Originally Posted by phillipas
Firstly GIB is better than WAW IIRC. There have been significant price rises since Gaza did his ex-WAW (which is where I suspect you go thte WAW idea from.
Partly yeah, although it's also partly because I have friends in Warsaw who I've not seen for a long time, so I was considering topping and tailing the tour with a visit. The extra cost is offset by actually having a reason to go there
Originally Posted by phillipas
Pushing the miles a bit further. And I'm working off the top of my head here!
GIB-LHR-SYD-flit around Oz-AKL-HKG-SIN-HKG-NRT-HKG-JFK-flit around the US-LAX/SFO-LHR-DXB-LHR-GIB.
Avoiding land sectors is easy - but does restrict your miles. You can buy a few cheap tickets to plug any gaps, or in the US and Oz at least land travel is pretty painless. You could do, say, SYD-MEL by bus/train/tour in a couple of days and see a few things on the way. And the train SFO-LAX is not a bad trip either.
As to miles. BAEC is probably not the best option. Sign up to AAdvantage, sign up for the Plat challenge and you'll get far more benefit that what BA offer.
Thanks for the advice. I'm glad I've got a lot of months to work out all my options!
Because I'm not a really frequent flyer I was just going to stick with BA because it's the only scheme I'm already in (VS Silver is a work "perk", but seems to be some kind of oblique joke
) and I've around 55k miles to start with. Starting at zero elsewhere didn't seem like a good idea, but I'll go and read what the AAdvantage platinum challenge is all about. Thanks again!