Originally Posted by dvs7310

If you're planning to do some MS anyway, I think it might be well worth it to go for more points and do business class. There's not much pleasant about a transpac in economy.

If you do that then it may be worthwhile to connect somewhere and take CX or JL rather than AA.

Originally Posted by umc

I have booked 18 one-way award tickets for 9 people in my family to travel from SFO to SGN in June 2014. In my experience, I can barely find coach award tickets using AA miles, and I have CX and JAL to choose from. It is even harder for you because CX doesn't fly your route. I started booking the outbound SFO-SGN right around the 330 days, and coach availability did not look good. They may have more coach award tickets as it gets closer to the date I want, but I don't really know. United has a lot more available award coach tickets for my route because there are many Star Alliance airline that fly my route. I decided to book one-way business award tickets using our AA and United miles and there were a lot of available business seats for the date I want. For the outbound flight, I booked 5 one-way CX business (55k each) using AA miles and 4 one-way EVA business (60k each) using United miles. This will be the first time my grandpa, mom, dad, uncle, brothers, and cousins fly business class, and I really hope they'll like it.

I think you may consider booking one-way business class award tickets if you plan to use your AA and AS miles because of limited availability in coach. Your current miles balance won't allow you to do so, but you can start collecting more miles now. You won't travel until December 2014, so you have some time to collect more miles. If you don't have any big loan coming up, you may apply for at least one Citi AA (50k miles) and one Chase United Mileage Plus (55k miles). If your girlfriend has good credit, you may persuade her to apply for these two cards as well. You should have enough miles for business class both ways if both of you apply for these two cards.

I was able to book business award tickets for the inbound SGN-SFO for my grandpa, parents, uncle and one of my brothers. So, they'll fly business both ways. The other young family members will fly coach for the inbound. We still have enough miles for 2-3 people, and we'll keep burning the miles to get more family members to go to Vietnam. I wouldn't be able to do any of this without the help from Flyertalk and travel blogs. PM if you need any help.