Hi all,
Y'all have always been a great help so I'm back for more! I'm planning a trip, to book next month and to be taken in March 2009. I'm going to use AA miles so I'll be doing a OW150C, which (correct me if I'm wrong) will get me 25,000 flight miles to play with. Here's the routing I'm considering:

DCA-JFK-MAD-CAI-AMM-BKK-HKG-NRT-LAX-IAD.

The airlines are:

DCA-JFK = AA
JFK-MAD-CAI = IB
CAI-AMM-BKK = RJ
BKK-HKG = Cathay
HKG-NRT = Cathay or JAL
NRT-LAX = JAL (hopefully!)
LAX-IAD= AA

Questions:
1) The reason why I am starting the transatlantic part of my journey from NYC instead of IAD is that IB has a flight from NYC which gets into Madrid at 7:10am. THe flight to Cairo departs at 4:30pm. Do I have time to go into Madrid? (I'll only have carry-on luggage.) If I don't have time my routing will be IAD-MAD-CAI. I may take a bus/train to New YOrk to start because AAs DCA-JFK flights are not known for their timeliness!

1a) Is MAD-CAI daily? Is AMM-BKK daily? (I know I can look it up myself but if any of you know offhand that would be helpful. If I don't get any responses to this subquestion I'll look it up myself! )

2) What is award availability like on IB and RJ? I know it can be very difficult on Cathay and JAL.

3) Better chance to get a flight with Cathay or JAL from HKG-NRT?

4) WHich airline would be better HKG-NRT, Cathay or JAL?

5) I'm only planning one night in HKG. If so, will I be able to see anything or should i just skip it and do BKK-NRT?

6) WHat are my chances of scoring JAL from NRT-LAX. Would I have a better chance using another gateway? (Either Osaka in Japan, or SFO, NYC...in the U.S.)

7) Does the Qantas award planner still show availability on all airlines. THey seem to have changed the interface from the last time I booked a OneWorld trip and it seems more difficult now.