Hi everyone! My fiance and I are getting a late start planning our honeymoon and could sure use some help. We are getting married on January 13th and would like to take a honeymoon anytime between January 21-February 21, for about 2 1/2 weeks. In an ideal world, we would spend a week in Tahiti (Bora Bora) and then go on for another week in Australia (or New Zealand). My fiance has several thousand points on his AMEX card that could potentially be converted to ff miles. Does anyone have any suggestions on how best to obtain 2 business class tickets for such an itinerary? Thanks in advance for any help.

Understatement of the Year Award.

Bon Voyage.

Welcome to FT. We need more info. Where are you leaving from? How many AMEX points? Any FF point on any airlines?

Hopefully he has more than "several thousand", he's going to need "several hundred thousand"

welcome to FT.

Now that you have been introduced to a bit of FT sarcasm, I guess you are ready to better realize this: All things involving travel need research in planning... Lesson learned.

Something tells me you may wish to join a few FF programs and maybe BUY these tickets outright, leveraging towards future awards you could use later in life. Example: if you are flying, say, Air NZ or Quantas or Air Tahiti... join the program that partners up with airlines you will fly most. If it were me, I might put all my Air NZ miles onto United, all my Quantas onto AA and all my Tahiti onto NWA. I dunno. Depends on what you are doing, etc. It is best to try to get them onto one or two and that way you earn more faster, but you may not have that choice. Again, we need to see where you are flying, etc.

Anyway, either way, you then save all your tickets, itineraries, boarding cards and receipts and ask to have your miles and points put into the appropriate program. If there is any delay or error, you submit copies of these things to the FF program and they will credit you. Later in life, you will have something in your accounts and THEN you can fly using those miles!

Maybe now this thread belongs in TRAVEL forum?
MM
good luck mate! Also be sure to check out the Starwood (SPG) AMEX and threads on that program.

I hope this is not a joke. If your wedding date is Jan 2007, I highly doubt you can get 2 bus class tix to Bora Bora now (or anywhere else) regardless of which airline you fly. Besides, it also can take some time to even convert miles from AE to any ff program. My suggestion is to look into Starwood, see if they have rooms available, and if they do, convert your AE to SPG points and use it for hotel rooms instead.
Congrat by the way.

Good suggestion and I second it. Convert the AE points to SPG points and book yourselves at the Le Meridian in Bora Bora and pay the airfare.

Oh my.

I think the suggestions made thus far are likely the best anyone here can do based on the information provided. I think you need to be more specific. How many Amex points do you have? Where are you traveling from? Are you getting married in 2007 or 2008? What other FF programs are you enrolled in, and how many miles or points do you have in them?

If indeed your nupituals are planned for 2007, I'd have to say that you are very likely SOL in scoring free seats with your suggested itinerary. If you have a ton of Amex points, you could possibly use the pay with points feature on the Amex site to book your travel, but at the rate of .01 per point, that is typically not the best use of your points.

Anyone else think it's odd that the OP hasn't posted anything since the 19th after receiving some helpful advice (converting to SPG) and some maybe not so helpful (but probably dead-on)?

I suspect that the OP is one of these people (who appear on FT from time to time) who have never bothered to read the details of any FF program, and are operating under the delusion that miles in a FFP are equivalent to the # of miles you are permitted to travel with them. Thus, "several thousand" points converted to FF miles, together with some additional, could take them where they want to go.

I can think of no other explanation for the OP's post. And once this type of OP has figured out how the world actually works ....