Best Use of points
 

We have hundreds of thousands of points on Chase, Amex Platinum, and Citicard.We can put them and combine to any airline that takes them.
We want to fly BUSINESS class from Southeast Florida, stop 3 days in San Francisco, stop 3 days in Shanghai, on to Tokyo where we pick up a cruise, and return to Florida. We are senior seniors so do not want too many plane changes en route. We do like comfy Business class. We have membership in most all airlines. We can leave from west Palm beach fort Lauderdale or, if necessary Miami? What would be the MOST ECONOMICAL use of our miles? We want to use as few as possible. Thank you.

I did post similar question yesterday but do not think it was as clear so reposting

You have repeated your post from yesterday, where you were advised to seek out an award booking service. Figuring out your holiday is unfortunately not what FT does. You don't give any really useful information and it's a bit much to expect others to come chasing after you for more information in order to do you the favour of planning your holiday for free. As you were advised, seek out an award booking service who will, for a few hundred dollars, do this for you.

Is this the FT newbie version of HUCA?

Hang Up, Hope Flyertalk Transforms Into A Travel Agency Tomorrow?

I will give you a head start...

Figure out which airlines fly from MIA to SFO, then figure out which airlines fly SFO to PVG. Finally, determine who flies PVG to HND/NRT (and of course NRT/HND-xxx-MIA). My guess is that you are looking at a multiple of airlines within either Star Alliance or OneWorld. You could then try to build an itinerary on united.com or aa.com, using either multi-city options or one-way fares. Some allow stopovers, most don't anymore. You will probably spend a lot of time piecing together available flights that don't suit your itinerary and have to make compromises of class of service, dates, or paying cash. When it comes time to transfer miles be sure to do it quickly as availability disappears. For two people doing this itinerary in business class, expect to have several hundred thousand points available.

This is why people use award booking services. I'd recommend one for this for sure!

Harvard
University
Cycling
Association?

No, it's:

Hang
Up,
Call
Again

Hi ejmmjm, glad to see you back on FT. All jesting aside, the rules here at FT are that duplicate posting is not allowed, and we kindly ask that you don't repost questions simply because the answers to a general question weren't helpful enough. You may find more help will be forthcoming if you ask very specific things- the cumulative body of knowledge here at FT is unmatched.

That said, let's move on... The gist of reward bookings is that there is nearly always a way, but finding the best and most economical use of your miles for "free," and, especially, "free business class" travel, is an art form in and of itself. London Elite gave you some good hints. You can figure out what airline routes are available through Wikipedia by typing in the airport name and looking under "passenger destinations." That will tell you who flies from what destination, and you can piece together your itinerary.

There are multitudes of posts and threads here on FT to assist you in finding/figuring out what best works for you, but you'll have to do the legwork for yourself. The easiest way might be, as suggested, to hire a booking service, who knows the ins and outs of the various airlines and the transfer partners for your nice array of points.

How many people are traveling? Are your cruise dates already booked? Is there flexibility in your dates, routing and schedule? If your main goal is to get from Florida to TYO for your cruise, you might have to be flexible on the other items, especially if your dates are fairly soon. The award tix get released roughly 11 months out, and the biz class/saver fares often get snapped up quickly.

Hope that helps.