However you go it, starting in London will be cheaper than returning from London due to taxes in departing flights, very high in business , same tax in awards.

Get new AA credit cards. Use your existing hotel points on hotels unless the transfers are at a good ratio. Chase transfers to Hyatt at a good ratio.

you will likely need a minimum of 230k miles RT for 2 if you can find saver. Take out 2 personal and two business cards for you and your wife (or 4 personal, with citi and Barclays) and you should have the signup bonuses in. 60 days with that much monthly spend.

frankly, don’t think you will get nonstops at a good price on awards from a hub , but going through LHR or MIA in a connection home (connections don’t incur the tax ) will likely save you a ton of miles and is not much out of the way.

Dont be focused on too short a connection, a misconnection would be not worth it. Plan on 2 hours at least unless you are willing to roll the dice (maybe the next flight if misconnect would only be a hour later as opposed to next day)

you should also open up an Iberia avios account. Amex points moved to IB is a great way to get to Europe, and you can take out Amex cards for big bonus. The IB account has to be open for 60 days before transfer, so open it now.

You are in a position to steamroll a bunch of credit card applications and could wind up with a ton of AA and Amex points.

Not sure if you have a peremium Chase business card or no fee, you need a premium card to transfer the UR points (you can usually double the value of them by transferring rather than as a cash statement). If you don’t, the Chase Sapphire preferred is currently having an all time high bonus.