Originally, I was going over to PEk in late August and award tickets were awful. I was told double miles or no go. I switched to October and found tickets, but with not non-stop from North America to China. The flight back left Hong Kong late afternoon and I had to overnight in Soul.

So I looked for Cheap tickets. CO out of Newark was high. I ended up with Air Canada out of LAX. I change in YVR, but to go from YVR instead of LAX was costly.

My cost was $3,135 per ticket business class. To make this work I am overnighting both ways at LAX at the Sheraton Gateway (7,000 Starwood points total for the two nights) and taking Delta to LAX (25,000 miles per ticket -- since I have old delta FF miles not just Skymiles I am getting a FC seat round trip for those miles).

Where I wished to use miles all the way, busy times and less than 331 days out makes it tough. If you are willing to take flights that go out of your way and maybe even fly coach part of the way, keep trying -- something might open.

Now the person I taked to at CO told me that for Asia, CO did not post standard awards until closer to flight time. So I plan to keep looking there. The Air Canada tickets are not only relatively cheap, they are refundable!

Air Canada flies 763's to PEK and 343's to HKG. It is upgrading its fleet starting in April (so THEY say) and the Asia flights might be among the first to get the new seats. I am not counting on anything, but you can always hope.