FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Atlanta, GA, USA
Programs: Frontier Gold, DL estranged 1MMer, Spirit VIP, CO/NW/UA/AA once gold/plat/comped gold now dust.
Posts: 38,176
I did my trip to the Seychelles in 2015 on the great Etihad mistake fare deal...the $644 RT from JFK to there wasn't as good as $344 IAD-MNL-IAD or $208 ORD-AUH-ORD, but I still had to do it and was glad I did.
Had looked at other approaches like trying to tack it onto an Africa trip via Kenya Airways and Skymiles points, but it looked like actually booking would be a real pain. There's also that Ethiopian carrier and Air Seychelles flying to a few places.
Realistically, though, EK and EY now tower over the other options and are probably most realistic by far. Maybe you can use AA miles via EY, but I'm sure if it were me there'd be some segment messing up the price or availability and requiring a two-ticket strategy. Hopefully the Seychelles government doesn't allow the ME3 to flood the place with visitors, but that's how many people are getting there these days.
With the Maldives I'd look at getting someplace with easy access like KUL and then taking a ULCC for the last segment.
You're lucky in a way that it's not as easy as people may think to get to these places, as they're fragile and too many visitors will ruin them.