I am totally ingnorant here about this kind of travel so I beg your indulgence.
Several of us are researching an escorted tour to Australia and NZ for 2004. The trips are a bit pricey and if I can use ff miles it would save me some money. I would prefer not to use the miles in my larger accounts (AA, Delta, AWA), but I have 72,000 on British Air which I know is affiliated with AA and I also have 75,000 miles in my United account. I also have enough points in my Starwood account if I needed to top off any accounts. I would need to fly from NY to Auckland and return to NY from Sydney.
Can anyone tell me how many miles I woud need in which account to do this with award travel and also how difficult it would be to get award travel on whatever airline you recommend. The tour we are interested in at the moment uses Air New Zealand for their group and I would prefer, but don't insist on going on the same flights as my friends who will be purchasing the air from the company. Thanks for any info in advance.