Sharing an itinerary I booked for 240,000 miles, all business and maxing out the 50,000 miles allowed
CX HKG-EWR Openjaw 1 (start trip 1)
AA MIA-DFW Transit 1
AA DFW-SCL Stopover 1
BA SCL-LHR Stopover 2
BA LHR-HKG Stopover 3 (end trip 1)
CX HKG-SEA Stopover 4 (start trip 2)
CX SEA-HKG Stopover 5 (end trip 2)
QR HKG-DOH Transit 2 (start trip 3)
QR DOH-NRT Openjaw 2
CX TPE-HKG Destination (end trip 3)
Total: 49,859 miles
Took a few nights on CX/AA/BA sites to find all the available flights. I like knowing all my options and once I had the flights it was easy to tell the CX agent exactly what I wanted - makes their job easier and saves me hours on the phone. As a lowly silver I was surprised my calls were connected instantly these days, whether 2pm or 2am.
On trip 1 I had wanted to fly to Cuba, which AA's site shows availability and CX agent was able to see and book as well. However she was unable to issue the ticket. Turns out any Cuba flights cannot be booked as an award with any other AA flights. I quickly figured this out and called back to another agent to cut the Cuba flights, while the original agent called me at the same time to follow up as she also found this out. Pretty good service I'd say.
Originally I booked trip 1 for 210k miles. Then I realised I had only flown 27k of the 35k miles allowed, and for 30k Asiamiles more I could fly up to 50k miles. That's where I plugged in trips 2 and 3. HKG-SEA route has just launched so was easy to find seats. Trip 3 is just so I can check out the QR Qsuites. That's 2 more holidays solved for just 30k miles more - huge bargain. Lesson learnt: always count the miles and maximize the value!