I could really use the advice of you mileage experts. My brother got married last month and is honeymooning in New Zealand the first two weeks in December. He has invited my husband and I and my parents to join them for the second week. I told him I would give him two first or business class tickets there as a wedding present. I have also talked my parents, who are in their 60s, into letting me use miles to get them into business or first; coach would be really hard on them. None of my family members have any miles to speak of.

I have 500K Continental miles, 360K Starwood miles, and platinum status on Continental. My husband has 900K Amex MR miles, 250K Continental miles, and gold status on Continental.

I would have thought all those miles could turn into four award tickets, but when I checked with Continental they have no availability for reward tickets on Qantas into or out of New Zealand or Sydney. Any suggestions? I can get a guaranteed reservation on United using a standard reward, but I'll end up transferring all my Starwood points and still be short. Any advice will be appreciated.

Your 360K starwood points can be converted to 450K times 2 equals 900 miles which should be enough (IMHO) for 4 first class tickets on Qantas!

That was my original plan satish, but the problem is availability. There don't seem to be business class award seats available, much less first class.

Have you tried availability via LHR on BA?

Transfer your AMEX MR points to Mexicana and redeem on Air New Zealand, 90K for Biz and 120k for First per ticket.

Interesting idea. It might work for me, but everyone else is flying out of Nebraska and has schedule constraints because of work. I don't think they could put in the extra time to go that direction (regarding going on BA via LHR).

Beckles, I'm intrigued by your idea. I just registered my husband for Mexicana; I'll call shortly to see what award availability looks like. Thanks!

Anyone else have ideas?
[This message has been edited by JNelson113 (edited 05-07-2002).]

[This message has been edited by JNelson113 (edited 05-07-2002).]

Mexicana is in the Star Alliance and has quite a few good partners available for redemption ... however, you should probably be able to make a reservation before you redeem the points, and AMEX transfers are usually pretty quick. The only thing is check with Mexicana first and make sure everything is kosher for this, in particular redeeming awards without ever having flown them (which I don't think is a problem, but you'll definitely want to check first!).

[This message has been edited by Beckles (edited 05-07-2002).]

Same idea as above but transfer the MR miles to USAir and redeem on Quantas.

Just because Continental didn't have access to Qantas availability doesn't necessarily mean that Qantas wouldn't have availability directly through their program - or that other US airlines wouldn't have Qantas inventory.

Thanks Chazas. I've enrolled in Qantas ff program and keep checking award availability. Not looking good. Same thing for United Saver awards.

Nelson, I used www.points.com and transferred miles from 2 airlines to Delta. Its not a good transfer rate but I thought I'd let you know.

You have many options.

I have routed MR points to MX and redeemed on Lufthansa FRA-NCE.

Looks like your options for the MR points are:

*Alliance
MX and ANA
Redeem on UA, NZ, Thai, SN,

Delta
Redeem on MAS via KUL; SN via SIN; KAL via Seoul (Or goto KAL directly)

CO
Redeem on Qantas; or EVA via TPE

Those *woods are more valuable:

Look into UA; ANZ; QA; CX; JAL for direct redemption.

Look at AA for Air Tahiti.

One other thing to consider is think about going via europe with a stopover I redeemed LP points to fly IAH-AMS-MNL on KL with my 82 year old grandfather. (We talked our way into Biz on the MNL-BKK-AMS flights. If you keep your parents in First/Biz I think going via europe will be alright. It will be along flight either way.


Just my 2c

BSL

JNelson13 - hope it works out for you all. I think your problem is timing. Reading your post it seems like you want the award out Mid December and do not mention the return date. Just keep in mind mid December to early to mid Janaury is absolute HIGH season for flights to and from Australia to ANYWHERE. NZ is much the same story.

The entire country closes down basically. Like France in August etc. All schoolchildren are on vacation, and nearly all business has closed down. So, flights on all airlines are 100% full with revenue pax, and QF are loath to shake out too many reward tickets.

Good ideas, BSL. Thanks very much. I'll look into some of those.

ozstamps, I completely agree. I cringed when they told me their dates. They're going out on 11/27, returning 12/14, my parents, husband and I are going early December, probably returning around 12/17. Our week together will be 12/7-14.

Yeah, I knew these dates would be trouble from the start, but considering it's their honeymoon and they've already put in for vacation I didn't feel I could try to steer them to another time.