Which program would you say has the best redemption rate and flexibility to austrailia? Possibly visit Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. Then head to New Zealand or possibly Tahiti?

Not too familiar with that part of the world but would be up for anything.
I've got some miles across the board so if anyone could share their opinion of the best redeption to get the full use of miles that would be great!

You can use AA miles on Qantas, but it can be tough since Qantas opens up award seats to its own FF members about a year in advance and they can be gone by the time the AA 330 day window opens up. Still, worth a try.

On Star Alliance, the most direct way to get to Australia is on UA, but other options such as NZ are good.

If you don't mind going out of your way and probably shelling out extra AA miles, Cathay is great in business class and even more superb in first, and often has availability far in advance and sometimes even close in to a trip. And Hong Kong could make a great stopover.

I wouldn;t mind doing hk also. So it would be using AA miles from sfo-hkg-Aus?
What would be the total redemption there? I don't think AA allow free layover and sfo-hkg is 135k in F.. from hkg to Aus is like another 80-00k in F id imagine.
Not sure I want to spend that much if no necessary though. It'll be a family of 4, so trying to minimize miles but maximize experience

Don't know how much it would add up to. You'd have to call AA to be sure. But anyway, ouch! - for a family of four could be a lot of miles if you flew CX via HKG. Better on UA or NZ using UA miles or, best of all, QF using AA miles. But for four people you might have to be creative and go indirectly to find four seats.

As you may know, you might be better off booking two different sets of one-way tickets, as that can be easier than trying to nail down four round-trip tickets on the same flights.

The UA site can be pretty useful for finding availability using UA miles, but to search for more options awardnexus.com is a very good site that's free for limited use by FT members and costs only $50 for more expansive use.

Qantas F will be 145k a person. Assuming I get the 10k rebate it'll be 135k a person. If I can nail two seats up front, I will need to find out if Qantas will release seats during the last week or few days.

Anyone have much experience releasing seats last second or days with Qantas?

It doesn;t look like Qantas flies direct from sfo to aus either.. hm...

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If you're talking about the 10% rebate of redemptions for Citi/AA credit card holders, that rebate is limited to 10,000 miles per AAdvantage member per year. So you would get one ticket for 135,000 miles (assuming that you have not received any other rebates in the same calendar year), but would still pay 145,000 miles for the remaining tickets.

If you want to go via HKG, be sure to price the trip as a distance-based Explorer award also: it might be cheaper than a series of one-way awards.

Using DL SkyMiles for Virgin Australia.

Alaska redemptions with Qantas actually have a very nice sweet spot with only 110k miles RT in business:

http://www.alaskaair.com/content/mil...australia.aspx

Dont have many alaska miles. I have about 100k delta, good for maybe 2 on ways. I need to look into explorer tiket. Are they subjct to normsl award availability!

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Explorer awards require SAAver availability on all segments.

I'm tilted towards Star Alliance, since I've had pretty good redemptions with UA as long as dates are flexible. The drawback is you may gave to purchase your domestic flights within Australia. Otherwise you can do something like SFO/LAX-AKL-PER then SYD-LAX/SFO. I've also seen some circuitous routings like SFO-TPE-BNE on EVA (BR) or SFO-SIN-PER on SQ or LAX-BKK-PER on TG. Another option is to do a semi-Circle Pacific routing using two one-way awards, such as LAX-AKL-SYD then PER-SIN-NRT-LAX.

I'll have to take a look. The sfo-sin-per may be impossibe to get in premium class since sq doesn't like united miles for premim class.

The SFO-SIN leg may be hard but the SIN-PER and other intra-asia routes (basically anything on a B772) have reasonably good premium award availability for SQ. I quite often see business seats available on SQ A333s between secondary cities in Japan to SIN as well (KIX, NGO, FUK).

I'd say just go and search for some awards on UA and see what sort of routings come up before you decide

Very very unlikely. IIRC the same seat class is used for QF upgrades. QF will fly with empty seats in F & J. As is the way with most airlines not in USA, F & J is not "upgrade class"

You'll have to get around within Australia somehow, since you want to visit far-flung parts of this very big country.

From/to the US on one side, go to/from the biggest city you're visiting in Australia (that would be MLB on your list). From/to the US on the other side, go to/from New Zealand or wherever non-Australia you're visiting. Then all you have left is intra-Australia and Australia-New Zealand, not the more difficult routing direct between a relatively smaller city in Australia and the US.

Then figure out if it makes sense to use separate premium awards or not for the shorter connections within Australia and within New Zealand and between Australia and New Zealand (or wherever). It may be much easier for 4 to find paid flights than award flights, so where you can afford to do paid flights for shorter legs that may make much more sense.

But, btw, also consider how much total time you have. Just getting from one part of Australia to another will take significant time, and then you want to allow enough time to see whatever there. And New Zealand is somewhat far-flung too (it's a narrow but long country). So make sure that you really have enough time for both countries (because it much simplifies the routing if you're only going to one or the other, rather than trying to throw a bunch of stuff in just to say you've done it).

It can already be hard enough to find awards for 4 to anywhere. The more complicated those awards have to be (because you're flying roundabout to stop, not just flying roundabout to get 2 other people there) the harder. You may actually have to split the family up between two different routings just to get 4 seats to the final destination!