Originally Posted by rjw242

Another (somewhat riskier) option just occurred to me -- flying US to New Zealand is 40,000 AA miles each way in economy, and purchasing 80000 miles costs about $1540 at the moment. You can change the dates on award tickets at no cost as long as the origin and destination remain the same. The only risk, of course, is that the cheap award bucket won't be available on the date you want to change to.