First let me say that I might be developing an obsession with reading FT.
As an American currently studying/living in AU, trips back to the US get rather expensive. Looking for some tips on maximising flights, booking, routing ect.
I am married with one child, so there are three of us. All three of us currently have about 20k miles with UA and 27K with Qantas. My wife was approved for the 65K max MP Xplorer, mines still pending. We're open to doing 1-3 day stopovers just to break up the whole flying marathon. We're newbies at this, anything is appreciated !! Thanks

Welcome to FT! This is probably par for the course

Flying between the US and Australia is generally a more difficult award to get than most, but it's certain do-able. Are you wanting to fly in coach or business/first? Coach will generally run you 80k miles roundtrip per person, while business class will be about 135k roundtrip per person. You can also look into getting one of the Chase cards (Ink or Sapphire) that offer Chase Ultimate Rewards Points, which are transferrable to United.

I'm mainly a Star Alliance flyer (United, etc) but others can give you input on your OneWorld (American, Qantas, etc) options.

Even without miles in your United account, you can use the United website to search for award availability to get an idea of when flights might be available. There are other sites like AwardNexus that also let you do searches, and paid services like KVS and ExpertFlyer. In general, when doing your searches, I'd recommend mainly focusing on the overwater segment (i.e. probably SYD-SFO or SYD-LAX) rather than adding in the BNE-segment right now. Getting from BNE-SYD will probably be relatively trivial compared to the rest of the trip. With Star Alliance (United miles), you can also fly with Air New Zealand (NZ), connecting in AKL. New Zealand could be a great place for a stopover.

I've also flown ADL-AKL (stopover for a few days), then AKL-HNL (stop for about 20 hours, since you're only allowed 1 stopover >24 hours), then HNL-ORD. It was fun to grab a quick day in Hawaii, while both AKL-HNL and HNL-ORD were only 7-8 hours instead of the 14 or so that a nonstop SYD-SFO takes.

I do know that Qantas does have nonstop service from BNE-DFW, so that may be an option as well.

Hope that helps a little!

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[/b]"I do know that Qantas does have nonstop service from BNE-DFW, so that may be an option as well."[/b]

Nope: the nonstop is DFW-BNE. To DFW, the only nonstop from Australia is from SYD.

AA miles can be redeemed on QF, HA (to HNL), and Air Pacific (to LAX via NAN). The only issue (aside from availability) is that the over-water carrier must publish a through-fare from origin to destination; otherwise, AA will charge for two separate awards.

Note that AA and UA each offer one-way awards, so that might make it easier to travel roundtrip on one's desired dates.

I think the best bet would be cheap paid fare from BNE to AKL (use virgin or QF), fly Air New Zealand using UA miles to HNL then use up your Qantas points from HNL to CLE (I can't pull CLE up on the Qantas FF site at the moment, but it should be 25-30K points each way, with only 5USD in fuel fines.

That's a lot of work and may not be worth it when you pay ~$500+ cash, 100k+ miles, deal with 3+ different purchases/redemptions, and get put on 3+ different tickets. One IRROPS and you're done for. Why not just use miles all the way for 100k+, or full cash which is ~$1500?

My advice would be to collect Star Alliance and Delta miles. If you're fine with economy class it isn't THAT hard to find availability. Delta miles can be used on V Australia 100k economy or 150k business. US Airways has the best US-Australia chart in my opinion, and is 80k economy or 110k business.

The combination of the 2 should allow you to travel back and forth with ease. If you can't find direct routes, using the US Airways miles to route thru Asia makes availability VERY easy to find, especially if you're fine with economy. Keep in mind the tickets need to be roundtrip.

As far as earning the miles, Amex Membership Rewards points transfer 1:1 to Delta and there are numerous cards with signup bonuses in the 50k-75k range. Barclay's has a US Airways card that can be churned for 40k after first purchase. Amex SPG card also transfers to both at a 1.25:1 ratio if redeemed in 20k point intervals.

Thanks so much for the input guys !! You've all given me some things to look at and some options to pursue. Had not thot about the AKL - HNL option, I like it
^^

I'd highly recommend looking into the AKL-HNL option. A few years ago when I connected in HNL, UA's HNL-ORD left around 4 pm, which made for a relatively rough red-eye, since the flight is only about 8 hours, so it was tough to get sleep. Now, the HNL-ORD flight leaves HNL around 8 pm, so it's much more natural to get sleep on the flight.