My wife and I are interested in going to Australia and would like to find the best way to go Business class. I am not a road warrior and travel by air about 3-5 times per year. What would be the best way to do this? I am enrolled in:
AAdvantage: 12,200 Miles
WorldPerks: 18,200 Miles
USAir: 2,500 Miles

Should I figure out how to do some mileage runs? How many points should I expect to use for 2 upgrades? Which airline/program is the best one to use for this? Do I need to purchase a full fare coach ticket for the upgrade or is there some way around that.

I guess in short, what is the cheapest way to get 2 round trip Business class tickets from RDU to Sydney?

Basically you have 2 options to get to Australia with miles given the programs you are a member in:
1. AA to LAX and then SYD (codeshare with QF)
This would probably the shortest and quickest routing

2. NWA or KL to AMS then KL or MH to KUL then MH to SYD
Seems a long way to me

To upgrade using miles you need a certain type of economy class fare, depending on which of the 2 progams you would use the miles from.

Once you decide which option you choose perhaps repost this in the forum of the appropriate airline and the local experts will be able to help you then.

I personally like to use these long flights to collect miles and so I try to find the cheapest possible Biz class fare that earns me miles.
Some consolidator fares do allow that. This might be an option to explore too. I got a Biz class fare on NZ from LAX-SYD for ca. 3000 a few months ago.

Enjoy Australia and Sydney..one of the great cities in the world

Well, that's just it. I haven't really made up my mind which airline I would take. I think I still need answers to these questions before I can decide:

How many points should I expect to use for 2 upgrades?
Which airline/program is the best one to use for this?
Do I need to purchase a full fare coach ticket for the upgrade or is there some way around that?
What airlines have easy ways to acquire points?
Is it really worth all the effort to gain points for the upgrade since a full fare coach is so expensive?

You can not use your American miles to upgrade on Qantas. Business class award seats are around 125,000. United flies to Sydney also and I'm not sure if you can upgrade those seats.

Award seats are very scarce for most flights.

Went to Australia this past spring - had a great time.

cejkwj

I am in the process of helping my sister plan a trip to AU and NZ next year. I had about 110,000 miles on USAIR which I was concerned about for a while, so I put them to use to get her a business class award from PIT to SYD. It was 105,000 miles on a partner award with Qantas.

Before USAIR joined Star Alliance, you could also get a business class award for 90,000 on United through that partnership if the whole trip was made on UA. But know--it looks like they have consolidated all the awards on Star Alliance at the 120,000 mile level from North America to AU on Star Alliance carriers--I assume either UA or Air New Zealand.

From what I can see in AU and NZ--if you plan to do any flying in AU or NZ while their, you need to use Qantas. Qantas has some type of "boomerang" fare within AU and NZ for visitors, but I don't know the details of them or if you have to get to AU on Qantas to avail yourself of that deal.

I have enough AA miles that I am going to investigate a distance based OneWorld award for internal AU and NZ travel for my sister. I think the Circle fares on OneWorld might something for you to check also as an option, but you have to keep flying in the same direction I think, ie, not backtrack.

I am not sure about paying $$$ for business class seats. I know that the award seats that I got for my sister go for about $9700 rt on USAIR's website. Even at a hefty discount, that's a lot of $$$.

I didn't investigate international upgrade awards, I don't know that I saw those listed anywhere on the sites I looked at, but maybe checking AA ff page or USAIR's, it might give you an idea if international upgrades are available as awards.

OH-and if you don't mind a little clicking on line, points.com has just announced their double mileage deal with USAIR the same as the one that finishes today for AA. You can see all the posts on the AA pages regarding get a lot of points with that offer. I got about 45,000 AA miles through that deal and spent maybe $55. You have to open an ebay account and paypal account, then join ebay anything points program ands also get a membership with points.com.

Points.com is the only one that costs money, $19.95--but it gives you unlimited tranfers between their various partners. Again, you can read the AA forum discussion on the ebay anything point deal, but the idea is to get as many ebay anything points for free as possible and then transfer them into USAIR's program. It involves getting some memebrships for 30 day trial periods, etc.

But $55 for 45,000 miles aint' bad. But I don't know how long USAIR will continue in theor partnership with Qantas now that they are part of Star Alliance. Might want to check with USAIR o that. Qantas is still listed as a partner, but since they are in OneWorld and USAIR is in Star Alliance, there might be some pressure to not renew the partnership.

Also, call the airlines award desk yourself and they may have some options that haven't been considered. Good luck!

I think you will find it difficult at best to make use of your miles to get to Australia. As far as I am aware, none of those 3 carriers service Australia directly, all use codeshare partners. Since most FF miles are only usable for upgrades only the FF carrier itself and not it partners, I expect you are probably out of luck. However, as dinise suggests, calling the carriers may yield something useful.

For comparison, here is a link to the UA page showing the UA miles that would be required to upgrade UA flights from the US to Australia. If there are opportunities with the carriers you have mileage with, my guess is that the mileage levels would be similar (4 one way business class upgrades from a mid-level coach fare, if available, would be 120,000 miles on UA).
http://www.united.com/page/article/0,6722,1151,00.html

You may want to consider: (a) checking out the Coupon Connection to see if anyone would work with you for UA, ANZ, or Qantas upgrades that you can use with discounted coach tickets; (b) using miles for discounts/upgrades to Honolulu and then purchasing tics from there to Austraila; and/or (c) looking into some of the South Pacific carriers, Fuji Air, Air Tahiti, etc.

Best of Luck

If you want to travel Qantas then you would need almost as many miles for an upgrade as an actual award.-rediculous eh?
its 160K LAX-SYD-LAX for a free ticket and 140k for an upgrade on a discounted coach ticket.200k and 180k ny-syd-ny!
It is correct that you cannot use AA points to upgrade.
If you purchase a cheap UA ticket and can procure a SWU then you need to make sure there is availability for the upgrade before purchasing the ticket or you still may be stuck in coach and it is a damn long way!

I suggest saving to purchase tickets and register yourself for plat fasttrack on AA. You would have quite a few points for internal travel in the future.

Air NZ is also an option. While no longer any US-Oz direct flights there are very good connections at AKL plus the opportunity to stopover in NZ if you wish (or some of the pacific islands).

All this talk of awards makes me wonder why the obvious hasnt been pointed out. Given the relatively low number of miles and limited travel, awards may not be possible/practical. Having said that there are of course plenty of other ways to earn miles than just flying, and the OP didnt say when they were thinking of travelling.

This is what Eauclaire was asking.
We were answering his questions.
I am sure he knows that he doesnt have enough points for 2 bus class to oz.

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Here is an example of what could be done with USAIR miles and points.com with their just started double dividend miles---this would require you to be a memebr of ebay and join their anything points program and also open a paypal account---all free....

Then join points.com as a pointplus member and choose the 2100 ebay anything points for the bonus ---cost of $19.95

On the ebay site, there are several offers for trial memberships that don't cost anything (or very little) that award ebay anything points. You can easily get an additional 10,000 to 15,000 ebay anything points from these opportunities.

With the double divident miles and 25% extra as a pointsplus memebr of points.com, it would look something like

2100 ebay points----> 703 USAIR miles, plus 703 more miles as double bonus plus 175 miles for the 25% bonus as a pointsplus member--->1581 USAIR miles

If you say 12,000 ebay points from the free trial memberships (there are more opportunities to get ebay points besides these), then

12,000 ebay points--->4017 USAIR miles plus 4017 more miles for the double up promotion plus another 1004 miles as a points plus member = 9038 USAIR miles.

You can then transfer the 12,200 AA miles to USAIR on points.com under the double up promotion---12,200 AA miles---->2042 USAIR miles (yeah--dilution here) plus 2042 more miles for double up promotion plus 510 miles for the 25% bonus-----for 4594 miles.

So then you would have 2500 + 1581 + 9038 +4594=17,713 USAIR miles. The cost of 15713 additional miles is $19.95--about $.0013 per mile--or about one cent for 8 miles.

USAIR has some triple mileage specials on now, so if you and your wife are playing the points.com game to the max--and as long as USAIR and Qantas are still parterning, 105,000 miles is not out of the question to achieve--even if its for one award ticket and the second business class ticket.

Good luck with it. I had to call USAIR for a couple of weeks before I find the business class award on Qantas. I don't know how easy it is to get two awards on the same flight itinerary several months ahead of time. The airlines usually wait awhile to see if the seats are going to sell before they make a lot available for awards.

I think the best thing to look at is whether as a US silver or gold you can upgrade on United or alternately, get some US flights and UA flights and credit them to a UA account. I think the best way, maybe the only reasonable way to do this is as a United premier flyer. You are so far from the miles necessary for 2 upgrades that I think you should start over collecting miles credited to a UA account (unless you can do it as a US elite flyer). As a UA elite flyer you can upgrade to Oz on discounted tickets (although not the very cheapest tickets). You will likely have to watch bonuses and do some mileage runs for this. But it will be a lot cheaper than buying the tickets and you will get to visit some other places.

Given that you don't fly an awful lot, then trying to find some UA SWUs may be your best bet. Then look for dates that have space so that you can use them. I'd avoid flying NZ in Business. The seat ptich is only 48" and they don't recline very far. If you want to enjoy the J experience, be sure to check out what different airlines offer in their Business cabins. UA is fine.

Just curious, when you found that $3000 rate did you use a consolidator? If so, did you get airline miles? Thanks