Newbie with a complicated route
 

Hi Everyone, I've been collecting miles and flying ff for years, but mostly my routes have been simple round trips and so it's been easy to find the best way to fly while minimizing how many miles I use. But I am planning a complicated trip - Brussels to Taipei, Taipei to Shanghai, returning Bangkok to Brussels. I prefer to fly economy because I work hard to get these miles, so dropping 100k is a big deal.

I have tried the United, AA and Delta websites, all of whom I have a ton of miles with, in addition to checking ANA, Singapore Air, Thai Air, EVA, and so on, all in which I have 0 miles but into which I can transfer miles. (UR, MR, SP, TY)

My question is, is there not a better way than this, going through every mileage program to see who will offer me the best deal.

So far, the best deal I've found is 130k miles flying busines class (1 stop on outgoing flight) or 100k miles flying economy (2 stops on outgoing flight).

Any help you could offer would be greatly appreciated.

Is the question about award pricing or award availability?
Availability with your ffp or its partners is never guaranteed
http://www.awardace.com/redemptions/search
http://www.flyermiler.com/

You only need to use the websites of the three programs you have miles in. For the most part, if they have an alliance partner that flies the route you are looking for, and reward seats are available, these websites will display them and you can book the flights there.

Thanks! The awardace and flyermiler sites were very useful in letting me know what kind of miles I would need to use if I were able to score a seat. For example, Aeroplan offered to get me there for many fewer miles, but the fee was prohibitive.

The AA website is not helpful for finding seats to and within that part of the world because it will not show flights operated by the OneWorld members based in Asia. Limited partners on the website is major defect of that program. Use the BA or Qantas websites for a better search of that alliance.

Do you have Aeroplan miles? If not, there's not much point in using the AC site (other than to get an idea of availability) because you don't have the currency to shop there (unless you create an account and transfer from a partner that does so.) You say you have UA miles, so you must book your Star Alliance flights there.

A tool I use frequently for finding availability is awardnexus.com That's the way I usually look for CX availability since you can't search for them on AA's website.

Sometimes things like stopover rules can be very useful for the type of multicity trip you're planning.

Or you could call the airlines with whom you have miles and ask them.