First a big shout out to John C for providing me with the final puzzle piece, and after 2 1/2 hrs on hold was able to get a very supportive agent on the line to book for two people. Doing a couple of positioning flights but dream trip to Maldives using Hilton Points is now accomplished We could have done the ORD to HND on UA economy but no thanks, and the ANA flights were waitlisted for all classes. Besides have never been to Seattle so an Uber to the waterfront.

Itinerary:
SEA-HND ANA economy (ANA showed premium availability but agent couldn't book)
NRT-HAN ANA Business
DAD-SIN SQ Business
SIN-CMB SQ Business
CMB-IST TK Business
IST-BRU TK Business
BRU-JFK SN Business

We could of gone into Washington DC from Brussels, but SN is daily into JFK and more choices to fly back to ORD late in the afternoon. Spending a couple of days in Tokyo and Singapore, a week in Vietnam, 5 days in Sri Lanka, and 6 in the Maldives so all these places are not easy to get to from the midwest so I am very happy to check these off my trip list. We have been to Istanbul but it is one of favorites so we get to spend a couple of nights there and never have been to Brussels so two nights there to check the city, and I love Belgium Beer

Called at 10:30 am on Fri Aug 11 and Japan is/was in the midst of typhoons so the agent was very apologetic, but basically like I said a 2 1/2 hour wait.

I had three Excel worksheets with different dates and times ready to go and triple checked with UA (don't log in), ExpertFlyer, and ANA's own site. Off to the side of my calendar I had the days, dates, and flight numbers, as well as seats for flights. I did have a couple of flights filled with yellow in case one didn't work - for example the DAD-SIN has two flights so the alternative was there to choose if needed. Also, found out Air Dubai flies out of CMB and Emirates flies from MLE to CMB so choices besides SriLankan, since MLE to IST was not available and the flight is only 1 1/4 hrs.

Took about 15 minutes to complete the booking but it would of been faster if I had my wife's information loaded into the system. To do this goto:

Main booking page>click on your name>Family Usage>Award User Registration>Register and on the right side under the example names you will see two lines for first and last name. At first I couldn't see it and thought you had to enter information on the left hand side.

The only correction I had to suggest was the flight from NRT to HAN. Google Fights only showed one departing at 6:30pm but their system also were showing a 7:30 pm flight. But we were able to do the preferred flight. And at the end she put me on hold and came back to make sure I had the miles and to give me the fees. OUCH.

Miles were 230,000 for two just as I thought, using Great Circle Mapper, but the fees were $1800 each. Looking at the previous posts this seems in line so either ANA or TK, or both, are hitting people and ITA Matrix was off by $900. And I priced that individually for each flight on my sheet for an idea. Tomorrow I'll price out what this would cost if I paid money but I know it would be a couple dollars more than the fees.

Nice touch by the agent was to go ahead and book the seats. She gave us exit row seats for the first leg, and she was able to reserve the seats for all the flights, which I had already did my homework for, so look at seating charts ahead of time to get an idea where to sit.

For those coming back from Europe, and thanks to John C, it seems Brussels is the only award space available currently, and they only fly into JFK and IAD. Now to set up an alert for the outgoing flight and see if I can pick up business for that.

Thank to this board for the guidance.