Originally Posted by
eponymous_coward
What's the intended complete itinerary?
SQ HKG-SFO/SFO-HKG is pretty cheap in F if you simply
must do F on SQ- it's
only 7k extra over J. So I would give
strong consideration to using SQ out of HKG if you really want an F segment on your award.
I would probably structure things to take in honeymoon stops along the way and be a tourist in the cities you travel through (adding domestic UA flights to the SQ redemption will blow the cost up). Also, you DO have ~15 months to add to your AA/SQ balances.
I'm looking at a departure itinerary of LAX-NRT-SIN-DPS in SQ Suites/First. I'll buy a stopover ($100) in Tokyo for 4 days, then plan a long layover in Singapore, and then final destination is Bali for a week. I also have another award ticket planned for DPS-BKK-HKT-BKK-MNL (probably on Thai Airways) with 7 days in Phuket (another $100 stopover), a long layover in Bangkok, and final destination in Manila for 8 days (will attempt to pay for with excess Krisflyer miles at 20K/person one-way). Plan on taking a LCC (Cebu Air or Air Asia or something) from Manila to HKG for 3 nights, then back to the states us AA miles on CX J. I don't know if i want to work toward accumulating another 110K AA miles just to bump from CX J to CX F. If i had the opportunity to acquire another 110K AA miles, i'd use it on another award (probably to Europe).
I already have 155K Krisflyer miles but i have a few months left to acquire the additional 28K to book SQ Suites LAX-NRT-SIN-DPS (will attempt to book Late May 2016 for a late April 2017 flight), then more time after that to gather enough points to book the inter-asia business award ticket DPS-BKK-HKT-BKK-MNL.