Was wondering if the "fly experts" could help me with coach awards. I currently have only AA [250k]and BA miles [700k] and always have to purchase 3 tickets at a time so I dont want to use all my miles on one trip and rather use on multiple trips.

I live in Houston [IAH] so its hard for me to figure out how to get the maximum amount of stops/layovers since Im not a hub city.

I know that I wll use BA for a south america trip. Here is my thought process: Use AA miles to ge to LAN hub and then use BA miles for LAN? Or should I use AA miles and go directly to South american city but it will cost me more in terms of miles. Can I do IAH to Peru to Chile to Brazil and then back to IAH and still cost 40k miles per person? Please fix my thought process if not right.

If someone can please give me some examples of getting the most out of my miles -- like best way to ge to asia or europe [mostly turkey/portugal/swirzerland], australia, and africa [egypt/morocco]

thanks for everything -- for the last 4 months I talk to my wife in "mileage" and she has no idea of what I babble about -- Without yall [texan verbage] I would have 0 miles .

Thanks in advance

a good "trick" is to tag along a segment to Hawaii as AA prices Hawaii the same as the lower 48- and likewise, one can travel to both Cuzco/Peru and Alaska and back (on two separate trips but the one itinerary) for 47,500 miles rt.

This sounds like something I'd be interested in as well. I'm assuming this would have to be booked on the phone. Could you explain it with a little bit more detail or somewhere where I can look this type of information up? I'm also in the non-hub city of Orlando (MCO).

I actually posted about it in detail in my blog, so instead of retyping it I'll just direct link you there:

"Tagging along" a segment to Hawaii

Travel to Alaska and South America

Good luck!

To head to S. America, I would think using AA miles to get to a US LAN hub and then use BA miles from there would get you the best value for the miles. BA allows a stopover in each direction, so by leaving from the US it should get you better stopover options. I don't know where you want to go in S. America, but I flew MIA-LIM (stop)-ipc (stop)-scl-eze(stop)-lim-mia for 80k in biz and $150 in taxes and fees.

Rereading the OP's post, I see that they want to do iah to Peru, Chile and Brazil. Going to all those places using 40k BA miles should be doable, but the trip would have to start from LAX, MIA or JFK, which are the US LAN hubs. Mixing AA and BA metal will raise the mileage cost on a BA award.

All this thread does is reaffirm that I need to move to a hub city lol. "Honey, we need to move to either Los Angeles, Chicago, or New York City". I'm not willing to drive 4 1/2 hours to Miami for these type of trips :/

Or just buy a ticket on NK or something - now that NK is moving into ORD.

Proper Texian grammar please. Should be all y'all when referencing the plural.<rotfl>

I'd skip Egypt and Morocco for the moment.