eponymous_coward

8 Y tickets on the same flight to Hawaii during summer or Christmas in the USA, when it's peak demand time for selling coach tickets to Hawaii? Good luck with that.

My experience is that it's easier to get a low-priced award to SE Asia in December than Hawaii (done it twice).

Alaska Airlines is one of the hardest airline currencies to "churn" in without having to fly them. The only meaningful transfer partner is SPG (no Chase, no AMEX), but the BofA credit card IS churnable and sometimes has category bonuses, but not always.

Honestly? I'd seriously consider this:

- accumulate a huge bunch of miles (a million or more) among AMEX, Chase, SPG, programs where you can transfer into various programs, as opposed to accumulating in a particular airline mileage program

- hire one of the people who actually do award bookings like Lucky, Gary, whoever (lots of people on FT who do that for a reasonable fee), and have them figure it out for you. "I' have a huge pile of miles. I want to take my family to Bali. Can you figure this out for me?"

The thing is that having the ability to shift to multiple programs is going to be crucial, especially given that this may be a multi-year project. If you lock into one program and then, whoops, sorry, things change, you're SOL.

sj22

The other thing I would suggest is investing in an ExpertFlyer account to monitor available award seats and get an alert when 7 open up.

Below is some availability for 7 to HKT next year in April May.

If you research more, there are enough ways of collecting miles through different ways if you are ready to pay 2.1-2.5 cpm. PM if you need more direction on that.

Jaimito Cartero

If you home school, much better to shift to May or September/October.

You definitely need to apply for more cards with big sign up bonuses.

5khours

I did 16 RT in F from the U.S. to Phuket and Bali last Christmas so yes it can be done, but it takes some work and don't expect to all be on the same flights.

Happy

1) Get yourself boatload of both AA and UA miles - they are on one-way system so that adds flexibility to the seat availability. You should be able to find lots and lots of info on how to achieve such.

2) Be prepared to split the big family into 2 flights - it would be very very difficult to get all 8 on the same flight so split the family into 2 logical groups and look for award seats that way.

3) Travel in Peak Season would be really tough. May need to book really early if you are going in Y during X'mas time.

Last year for the X'mas period CX sold its coach tickets SFO-HKG in FULL Fare coach, i.e. over $4K round trip when it was only late October. Ironically while there was zippo in Y award seats, there were First award seats 2 weeks before departure time as usual. This goes back to 1).

StartinSanDiego

I second Happy's idea of AA and UA miles. They are pretty much the only miles that I have focused on and I am very happy with those programs. You can compliment the direct access credit cards with SPG for AA and Ultimate Rewards for UA.

5khours

One other thought, you might want to consider a combination of award and paid tickets.

redtop43

I wouldn't worry about trying to get all 8 people on the same plane. I don't think that will really diminish the quality of the trip.

I think it's very doable, although it could take a year or longer. You need to get a bit more in tune with some of the tricks for meeting minimum spends and with getting the best signup offers, and some of the adults in the party may have to pitch in by getting a credit card or two.

But think about it, any person who gets a United Explorer and a Chase Sapphire Preferred will already have enough points for a coach ticket and will be close to a biz class ticket.

I don't have a specific list of where and how we got them, but Mrs. Redtop and I got well over a million points on major airlines in the past 18 months, with relatively little spend. Yes, you can do it.

sharka

Best answer I could give is not likely as you plan to travel in high season (summer or Christmas). Seats are at a premium at those times to begin with and travel with 8 ? --not likely. If you break up into 2 or 3 groups and use differ. flights and differ airlines and arrive at same destination on same day but differ. times/flights then just maybe possible .But also consider the fact that sometimes seats are available on same flight but not always ALL in Economy so might need to book some Biz seats also if want to stay on same flight (but remember this will add up to much more total miles)

filelover

I think it is certainly possible but needs a lot of research and patience.

We are a family of 4 but our joined by parents and another family member - so we are a party of 7.

We were in Vietnam in 2011 for Christmas, Thailand in 2012 for Christmas, and Australia in 2013 for Thanksgiving.

I always got everyone on the same flight albeit in Coach.

BUT it required a lot of patience and building connections - Never did I call any of the call centers - all research was done online. I did learn something new this year - on some airlines they might only show 5 seats open. As soon as you book those 5 they open up a few more - this is how we are getting on the DFW-SYD flight later this year.

As a reference point Vietnam and Thailand were using UA Miles - Vietnam on LH/TG and Thailand on TG/UA. Australia will be using AAdvantage miles.

sj22

Very very true, but the opposite is also true. If there are 4 seats in a segment, and you book 2, the rest of the 2 might also go away temporarily or permanently.

Also, phone agents are pretty helpful when booking such big trips. They often see award space not available online, especially if booking 4+ people.

pinniped

Tail end of summer is actually a pretty decent time for award travel to Hawaii...both for hotels and airlines. In fact, when I read the OP, my first thought was to recommend Hawaii instead of a long grind through gathering 300,000 additional miles to go to a farther-away beach resort area that frankly isn't as good as Kauai IMHO.

Just querying 8 award seats on United.com out of ORD, the entire final 4-5weeks of summer are almost entirely "green" to at least one Hawaiian airport. Everybody stays together, 20k miles per person per direction, multiple routing options and multiple Hawaiian airports to pick from (including a fair amount of LIH, my personal favorite ).

You're still two or three Chase credit cards short, plus the Starpoints would need to convert into some other Star Alliance partner which *may* have different mileage requirements and/or fees to redeem. (Search the SPG and UA boards...probably some advice there on the best way to get an award seat on United with your original source being Starpoints.)

But Hawaii seems very do-able, half as far away, more affordable if you end up having to buy 1 or 2 tickets, and frankly as pristine an environment as you're going to find anywhere...

StartinSanDiego

Is there a particular reason that Bali or Phuket is the top of your list?
As Pinniped says, there might be other destinations that would fit the requirements of, say, pristine beach resorts, such as Hawaii.

Also Mexico and Central America are fairly quick and easy to get to on miles, and have the enormous benefit of being fairly inexpensive once you arrive. You could home school an eco-system segment, a pre-Colombian segment, do some astronomy and Mayan calendar research, and then visit the old Colonial cities and churches for a glimpse into the conquest and post-conquest eras. (yes, I home schooled my children, too!)

I like to evaluate my future destinations with these things in mind: distance, flight availability on low award prices, cost once I arrive, and. of course, appeal. I'm looking for quantity, so short, (relatively) inexpensive hops around the globe allow for more sites, more vacations, etc.

farbster

I would echo the suggestion that perhaps you look at adjusting your dates somewhat, especially since your kids can go whenever. Not sure about your work schedules however.

Another thought was where are you going to stay when you get there? If you had to pay for some tickets and use miles for some, perhaps you could get a few nights for free on a credit card sign up.

momof4kids1dog1guineapig

We only have a family of 6, but grandma travels with us, so we travel with 7. Last year, I was able to book 7 coach tickets on United for chicago to hawaii in January. I only booked 5 months out, so I know I was very lucky to find all on the same flight. We had to compromise by not flying direct - we flew through SFO there and LAX back, but that ended up being a blessing as my kids got to get out and run around for a bit at the airport.

I was able to get all 7 tickets for 280K miles (40K each).

Now I'm working on getting enough miles to go somewhere in south america next year.

Without getting free tickets, we would never be able to take these vacations because we don't have the $ in our budget. We figure we'd rather take everyone while the kids are still at home. We'll have plenty of time to travel without kids when they are grown, and believe me, it's going by way too fast!