Thanks to all the people at FT I have been able to collect a reasonable amount of miles in various programs in the last six months. The main purpose of this is to take my wife on a trip to Japan, sometime in 2011-2012 or later. I will plan the dates around whatever works best for award availability and don't mind waiting if I need to book 330 days out.

The question being, what would be the most "comfortable" way to get TWO people roundtrip from SFO (or other nearby airport) to just about any airport in Japan (Narita, Haneda, Osaka)?

I am currently working with:

AA: ~140,000
UA: ~53,000
Amex MR: 70,000+

I also anticipate having about 15,000 more UA miles in the next 6 months.

If all else fails, i figure we will go ANA economy for 80K MR. It would be nice to go Business or First for at least one leg of the trip, but ANA doesnt seem to have one way awards to combine with other segments.

I am definitely looking forward to any suggestions no matter how unconventional, even if I need to gain more miles in any of the programs.

150,000 AA miles equals three one-way tickets from North America to Asia 1 in business class.

Transfer 50,000 AMEX MR points to BA and you can redeem a one-way ticket between North America and Asia in business class.

Fly JAL.

Thank You!

I did not realize that BA had such a reasonable rate for partner business awards from NA to Asia 1. Now I will just have to find out about JAL availability and read up on their Business Class.

Still curious if there are more suggestions of course.

I'm new here, so I may be off on this, but your situation goes to 1 of my issues:
Is there a way to transfer from AMEX MR to AA?

It's now not a big deal for me b/c I have already transferred almost all of my points elsewhere, but my AMEX MR is linked to my SPG account, which, in turn, I have linked to my AA account.

Am I missing something or can I (and you) transfer 1:1 from AMEX MR to SPG, then transfer again a little later (at a littler better than 1:1 with bonus for 20k miles transfer) from SPG to AA -- effectively transferring from AMEX MR to AA?

MR cannot be directly transferred to AA. You can transfer to BA which can be used to get tickets on AA or other oneworld carriers.

If you transfer to SPG, you will only get 333 SPG points per 1000 MR. You would only get 1/3 of the value.

Aaaaaaahhhhhhh....I KNEW it was too good to be true!

Thanks for pointing out the error of my ways (I had assumed it was 1:1, since other hotel programs are)

I'm glad that I didn't bank on that as a way to get my miles over to AA!