Originally Posted by VegasGambler

As others have mentioned, the stopovers add significant value. It's a bit of a waste to use an Alaska award. For example, in your RTW example, you can fly F to Tokyo, stop for as long as you want, and then J to BKK (only because there's no F intra-Asia) for a single 75k mile first class JL award. That would require two awards on AA.

This is how I've always used my AS miles in the past. For example, SFO-TYO//TYO-BKK, then BKK-HKG//HKG-SFO, with the TPAC segments in F and intra-asia in J, for two first class awards (145k miles).

You can also use the stopover domestically if you don't want to visit another place. For example, I've done NYC-SFO//SFO-TYO, all in F, with a several-month stopover in SF (I lived there at the time) for 70k miles (the same price as SFO-TYO). So basically I got the return of a NYC trip "for free", booking into F.