Need help planning a trip to Central Asia
 

Hello everyone! I am new to flyer talk and have been learning a lot from different threads. I am planning to visit central Asia with a group of three late next year. I wanted to get advice from the experts here.

I have 100k+ Southwest RR and some 50k+ Marriott rewards and Marriott Platinum status. From what I have learnt, this is not going to be much useful for international travel (even with UA Silver status match to MR plat).

So far, it looks like buying LifeMiles when they offer 100% bonus and using that for the Star Alliance flight redemption seems like the best deal. Avianca is showing 64k miles for round trip in the economy class.

Is there a better way to get the points and/or a better award redemption to central Asia? Also, is there a way to upgrade to Business by spending points or earning elite status?

If you're not an expert and very experienced traveler, I'm not sure it's wise to try to use an Avianca award ticket for travel to central Asia. How easy is it to find award inventory and book the flights? What happens if something goes wrong such as a schedule change or cancelled flight or delay leading to a missed connection? Who would take responsibility for fixing the problem?

I am new to flyer talk, but not to travel :)

Booking seems to be fairly easy using LifeMile website and the inventory seems good. The booking would be Star Alliance booking so if things go wrong, the airlines with which the booking are done and star alliance should be able to handle things. In my case I am planning to buy points but what if there IS a loyal Avianca customer who has to travel to Central Asia?

So far, I am fairly comfortable with Avianca plan unless experts see some flaw in it. I am wondering if there is a better approach than this.

I would not be too concerned about the Avianca ticketing as most of your flights should end up on Star Alliance carriers. I suggest that you use the rather good www.united.com reward booking engine to get some idea of availability between various gateways and your ultimate destination. In the event of irregular operations the carrier that you are on should be able to resolve any issue. Avianca will have little to do with it. Do be sure to get the operation carriers PNR to make it easier to deal with these issues.

BTW: it helps if you state where you want to go in Central Asia as many places have very limited flight availability and thus a limited number of seats for rewards.

Hopefully you won't have any IRROPS but the couple of times I have run into issues, the carrier (TG) just punted on the problem and I had to go back to the airline whose points I used to purchase the *A ticket (UA) to arrange alternate flights, etc. Have never had to deal with Avianca so can't comment specifically but definitely something to keep in mind.