Originally Posted by
peterd87
We are taking a flight from ASP to MEL, and will be driving up MEL-BNE. Mileage limitation left me with this option.
This is an interesting approach, which I didn't think off. Let me see if adding some stops in Asia, would allow me to start the trip in Australia in Darwin as well
Valid question. On the one end going places we really want to go (Australia, SWP (Samoa, Fiji), but as I'm more than average interested in mileage / points I definitely want to make sure to renew my OW Emerald as well. Both my wife and myself hold status with Iberia (gold), and one of the downsides of the FJ flights is that they don't credit with them.
As I mentioned the DOH/DXB connection is up for debate; happy to split into two trips elsewhere if I can achieve that. We are planning to do this trip april next year, so there is time and BNE-DFW could be an option in that case.
DRW does have QF flights to DPS and soon to be SIN, also to ASP so that's an option. JL doesn't fly to DPS so if you choose there then it would remove Japan from your possible Asian stops (unless you remove segments somewhere else)
Since you've mentioned you're crediting to IB, then miles per segment definitely matters, so where practical I'd be looking at the longer segments within a region, without compromising the places you really want to visit. That 3,001-6000 mile range is really the sweet spot for you, which you do have several of. The only intra-Asia flights though I can think of that go over 3,000 would be NRT-CGK and NRT-CMB, you can get to SYD from both, but not ADL or DRW. I've always been a bit surprised that JL doesn't do TYO-DPS on their own metal, they oddly codeshare with GA once a week on the route, and NH has the codeshare every other day. It's a leisure route but Japanese will still buy premium cabins on leisure routes as you see on Hawaii and BKK. Indonesia is nice in a lot of places and domestic flights are quite cheap, so something to consider. Sri Lanka is interesting too and is more stable again now. Just sub in SYD as your arrival point in OZ and plan to use other tickets (like Avios) for the city that was subbed out. Of course if 115 or 225 tier points is enough vs. 500 then it opens up a lot more possibilities in Asia.
I assume you've already thought of this, but you can transfer your IB Avios to BA to redeem for your necessary intra-Australia flights (since I'm pretty sure IB still requires a round trip award) as well as your FJ flight APW-NAN. You could also transfer to QR but I don't think their award chart for intra-Australia is any different and they tend to charge a lot higher fees.
Since you're planning quite a lot of travel in Australia, just keep in mind the rules for segments. You can only have 4 flight segments within the continent (including SWP), so just as an example, DRW-ASP, ASP-ADE, BNE-APW, NAN-BNE, (could be ADE-ASP, ASP-MEL, BNE-APW, NAN-BNE) Naturally you'll want to use them on the most expensive sectors which with the cities you want, I believe those would be (if buying business, and maybe even economy). The other domestic segments should be pretty easy to book on Avios though, I've always seen tons of availability between the bigger cities. (*Note that segment limit is only for DONE4, not DGLOB34, and I'm not entirely certain but I don't think the surface segment counts towards your 34,000 miles in DGLOB34, so you should still be able to add ASP-MEL if sticking with your original plan)