Hello All!
I am about 10 months away from retiring from the Army and am hoping to use my points on a well-deserved "victory lap" with my wife using the ANA RTW ticket. While we would love to do first class, for availability reasons I plan on not even trying that and will "settle" for business class.
I have 2 questions I was hoping for help with:
1. I'm wondering about the best tools to use to find availability. I originally used flightconnections and StarAlliance RTW planner to try and find the most likely hubs to use. We plan on using these 5 or 6 hubs as spokes to explore with cash or other award flights.. But as for finding availability, obviously I could use ANA's portal, BUT...I'm wondering if anyone thinks paying for point.me or expertflyer would be worth the money to save time and improve my ability to dial in a good trip without having to work out all the changes with a phone agent.
2. Timing...We hope to squeeze this between our youngest's HS graduation (early June '23) and her starting College (early-Sep '23). If Phileas Fogg could do it in 80, we should be able to do it in 90... If our last flight (probably a long haul over an ocean) takes off on 1 SEP 23, then am I correct in saying we can't try to book anything until 22AUG, when ANA's availability open up? And even so, that might not work if our last flight is on United or another partner that opens late?

Finally, not a question, BUT we hope to hit all 6 inhabited continents. We'd like to include Kenya (friend stationed there), Portugal (hoping to be expats there), and SE Asia. So any advice on throwing those into an itinerary would be appreciated and possibly lead me to buy you a drink if you can track me down in my nomadic life...

I truly appreciate everyone's time and any help, advice, or humor you can share!

Adam