Hello,
I'm Justin and I need a little help trying to make travel plans.

A little background on what I would like to do.
For the last year or so a buddy of mine and I have been talking about going to Australia when he gets out of the military. He has just over a year and a half to go. I have one year of college left so I don't have a lot of money or time to spend flying around trying to build miles by flying. I have good credit last time I looked it was in the 775 range and I live in CA so I have access to LAX and SFO.

So my first question is too early/late to start planing for a trip a year and a half out?
What would be good programs to join?
I currently have the Citi AA card and I'm working out getting the 75k mile sign up bonus.

Any help you can give would be much appreciated.
Thanks for your time.

Do you know what time of year you are wanting to go? Length of time?

To be honest.. if you don't have friends that are lending you a room, hotel rooms tend to be the most expensive part of the trip. The price using Delta down there is usually around $1,000. If you got a Delta Amex you could use the pay by miles feature and knock off $450 off the price. Is 75K miles on AA enough for one ticket to there?

No specific time of the year, were more then willing to go off peak and two weeks would be the minimum(Id like to do a month). I have one family connection in Queensland so we have one place to stay. The rest of the trip wold be staying in hostels or cheap hotels.

Anything over 12 months ahead is a hassle. You're gonna have a hard time even finding reservations for hotels, airfare, etc,. anytime longer than 12 months...

Also you're gonna be using Quantas airlines. 75k should be enough for round trip ticket in coach. Yea go for more than 2 weeks.. its not worth such a long flight and expense of miles for such a short stay...

http://www.aa.com/i18n/AAdvantage/pa...tasAirways.jsp

I figured trying to find tickets this far out was not necessary.
I'm just trying to get all my ducks in a row. I like knowing that when it comes time to book the trip I will have everything ready.
Thanks for everyones input.

Call AA up, tell them you want to go to Australia from LAX and find out how many miles it will be for a flight 8-9 months out. Qantas is a OneWorld partner airline, so you can use your AA miles to book a flight on Qantas to get there.

Also use Qantas to fly from city to city in Australia, unless you plan to drive around but thats quite a drive. Sydney to Melbourne is drivable, but if you want to get to some other places like Perth or Brisbane (or New Zealand which you should also consider if you can take enough time!), may want to fly around to save time.

75k should be enough to get you there and back, might want to try and put spend on your AA card to get more miles for the city to city flights.

Australia is one of the places I most want to visit; hopefully get there myself in 2012

If you haven't yet applied for the 75000 mile Citi AA deal, then try to apply for two cards at the same time and get 150,000 miles. Sometimes this works for some folks. And even if you can't get two Citi cards now; a year and half gives you plenty of time to acquire more miles. there are always new deals coming out. Good luck!

I've had my card for 3 weeks and I'm well on my way to getting $4k minimum needed for the bonus. If my school didn't charge a 10% fee to pay for tuition with a CC I would have had it done in one payment.


I've already got my Citi card, at the time I applied I didn't know I could try and get a personal and a biz card. Hopefully new cards come out and I can grab some more bonus miles.

Thanks for all of your input.

OP: "I've already got my Citi card, at the time I applied I didn't know I could try and get a personal and a biz card. Hopefully new cards come out and I can grab some more bonus miles. "

Respondent: "If you haven't yet applied for the 75000 mile Citi AA deal, then try to apply for two cards at the same time and get 150,000 miles. Sometimes this works for some folks."


I believe that the responding poster was suggesting signing up for both the personal Amex and the personal Visa at the same time, and it appears to be too late by conventional wisdom. Could anyone please correct me if I'm wrong, which many are typically eager to do on this site, but I believe that one can often apply for and receive both personal cards at a time but that one can more easily get a business card at a later date after receiving a personal card. There is a billion-page-long thread on this. I actually got the Amex 1.5 months after getting the Visa, but I applied for it soon after my Visa was reissued to loss/theft, which may have screwed with Citi's systems.

Apologies for my misplanned quoting style.

True for CitiAA Biz card. go ahead and apply for it.