I am quitting my job next week and planning a 6 week holiday before starting my new job.

I have accumulated some miles and hotel points and would love to try and use them all in this 6 weeks.

Ideally I want to use American's distance based award and hit many places over the 6 weeks. I prefer business class.

I am based in Shanghai so will need PVG as a starting point.

I am also OK to convert some SPG points into AA miles as I believe you get 5k bonus miles for converting 20k points.

Here is my miles/points breakdown that I am working with for this 6 week trip:
AA Miles: 276,065 miles
SPG points: 172,955 points
Hyatt points: 146,148 points
IHG points: 141,727 points


I would love to check out Japan, Vietnam, Thailand.
Also want to meet up with some family in France/Switz/Italy in middle of May for two weeks.

Anyone have some initial ideas on how best to accomplish this?
I am trying to leave on April 23

Welcome to FlyerTalk!

Wow. You have a very short planning period, and many questions that overlap into multiple categories. Since the scope of your request is far too broad for the Asia forum, I'm going to move your post over to our Information Desk which is designed to assist with exactly such inquiries.

Meanwhile, I suggest you explore the Hyatt, Starwood and IHG areas of our Hotel Loyalty Programs forum to see what FlyerTalkers say about the options in areas you are thinking of visiting. We also have a Japan destination forum and a Thailand destination forum which might help you to narrow down your itinerary a bit.

Good luck!

~Moderator



// mod hat off...

Regarding some of your questions, when you say AA distance based awards, I'm guessing you mean the Explorer award. If that's correct, you need to be aware that the program was terminated a few days ago. See this post in our AA forum: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...pr-2014-a.html. You can still make your trip, of course, but you'll have to make multiple award redemptions to do what you're talking about.

Also, you are correct in your understanding that you will receive 25k AA miles for every 20k SPG points you transfer into your AAdvantage account. Depending in how many awards you need to book, this might be a very good idea. It can take several days for the transfer to post, so you won't want to wait too long if you expect to use this feature.

Again, good luck with your planning!

The general advice you'll find here is to book with miles and points as far in advance as possible, as saver award space goes quickly on many routes. As aBroadAbroad mentioned AA's distance based award just went away, so you'll need to book your trips in segments or possibly a round the world ticket (not sure if that went away as well) Start looking for award space on flights now. I'd try to get it booked asap and if you're open to purchasing flights, you may be able to piece together a fairly cheap itinerary. Hotels shouldn't be too bad, check out IHG's pointbreaks!

Check Starwood's transfer partners and you may be able to get more flexibility out of your award flights by mixing up alliances/partners. Good Luck!

Man sorry about the timing on the AA award.

I wouldn't do a RTW, unless you have many more destinations in mind.

For the Asia portion, I would consider using your AA miles or your SPG to a variety of programs. AA has off-peak awards in Asia until the end of this month, and Oneworld has a good footprint in Asia. But I'm not as familiar with those and maybe someone else will be able to judge if you can use that to your advantage. But you could also use SPG to BA and JAL, which have distance based ideas, like the AA award that vanished. Be aware of taxes and fees though. Especially for your Asian travels I would look at AA or BA redemptions using CX. Also Alaska has good CX redemptions, you could consider that for the Asia and SE Asia flights.

For getting around in SE Asia, you might just buy some of those. Consider your personal value, and if saving the cash is better for you even if the redemption isn't a great cost per mile. There are several budget carriers that have very good prices at times in this area.

Apr 23 PVG-NRT JL0876 Y class 14:05-18:05 10K AA (or 20K for J, several flights available)
Apr 30 NRT-BKK JL0707 J class 18:05-23:00 30K AA (or 20K for Y, or several options on CX via HKG)
Bouce around S. Asia on LCCs, surface transportation or MH/CX/KA on AA awards, 15K per one-way.

May 14 S. Asia-Europe, lots of combinations on RJ and QR, 52.5K J class or 35K in Y.
Breaking that up with a stopover (TLV?) will cost 50K with S. Asia-Middle East in J and Middle East-Europe in Y, or 60K all in J.

TLV-TXL-ZRH on AB is 14,500 Avios, $45 taxes, no surcharges, which you could take after using 30K AA in J to get from S. Asia to TLV.

Then where? I am truly sorry AA pulled the rug out from under you.

One possibility that is very efficient is to take EasyJet to Morocco and then QR back to Asia, CMN-Asia on QR J is 50K.

Thanks for all the info.

Yes - now that I realize the explorer award is gone. its kind of killing my planning. And I was saving all these miles just for this.

Now I am planning on just doing some small one ways on CX from PVG to BKK to SGN to NRT and back to PVG for about 3 of the weeks.

Then will have to figure out how to get from PVG into Paris and then out of Rome back to PVG 10 days later.

Kenny - how do you check international mileage award availability on AA?

Every time i try it says I have to call an agent to discuss.

Use BA and/or Qantas to search for available seats, and call in and feed the agent the flights. I used BA along with Wikipedia airport pages to find each segment. Ignore any surcharges and miles required, you're just looking for seats.

You may have a close-in booking fee so try to work all of your flights that are within 21 days into one multi-city itinerary.

May 16 JL0872 PVG-NRT 9:00_13:00, 1:35 layover, JL0415 NRT-CDG 14:35-20:10 52.5K AA miles in J. That itinerary works most days, and a few dates also have availability on QR via DOH.

May 26, 29 or 30 QR0112 FCO-DOH 11:30-18:05, 7 hr layover QR0888 1:05-1:50, 52.5K in J
or May 27 AY0782 FCO-HEL 11:20-15:45, 1 hr 20 min layover, AY0057 17:05-7:10+1, 35K in Y. Finnair should be bookable online at aa.com.