Originally Posted by littlevoices

I live in HKG; I am planning on using the low prices in Japan to support 2 primary holidays: Christmas in Australia, and a combined America/UK trip back home at Easter

Each city is a stopover for at least a few days except for Doha where it is a transit, and the SFO-LAX is a surface segment
HND-SYD-OOL-MEL-HKG // HKG-SFO/LAX-JFK-LHR-MAN-xDOH-HKG // HKG-HND
Currently this is an 4DONE with 11 segments and about 30k miles. As I've got a young kid (~2yrs) have to try to limit pointless stopovers

Would welcome any optimisations or route improvements... I've considered, and discounted a fair number already:
> Add more American cities, but decided I'd rather just get a car and drive around SFO-LAS-LAX (death valley, highway one etc.) . This way I can try the Transcon AA flight too, which I haven't done before.
> If there is some way to get that extra HKG- Somewhere - HKG leg, but I think I have all my stopovers in Asia now (2 in HK)?
> By the time we get to the UK I will have taken enough time off work, so likely I can't throw in a random LHR-TLV-LHR flight
> If I try and do something like starting in Australia, I lose my Japan exchange rate benefit
> I could do HND-xMEL-SYD (trying JAL rather than Qantas), but seems fairly pointless to add one more domestic flight
> Considered a Australian trip to Perth, however I can't get the online tool to ticket PER-HKG, and there is currently only one flight a week (It does show D9 on Expert Flyer), and as MEL-PER is less than 2000 miles, I don't get any extra tier points really

Thoughts welcomed!