Strategy for awards to Australia
 

I am planning to book 3 awards to Sydney from 3 different cities (NYC, LAX, SFO) for Dec 2013 leaving weekend before Christmas, returning Jan 1, and am trying to plan my strategy so I maximize my chances of optimizing my miles, flights routes and dates so that as soon as the awards become available, I can swoop in immediately and get seats :)

The following are our balances:
AA 170k
UA 150K
US 40K
SPG 60K
MR 80-100K
UR 40K
AS 35K

I would like a business class ticket from NYC and economy from LAX/SFO as the LAX/SFO are direct shorter flights and the people traveling from CA don't have as many miles. I am not willing to pay any fuel surcharges for these tickets (so BA out of the question).

My plan currently is as follows to book these 330 days in advance:

From NYC: Transfer 60K SPG to US. Use 110k US miles for a business class award. I don't mind flying through Asia on this. I know this is bookable with UA miles, but costs 135K for business class and I also want to save my UA miles for the more complex open-jaw/stopover routings :)

From LAX/SFO: Use 37.5k AA miles each way to try to get the direct LAX/SFO-SYD segments and back so that these can be combined with the 1 way stopover in LAX/SFO for another North American destination (TBD, but flexible). I could also try going through Fiji or Asia on this (though I don't think Air Pacific or CX shows availability on AA), but prefer not to route through Hawaii on HA as that will demolish the additional destination.

A few questions:
1. Which routings should I try to look at for the *A segments?

2. I read the Qantas flights become available a year out, but are not available on AA. Any way to get these without fuel surcharges? I can't seem to find the Qantas flights on AS and am already planning to use my SPG points to transfer to US so don't think there is any way to get AS miles.

3. I searched on AS and saw Delta also has direct flights LAX-SYD for 80k roundtrip in economy so I could transfer MR to Flying Blue and getting a one way on Delta that way (assuming it's 40k).


Any comments or tips on the plan would be great!

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1. QF no longer flies to SFO.

2. What DL charges for a redemption is only relevant if you book with Sky Miles. If you book with a different program, you will pay that other program's redemption rates (and fuel surcharges, if any).

3. AA redemptions from the South Pacific to North America do not permit a transit through Asia, so CX is out, unless you want to pay more miles.

4. If planning to use the gateway stopover option when redeeming miles, keep in mind that AA's rule is that the over-water carrier must have a published through-fare (not a constructed fare) from origin to final destination. If the over-water carrier does not publish such a fare, then a second award will be required for the post-stopover leg.

LAX and NYC to Australia on QF are available on AA.com - I booked myself 2 months ago 2 F tickets AKL-MEL-LAX-DFW. Just book 330 days out.

This sounds like a headache. Maybe try an award booking service for some/all of these? If I could get good flights for free, I would gladly pay the fee.

That may be your way of going about it, but I am fully capable of doing this myself and all the information needed to do so is publicly available. Why would I pay $200 a ticket to give up control of my routing? It gains me nothing... and I don't have such a low headache tolerance :)

I was referring to the fact that the awards are available on Qantas and some other airlines awards 355 days out and by the time you can book them on AA, 3 weeks have passed and the good tickets are all taken.

You can transfer your 60K SPG to AS, generating 75K with your existing 35K, giving you 110K. That is the required amount for a business ticket on Qantas redeemed through AS. Qantas awards must be booked through the partner desk and AS can redeem at the same time the awards are released (shhh).

Book the coach awards with your AA miles at 330 days. All of you could be on the same flight, although you may not want that since you're in biz and they're in coach?

Will Delta let you do a one-way award as the OP wants?

Not natively from Skymiles, but potentially through the Skyteam partner if it allows one-ways.

Whenever I need a one-way on US metal, I redeem UA miles. Similar concept...

Personally I would save the SPG points for a hotel. 60k points will get you 6 nights at a Category 5 hotel in Sydney. That would get you about $0.03 per SPG point or $0.045 with cash and points at the current listed prices for the area in December 2013.

This is actually so much fun and thank you everyone for all the tips and help :)

Good point on the value of SPG. I am not so worried about hotel nights at the moment as those are much easier to get than flights and I estimate we essentially have another 6 months to collect the hotel points. I was able to get rooms for New Year's in Rio this December 3 months before. I will probably have to do some more research, but we are preliminarily thinking of doing 4 night AXONs in Cairns and Sydney (Cat 5 and Cat 7, respectively). Our agreement is also to have the SFO person use points for hotels since she travels for work short distances and has few airline miles.

I was working on this some more and did start thinking about the fact that I am using SPG for the US Airways flights so it's not really 110k US. Also, it may be best to try to go for the Qantas business class ticket on AS (which is really really hard to get, but I have a backup plan).

Would it be crazy to actually go with 135k UA for the business class ticket from NYC?

The things is US already charges $50 for an international award and you pretty much get only on shot at it with each additional change $150 (unless there is a schedule change, but with common routes like JFK-ICN-SYD, the schedule is probably pretty set). I am 1k on UA so can change all I want, which I will most likely want to do if a North America - SYD flight becomes available. Moreover, since I am not doing any stopovers on the JFK-SYD round trip and United does allow me to add a stopover and open jaw (whereas US has stopover OR open jaw), I can add another segment for another trip beforehand from the Caribbean or, if I change my mind later, change to a stop in Asia - just with booking tickets so far out, changes you wish you could make for free are likely! So $50 processing + $150 to change + North American segment in business from elsewhere = all these differences may just make up for the 25k miles :)

So now I have the following plan:

1. NYC: Move 60k to AS as eattofly suggested to try to get the business class flights on Qantas for 110k miles and put intra-Australia flights on Qantas also. If this doesn't work (which it likely won't), use 135k UA for the ticket JFK-SYD and then do little flights with BA within Australia.

2. LAX: Use 75k AA for the ticket LAX-SYD doing a north american stopover both ways. By the time Qantas inventory is available on AA, the flights may be gone so then will try to take Air Pacific or HA, maybe building a 24 hour stop in Fiji.

3. SFO: Use AS miles for the ticket from SFO (preferably on Qantas, but lots of other partners, such as Delta, Air Pacific, Cathay). If option 1 does get the business class flight, then use AA miles preferably overlapping the route with LAX person.

With the Qantas business class flights disappearing almost as soon as they hit inventory, I am trying to work out my contigency plan to use *A miles.

I've decided to go with the UA miles. Even though 110k US is much cheaper, I would need to transfer SPG points and the value of 60k SPG should technically be higher than the additional 70k US I need. Moreover, it is likely I may want to change to do a stop in Asia or spend a few nights in Hawaii and my 1k status will let me do this for free.

So my next question is:
Which is the best *A airline to route through Asia in terms of seat?

The three possibilities seem to be: Asiana, ANA, Thai.

It seems Asiana has best availability through ICN, but ANA through NRT also seems possible. Which of these do lie flat in business from NYC to the hub? Seatguru says they don't, but I have had flights on Brussels Airlines, for example, that turned out to be lie flat unexpectedly.

If I am not mistaken, according to this piece in WSJ 'The race to offer better sleep at 35,000 feet', ANA should have lie flat seats on NYC-NRT. Is this correct?

You're probably going to have MUCH better luck finding a stop in Asia than in Hawaii at that time of year (it's peak season for Hawaii = little award inventory). You're also going to have problems getting onward travel from ICN if you choose OZ, FWIW, because OZ blacks out all non-North America awards during late December/early January (the trick I've used to get around that is TG has an ICN-HKG fifth freedom flight that has good availability). Oh, and OZ does not have lie-flat on ICN-SYD. The good news is OZ has decent award space available out of North America that time of year (you may be able to get their lie-flat).

Your best bet to get award space on the Asia-Australia leg will likely be TG (slanty-flat unless you get their A380), though sometimes SQ will have some award space on their regional planes (A333), which is also slanty-flat, not true lie-flat.

Also, if it's strictly seat you care about (as opposed to soft product)... UA shouldn't be off your list. Their C seats should be all lie-flat by late 2013. OZ, TG and NH won't be.

Other options.
AA award travel routinely has HA flights from SJC & SFO to SYD via HNL.
What's that supposed to mean? I travel from CA and I make your accounts look puny.

That's really good to know about the award blackouts with OZ. I will definitely have to work that consideration into my plan. I may look for a routing through NRT, then, though I've been reading the ANA seats are kind of hard.

Of course, if I can get on the UA flights, especially the one to SYD, that's my first choice. But those are really tough to get as they business class flights disappear almost immediately. I may try to use them to fly through Asia, though.