Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Santa Monica, CA
Programs: AA EXP 1MM, DL Silver, HHDmd, MBvLTPLT, PCAmb/Dmd, HYT Dis, WN A-List
Posts: 1,669
I am having to book 4x J tickets for my international trips and it is becoming harder and harder. Trying to find a 5th J on the same flights might make it impossible.
If tying to accumulate miles add more cards for you + hubby with transferable currency - I.e. Amex, Chase. Look for the biggest signup bonuses. A key will be common airline programs where your miles can come together - I.e. BA or Flying Blue or Air Canada - even if you are using them to book other airlines in their respective alliances.
AA is pretty much the last airline with saver awards as low as 57.5k/person/way - most likely you will be 70-80k/miles per person per one-way if you can find low levels - so may need more like 800k miles to really have enough options. While MIA is an AA hub you have several Star Alliance and SkyTeam flights too.
In an ideal world finding availability - if it happens - lines up with an active transfer bonus and your miles go farther. But that is very YMMV - has only happened for me 1 of the last 7 times. Availability of 4 J seats somewhere near where I want to be dictates timing and where I am transferring miles.
Another timing thing might be if you find 4 seats (which is rare but more doable) and there happens to be a decent Amex offer - for example one just started for AirFrance with spend 1k get 20k membership rewards points - maybe you just buy the 5th ticket.
Last trip I was searching for AF actually had decent availability at low levels if I was connecting to random cities like Marseilles (MRS) vs flying straight to CDG. But I think they also made program changes recently and this was last January searching for this winter, not peak summer - and these awards still had significant fees (though not BA level).
The TP suggestion is a good one. Also - is premium economy an option? Some of those cabins are getting close to old recliner level business class. May more attainable. You also have some options like NO premium class from FLL, especially if they keep up the BER flight into next summer. That would probably be something I looked at if I was based in MIA and had 5.