Hi! I'm a relative newbie...I've been haunting these boards for a while now, but have never posted. My husband and I are trying to go to Australia in January, preferably business class. I have 115,000 miles on American, 20,000 miles on United and a scant 4,600 miles on Delta. He has 74,000 American miles and 82,000 United miles.

Is there any hope for us to be able to fly together in business class? We seem to be so close, but yet so far!

I guess the first stop is to check out each airline to see what they require for coach, business and first travel.

I would say your best bet is to use the AA miles. Your 115,000 is more than enough for Qantas (105,000) or Cathay (100,000) biz seats. As an added bonus with Cathay, you get a stopover in Hong Kong. Since your husband is 26,000 miles short, you could do a few things. He could take a mileage run to europe. If you are on the west coast and he doesn't mind making some odd connections, that can be around 7,500 miles each way. That's 15,000 rt. With the double mile promo and the 2,000 online bonus, he can get over 30,000 miles for a few hundred dollars.

Another option is to post in the coupon connection board that you have a lot of united miles. Try to get someone to trade 100,000 AA miles for your husband's 80,000 UA miles.

Whatever you end up doing, call AA NOW and get seat reservations for january. You can always cancel them later, but that's peak time down under and award tix are hard to come by then.

Yeah, we've done that. We've got enough for one business class ticket on American (Qantas) and 2 coach tickets on United. I was trying to figure out if there is some way to combine our miles in a semi-generic program to get us into business class (ie: convert miles to HHonors points), or if it made sense to buy tickets and try to upgrade to business class. I've already looked into HHonors points, and they only offer coach award redemptions.

I know at the least we can travel coach together on United, but we were really hoping to be able to fly business class. Our last long haul flight from Tokyo to LAX was a real beast in coach!!!

I beleave you only need 80k miles for a companion ticket. 185k miles for 2 bus.traveling together.your husband is only 11k short he could do a run or purchase the miles from aa.

Johnep, thanks for the suggestions. I think I may just have to send him on a mileage run!!

As for the companion ticket, I may have to do the old call AA and get a different answer thing. I was told that the 80K award only works as a companion to a full fare business ticket, which is certainly out of the question. If he only needs 11K, I think we'd be in OK shape, because he could sign up for the Citibank AAdvantage card, and then charge our property taxes with it!

Your husband could get a Diners Club card. Then, he could transfer 50,000 United miles into the Diners Club program (you lose 50% of the value when doing this), then transfer them to AA, which currently has a 20% bonus. So, he'd end up with 30,000 AA miles in exchange for 50,000 UA miles, which combined with what he already has, would give him enough for a Cathay business class award. You already have enough for your ticket.

For the $80 annual fee, Diners Club will also give you 12,000 miles during the first year as a signing bonus (1,000 miles each month). You can transfer Diners Club points into virtually every domestic airline, including NW, AA, and UA which are absent from Amex's program. If you need a referral code, just ask me

Your best bet, as noted is to use AA miles and thus your husband must do a mileage run, or you shoud get an affinity credit card and run $20K of charges through it to get the miles needed -- or less if there is a start up bonus that you get up front.

However, even with the slump in travel, the biggest problem may be getting two seats in award category since you have no elite status with AA, and thus no hope at priority. It is rather late to book this route for January, since it is one of the most popular awards and QF is quite stingy at releasing seats to AA. Also, Business Class seats are in greater demand for paid travel than even First and Coach, so there will be fewer up for award use. That is also why CX might be your best bet. They have experienced greater drop-off and have been putting a higher percentage of seats on award status. Though Business will still be in demand for revenue travel.

There is no way toconvert the UA miles to AA, since AA doesn't participate in the HHonors "laundry", and any other way leaves you with too few miles.

But all this might be academic if no award seats are available. Have you called AA to check availability on either QF or CX? I would do that now if you have not. Then work on getting your husband enough miles since the clock is really ticking away.

AA does participate in HHonors, they just have a different conversion rules.

United points can be transfered to HHonors 5000 miles for 10,000 points. Then to AA 10000 points for 2000 miles, 20000 points for 3500 miles, or 50,000 points for 10,000 miles.