Whew! Just finished booking a pretty maxed-out award, with all 5 stopovers, 2 transfers, and 2 open jaws. Today must be my lucky day, because I managed to get this done over the phone in just 50 minutes, on my very first call without needing to HUCA at all! And I'm not even a Marco Polo Club member, not even a lowly green
240k miles, all confirmed into business:
Trip
#1 :
IAH-DOH on QR: Transit 1
DOH-MLE on QR: Stopover 1
MLE-DOH on QR: Transit 2
DOH-IAH on QR: Open Jaw 1
Trip
#2 :
DFW-SYD on QF: Stopover 2
SYD-HBA on QF: Stopover 3
MEL-KUL on MH: Open Jaw 2
KUL-HKG on KA: Stopover 4
HKG-LHR on BA: Stopover 5
LHR-IAH on BA: END
Total: 45,749 mi
It was originally just going to be Trip
#2 for 210k miles...but then the StR Maldives OWV award pricing error happened a couple weeks ago, where I was able to snag a week in March for those insane points prices! So tacking on the IAH-MLE RT in QR J to the beginning of this redemption for an additional 30k + ~$1300 seemed worth it to me.
Overall this was pretty decent value for miles, although it's a bit of a pity that YQ was rather high for Trip
#1 and LHR-IAH in Trip
#2 . There were no viable alternatives for either trip though (and yes, it has to be London. No, I don't have time to fly in elsewhere and take positioning flights/trains), so I'm still happy with the end result