Just finished searching through like 15 pages trying to find what I'm looking for and the Mini-RTW but I think what I need is EASIER than that and might be why I'm missing it.

A link to the answer(s) would be totally appreciated, then this thread could just get closed/deleted. I feel stupid for asking but I can't for the life of me find this stuff.

1. I've got the AP chart, yet searching YVR-MIA and YVR-PIT through multiple dates even into July/August 2015, I can't find a single routing that's the "advertised" 25,000 points. The cheapest one I found for either route I think was 39,000 (with my Diamond discount). Am I missing something here? It doesn't list east coast Canada-east coast USA 25,000 they actually seem to make a point of saying "anywhere in continental USA".

2. When you guys are putting together routes avoiding YQ (which I'm looking to do) I have the chart of which airlines to use but I'm wondering how you actually go about it. What I wanna do is YVR-MDE (a route I frequent, but usually just pay for) UA/AV/CM are all fine choices avoiding YQ. So is it just a matter of going segment by segment finding availability on flights I like, then calling AP and having them book it for $30? If the answer is yes, what kind of points charge would one be looking at, would you have to add all the segments points charge together? Or would it be 50,000 like the chart suggests (and which I can actually find on the AP site) or is it some other number that only the phone agent would be able to tell me?

I'm trying to go from beginner user to kinda novice and I feel like this is a couple things I've missed somewhere so I need to bridge the gap between just a regular booking and the mini-rtw level of difficulty.

Thanks for any help, sorry if the questions are reposts, like I said I searched 15 pages of searching "award" and didn't come up with anything that seemed to answer it or a wiki for THIS kind of question.

1. Your problem here is both MIA and PIT are major US hubs and with that airline gone from STAR, awards are hard to come by on AC and UA metal.

2. Yes, you must plan your itinerary segment by segment, then once identifying flights call AE. No way of avoiding this. Start your search with the key segments, then worry about getting to gateways from your local airport.

1. As stated by poster above, space is harder to find since they're both oneworld hubs, or other people have already snagged the space. What dates are you looking at?

2. If you're doing a regular star alliance redemption it's the price that's on the aeroplan award chart. most airlines don't have fuel surcharges to/from south america (except ac). no, you find all the segments, feed it to the agent, and the it prices based on origin and destination.

hope this helps!

That does help, thanks. I figured MIA might be a WEE bit of an issue so that's why I tried Pit (thinking who would wanna go to Pittsburgh other than me...for a hockey game!) so I searched random dates far in advance. I didn't know it was a OW hotspot.

Now I tried using the ANA tool for the first time today, familiarized myself with that, had a bit of success using multi city doing YVR-IAH-PTY. PTY-MDE worked, though YVR-MDE wouldn't, neither would YVR-BOG. When PTY-MDE worked it also said Madellin which was wrong and Colombia wasn't in the "south America" portion of the list. Anyone have any troubles finding destinations on that thing?

That'll be my last question, the clarification from both you guys did help a bunch, from what I can tell I'm not that far off I just needed to make sure I guess!