Originally Posted by
bcourcelle
Hello -
My wife and I will need to make two trips to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (ADD) this year to complete the adoption of a little girl. The adoption costs have been daunting and I am trying to figure out how to maximize my various frequent traveler accounts to reduce (or eliminate) plane fares. Our travel time is still unknown, but we expect the first trip is likely in June and the second later in the summer. It is not always clear to me how to use FF miles on partner airlines, etc. so any advice from more seasoned travelers would be greatly appreciated. Also if needed we could break up the trips into two segments if using the miles on various programs on the same trip makes any sense. Thank you!
Our particulars:
US Air Silver 150,000 miles
AMEX Mem Rewards 300,000 points
HHonors 115,000 points
Hertz 10,000 points
You can
transfer your Amex points into several airline programs, then use those miles on that airline or partner airlines. For example, transfer your Amex points to Singapore Airlines' Krisflyer program, then fly in economy for 80,000 miles round trip from North America to Ethiopia.
Because of routing restrictions, using US miles is going to be difficult and quite expensive - the only Oneworld route into Addis at present is served by Qatar Airways from Doha, and AA won't allow you to connect in the Middle East for travel to Africa, only Europe, so you'd need two separate awards in each direction, US - Middle East, Middle East to Africa. The old "Explorer" award that could have been used for routes like that has been eliminated (2 weeks ago.) So I would look at your Amex points (transfer them, maybe buy 20K more since 80K x 4 trips = 320K points) for these flights.
Edited to add - ANA's awards are mileage based. Ethiopian Airlines flies nonstop from Washington DC to Addis, a distance of around 7200 miles, so 14,400 round trip, which equates to 65,000 miles needed in economy. 65,000 x 4 = 260,000 miles, so you'd have enough Amex points to transfer to ANA points, then redeem them for flights on ANA's partner, Ethiopian. Business class is 105,000 miles round trip, so you wouldn't have enough for both trips to be in business class.
Here's ANA's award chart.
Good luck!