68,000 Miles for Business to Europe
 

68,000 ANA miles for East Coast to Europe with stopovers. .JFK-Frankfurt-Munich (stop), Munich-Berlin (stop), Berlin-Frankfurt-JFK. JFK-FRA was on Singapore airlines on their 747 upper deck and all other legs on Lufthansa. Taxes are a bit high at $400..

Business Class on Virgin
 

63,000 ANA miles for New York to London on Virgin America Upper Class (business class). This is by transferring Amex points to ANA then redeeming the ticket on Virgin. Sounds harder than it is. Seriously

Business Class to Europe AND Africa
 

120,000 Delta Skymiles for business class to Africa (excluding South Africa), including.Mauritius.and Reunion..You can also include.a stopover.and an open jaw, which comes in handy when routing via Europe. Delta is partners with Kenyan Airways, KLM and Air France, which provide a good number of opportunities for African travel.

Is it a pure award (plus minimal government taxes) or more of a "cash + miles" thing like all of the ex-US awards on BA metal?

I just redeemed 270,000 BA + $2,700 for two F tickets US-India with a stopover and open jaw, but the only thing that made it a particularly attractive deal was about 220,000 in bonus miles from Chase. If I had slogged all the way to 270,000 BA the normal way, I would probably want to redeem them somewhere without the big cash component.

Personally, I find the 4,500 mile one-way awards on AA using Avios to be quite good. I've already redeemed a couple of them in the 4cpm range: flights just a little too cheap to redeem a traditional AA 12,500-mile award and so short that I won't miss the earned EQM/RDM. They're true awards: only cash cost is a $5 government fee.

Around the World in Business Class
 

You can often easily get 100,000 points just for opening up one or two cards.

125,000 Aeroplan miles for US to Asia in business class. The real value here lies in the routing- Aeroplan will let you cross the Atlantic or Pacific to go to Asia so you can effectively build a "round the world" itinerary with 2 stops. So for example, Chicago-Zurich (stop)- Singapore (destination)- Tokyo (Stop)- Chicago

Learn more from ThePointsGuy.com to get the points and plan the travel. It's a free blog

Intra-North Asia awards from areas such as Bishkek where you essentially get a "free" routing via Europe at only 30K miles round trip in business class (US Airways)

Instead of multiple posts .. you could just link to TPG's blog post from a few days ago.

This is an award we hope to redeem in 2-3 years. (Hope they don't change the routing rules!) We figure for a monthlong RTW, we'd probably want to do six to eight locations. We aren't ones who would try to set a segment record or anything. With so many cheap regional carriers in both Europe and Asia (or cheap intra-regional awards), it'd be pretty easy to build a 6-8 city trip around the AC award.

Not exactly the best award... US Airways offers the same award to North Asia for 90K miles.

Questions on US, because I just so happen to be sitting on my new Grand Slam haul and enough flown miles to earn Gold through the trial...zero to 195k in about 4 months... :)

(a) Are they as loose with the routing as AC is? Can I go US-FRA(stopover)-HKG(destination)-NRT(stopover)-US? I'm assuming I'd need to use airports that can be reasonably considered *A hubs.

(b) Can I do a stopover both ways...or just one way?

(c) If my stopover is in South Asia, Europe, or some other place where a J award is greater than 90k, will they still allow this whole award at 90k?

If even 2 of these 3 is true, then it's a pretty sweet award. Especially considering US seems to do a Grand Slam type deal each year that makes acquiring 120k-150k total miles very doable for a modest out-of-pocket cost (around 0.5 cpm).

One stopover OR open jaw- stopovers at Star Alliance hubs ONLY

Pricing is based on the cost of the highest region transited.

More info can be found on the megathread in the US Airways forum.

Glad This Thread is Back !
 

Where was it for the past 5 years I needed it anyway?

I think the thread was just on a little break.


20,000 BA Miles for Miami to Antigua (ANU) on American Airlines Business Class. this flight is usually very expensive. on two occasions I booked this flight as such and saved $700.

It's not really a better award then, just different. Two stopovers at non-hubs is quite valuable. Then again, I'm going to venture a guess that US doesn't charge ridiculous YQ.

Did you book this recently or do you know if that's still available?