Traveling from New Orleans, LA to Bora Bora
 

I first of want to say thanks to everyone in the forum for all the help and information i have gathered of the past few month. I am a newbie and would like your suggestions on how i can travel from New Orleans, LA (MSY) to Bora Bora. I am wanting to travel there for our honeymoon in June of 2013. If possible i would like to travel first class. Please let me know what you think

I can use any of these airport and then transfer over but i am looking for the best use of point to get the the airport or the nearest airport.
Here are some of the aiports near by
BOB Bora Bora
MOZ Moorea
PPT Tahiti
HUH Huahine
XMH Manihi

My point situtation are as follows: 400,000 AMEX mebership rewards, 41,000 chase ultimate rewards

Any help would be of great assistance.

Thanks

You are fairly limited in the number of airlines that fly to FP. The main airport is PPT. But, you will typically need to spend at least one night in PPT before going to BOB. The PPT - BOB flight would be on Air Tahiti which is not part of most alliances so you will probably need to pay for that flight.

As for getting to PPT, AA, or it's alliance / partners, is probably the best. The problem you have is that the flights to PPT are on HA or Air Tahiti Nui. Both are partners of AA and with your points, you have a problem getting them into the AA program.

Others, I am sure, can come up with other options. But the only one I can think of is to transfer your 400K MR to Hawaiian. The you could possibly get flights, as a minimum, from LAX - HNL - PPT. You MIGHT need to buy the ticket from MSY to LAX but I don't know.

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If the availability is there (and that's a big "if"), one could also fly to PPT on LAN from SCL. You would fly AA/LA from MSY to SCL (with a connection in DFW or MIA), and then LA to PPT. The MR and UR points could be converted to BA Avios, which could then be redeemed for travel on both AA and LA.

LA does not offer First Class, but its Business Class is supposed to be excellent. And when redeeming BA Avios, you are entitled to stop over at your connecting points for no additional Avios.

You might also consider getting some AA miles via the Citi credit card sign-up bonuses which are detailed in this forum. Since both the AA and BA programs offer one-way redemptions, you could conceivably use BA Avios in one direction, and AAdvantage miles in the other.

The best option here is to transfer your Amex points to Delta, which can be then redeemed to fly Air France or Air Tahiti Nui to Papeete.

I want to say thanks for the input so far.

What is the best way to convert MR to AA rewards??

As far as time, when should i start the conversion of points and how early so i book the flight?

Thanks Again

Bora Bora
 

We have been to Tahiti a few times. As others have said from the states your options are HA out of HNL once a week, Ait Tahiti Nui daily out of LAX or Air France out of LAX a few times each week.

ATN has 1 row of first class and 4 of business. Don't waste the mile on first class on ATN as it is little different from business. Also, they will be changing their seating within about 8 months to eliminate first and put in better lie flat business seats.

I am returning to Tahiti in June of 2013 for a cruise and land vacation and my plan is to use 130k AA miles for business from JFK. I plan on looking the first day it becomes available.

Air Tahiti, a different airline from Air Tahiti Nui, flies interisland and you will have to pay for their flight.

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You can convert MR points to AA miles by first converting the MR points to Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) points, and then converting the SPG points to AA miles. Normally, you suffer significant devaluation by doing this, but MR was offering a transfer bonus to SPG recently that made this a viable option. Not sure if the transfer bonus is still being offered.

No idea why you would want to convert them to AA miles when DL miles have a better transfer rate and are better for the job.

i just want to say thanks for everyones input and i appreciate the advice

DL low level awards are hard to find. It would take A LOT OF WORK to find low level Partner awards. I dont believe OP is up for that task. He can use pay service to tackle this task for him though. If I were in OP's situation I would pay for the service at a heart beat. A couple hundred bucks are well worth it to have someone work on this and secure the all-important honeymoon trip.

The other option would be to take advantage of the 50% transfer bonus AMEX currently has for MR to BA Avios (ends 5/31/12) Then use the OneWorld options. Though he would have to pay fuel surcharge on BA's redemption.

+1^

You're kidding, right? Both AA and DL get the very same TN award inventory, plus DL also gets AF inventory which is not available using DL miles...

I agree that DL miles can be difficult to use, but putting a blanket statement on it without considering the circumstances is silly.