Cheapest/Best redemption for Australia?
 

I have one world miles (BA and AA) and star alliance (UA). Which program provides the best price redemption and the most available seats to austrailia this summer?

*A is easy, but only in Y.

I'm going to assume you are searching for business class availability. Delta Skymiles can be used for V Australia redemptions for 150k roundtrip. Qantas also has some availability for this summer although the odds of finding a flight on your specific dates are very slim. If aiming for Qantas, then AAdvantage is the way to go. I just booked a trip to Australia flying V Australia for the first time over the holidays.

*A seems easy enough in J too... as long as you don't expect to fly LAX-SYD/SFO-SYD, LAX/SFO-AKL-SYD/MEL etc....

Admittedly my recent booking was going the other way but availability was easy enough to find through various Asian ports....

I'm looking at July. From las vegas to Melbourne. Looks like AA uses partner Quantas. Will need to call in to see if there's seats available.
Will probably do economy as it's a ticket for mom and grandma. Not sure if I have enough miles for premium class.

I would say Qantas has the best availability. You don't need to call to see the availability. You need to sign in to your BA account, and search availability LAX-MEL and SFO-MEL. (Click on include partners when it says BA doesn't fly the route.) Once you find some good transpacific options, write them down, and go to aa.com to see availability to get to LAX or SFO.

To fly coach/business/first will cost you 37.5/62.5/72.5 AA miles each way.

With a quick search, I didn't see fantastic availability, but there is a LAX-SYD-MEL on July 4 in economy.

Thx.

Could I use BA miles instead to book that flight? I tried to do it on BA but there's a system error. The calculator shows 50/100/150 for econ, bus and 1st but i think it's the old redemption calc.

You can use BA Avios to book, but 50/100/150 each way is the price, so that's a horrible deal. Plus BA will charge you higher taxes and fees than AA by several hundred dollars. (Plus you'd have to pay another 4500 each way for LAS-LAX, while with AA miles that flight is included.) AA miles can be great values flying abroad, while Avios rarely are. If you want to maximize Avios, see here

they need to get to adelaide by the way

That portion you can use Avios which is good value for short haul but terrible for long haul.

Or you can tag on the segment to Adelaide from the AA redemption which would be part of the award with no additional miles needed.

Your issue is to find the TPAC seats from US to Australia. Search for all Australia gateways - that would be BNE, SYD, MEL, from West Coast and DFW (QF flies DFW-SYD), using BA search engine on each city pair.

Alternatively you can sign up QF FF program and search on QF site which would give you a full month's view at a time.

Do your own legwork to find availability before calling AA to book would save you tremendous time and frustration. Nobody but you yourself has the most interest in finding the availability which is a very time-consuming, meticulous process. Dont expect an AAdvantage agent would exhaust all the possibilities to find that for you, especially if you are not an elite.

Yes, do use QF site and look at LAX-BNE for TPAC leg.Saw lots of available space when looking a few weeks back. Note: Darius at www.miilionmilesecrects.com has detailed process to search QF site that was just posted today.

HNL SYD
 

Well since everyone is being so helpful how about JFK HNL SYD BIZ at least?

Sept or early October for 2 . I have 400 K AA plus assorted others. Is that a good time to see those 2 Cities ?

HNL to SYD is not on a longhaul business class configuration - i.e. you would be on a half-recline seat all the way instead of a 170 lie flat seat between West Coast to Australia.

As for using your AA miles to find seats in QF biz, good luck in starting so late. Those probably are among the hardest award seats to come by in premium cabin because everyone else in OneWorld has a full month ahead of AAdvantage members to start booking those seats - namely 365 days out versus 330 days out. On top of that there is only ONE airline, namely QF, flies that NA - Australia route that is qualified for AA miles redemption for partner award (AAdvantage does not permit transit 3rd region on partner award so you are SOL to go thru Asia unless you do an Explorer (old name One World) award that is based on distance traveled.) OTOH, you have enough AA miles to do Explorer award which would allow you to go thru Asia and have stopovers enroute - the incremental miles required are well worth it if you have time to do the stopovers as it opens up a lot more routing possibilities, therefore award seats.

The only chance for you to find business class seats in your time frame would be someone has canceled his awards and you happen to be at the right time to see it. QF is NOT known to add additional award seats to the pool once it has done its initial release. More often than not, QF would fly largely empty F/J cabin instead of releasing some for award redemption. A marked contrast to CX in this dept.

Anytime is a good time to see HNL, and that's a good time for SYD. Lucky hit the nail on the head that the business seats HNL to SYD are not lie flat on either Qantas or Hawaiian. But you can do that route as a one stop, flying each leg on HA metal with AA miles. Hawaiian has incredible award space. You'd be sacrificing comfort for the convenience of fewer stops. Get a Hawaiian account, so you can search their availability on their site.

Quick thread hijack, when did they change the name to "Explorer"?