trying to do. I’m completely new to this stuff. I’m trying to book almost all of it as (one-way) award travel… hotels I can worry about later. The target right now is to travel next autumn’s off-peak, maybe October. But I’m very flexible and can wait to travel until I can find the right redemptions.

I’m based out of WAS/IAD and want to hit DXB and NRT with possibly a long layover (not a stopover) somewhere in Europe.

My balances:
AA: 54K
US: 36K
DL: 50K (pretty useless for this, I think)
KE: 7K
UA: 5K
Chase UR: right now about 65K, but I expect to have 125K+ by the time I’m booking these tickets.
I’d like to fly most of the trip in J, but would be okay with segments in Y if it made an otherwise awesome trip possible. No real interest in F unless it was a fantastic deal.

Here’s what I was thinking:

1. I could use United 60K saver award +$40 for IAD-MUC-DXB on Lufthansa metal with a 9 hour layover in MUC. Enough time to go out, see one tourist sight, grab a bite to eat and head back to the airport. That’s fine with me.

2. The next step is a little more complicated. It seems the two best options for getting DXB-NRT are on Qatar through DOH, or on KE through ICN (possibly using Emirates metal). I don’t see any way to fly Emirates directly because I don’t have any transfer partners. My understanding is that KE doesn’t allow one-ways on partners (but codeshares are fine, right?)

So please tell me which of these makes more sense:

2a. DXB-DOH-NRT on Qatar booked with Avios (I imagine high fees as well)

2b. DXB-ICN-NRT on Korean. If I’m reading the chart right, this would cost 62.5 SKYPASS. (The flights I see on ITA for DXB-ICN are on Emirates metal, but I can do this if there’s a KE flight number, right?)

3. For the last leg I’d do a 50K saver on AA from NRT-WAS on whichever routing available.

Is my plan realistic? I’ve never booked an international award before, so I want to make sure that I understand my options correctly for the DXB-NRT trip. I imagine my main savings goal should be racking up UR points, but I could work on US miles too if they could be useful.