andrzej

Thanks: reading about your trip made me think of doing this one now.

But "no", the AA phone rep articulated the "not-every-day-ness" of the flight schedule SCL-IPC although it appears that either there are multiple flights some days or that it does not depart and arrive at the same time each day that it is operated. He did suggest one could buy coach ($585 pp o/w) or biz ($870 pp o/w) tix for that leg. As the $2500-$3500 that would cost would cover a nice week at the Westin in Sydney or the Park Tower in BA, I'm disinclined to spend money if I can get there with miles, having more of the latter these days or so it seems.

It gets back to what I asked originally - given that we want to go to these places my only instructions to him were "we're totally flexible so let's start looking at this trip for four or five weeks total; start in late January or early February; we don't even care if we go to Australia first then come back via South America, etc." - is it perhaps best to nail down the IPC flights first and work back - and forward too - from them or try to build a linear (i.e. "first we leave here and go there, then we leave there and go here, etc.") itinerary.

Any experience that one method is better than another in getting (more or less) what you want?

Again, thanks.