Originally Posted by CEONelson

I'm currently in the middle of an amazing Europe/Aussie trip which has been made possible by this forum, so thanks all for that!

My return plans were originally to come back from New Zealand in January after the holiday rush, but that has changed so I can get back in time to spend Christmas with my Grandparents and extended family in MSP.

I've been bashing my head against the wall for the last 7 hours trying to combine all sorts of different cities to get back from CHC or AKL to MSP in mid december with (hopefully) a saver business class award, or if not then a saver econ award.

I've got over 120k AA miles and 150k Chase UR points I can transfer, but I'd like to keep it on the cheaper end of things to have them available for another great trip next year with friends this time!


TL;DR:

1: Any tricks for finding award space when you don't care about origin, connections or exact dates? I just want to go from somewhere in NZ (south island hopefully, but doesn't really matter) or Australia (MEL,SYD,etc) to MSP in mid december. I figure I'll probably have to route through a couple of cities in Asia, but that's fine.

2: On one way award tickets can you put in a stopover in a city or have an open jaw or would you have to book two separate one way awards to accomplish that?