Hey everybody! I am a college student just about to start my Sophomore year and am hoping to study abroad in Australia during the second semester of my Junior year giving me about a year and a half to collect some miles.

I don't do very much traveling though I currently have 11,484 miles with Continental.

Basically what I am looking for is the airline with the lowest miles to Australia leaving from the NYC area and a credit card that will help me accumulate miles with said program.

Continental doesn't have much for Australia but since they are joining Star Alliance I was wondering if it made sense to keep getting miles with them, or should I go for a different Alliance member such as United that actually flies to Australia? Or would something completely different make more sense?

Thanks a bunch!

if I were you, here's what I would do: keep collecting miles on Continental since you already have over 11k miles with them and you don't travel much. Get a continental credit card which will give you one airline mile per dollar spent each month. Put all of your bills, books, food, gas - EVERYTHING on that card and pay that one bill per month. Just watch your money carefully! Watch for special promotions where you can earn double miles, etc

Continental is partners with Qantas so I would not think you'd have an issue getting to Australia at all.

best of luck!

Surely that relationship with QANTAS will have to change with CO joining *A. Can't give customers to the enemy.

Either way CO joining *A means your miles would work on UA and you could accrue UA flights to CO, given you don't travel much elite status is irrelevant here.

Welcome to FlyerTalk!!

I'm going to disagree with the others who have already posted. The 11K you have from CO is close enough to zero that I wouldn't really take it into account when planning.

Assuming you have a decent credit score (which can be hard in college but some folks do it) I would start churning the heck out of the AA/Citi credit cards. Leverage the Mint dollar coin program to make your minimums to get the bonuses if you don't otherwise have the necessary spend. Because of the pace at which one can churn those cards you should be able to generate enough points for a trip to Oz using AA/QF, potentially even in the pointy end of the plane.

Plus, doing it with CC churn doesn't require actually spending too much money out of your own pocket. Even if you spent $2-3K/month out of your pocket and could charge ALL of it that would only be 36-54K miles in the 18 months that you have. That won't get you very far. In other words you aren't really going to make it just by earning points on CC spend; you need something else as a "kicker" to make the numbers accrue more quickly.

Thanks for the responses everybody!

Wow, I completely agree with everything you said.

I just spent the past hour reading up on the AA program and here is what I gathered:
- According to the AA reward chart I would need 70,000 miles for a round trip ticket (125,000 for a business ticket ).
- The Citi card offers a bonus of 30,000 miles which can be renewed every 60 days
- At this rate it seems like I should be able to have enough for a business ticket in under a year.

I feel like I'm missing something because it seems pretty simple but I'm not really sure what.

You've missed a couple things that I can think of.

First, there are three different AA cards that can be churned (including the "business" card that doesn't actually require that you're a business to apply for). That's more miles faster.

And then there is the issue of inventory restrictions on the reward flights. You'll have to work around that, especially if you're looking for Biz/First seats. But with a bit of flexibility you should be OK.

The churning can have an impact on your credit score and it depends on your score being good enough to begin with. You might not make it that far. But it is a solid "Plan A" to start with before we have to come up with a "Plan B" for you.

I don't know what my credit score actually is but I've had a credit card for about 3 years now, pay my balance in full every month and have had my credit limit raised several times so I would like to think its decent enough.

As far as inventory restrictions, as nice as it would be to fly biz/first I would have no problem flying economy if necessary. Also, since I will be going for a semester I should have about a month window before and after to pick a flying date so I don't think that will be a problem.

I did notice that there are 3 credit cards, but as you mentioned, the churning can impact my credit score and all I really need at the moment is the 70,000 miles for an economy ticket. If and when I reach that plateau I may get a bit more adventurous but I don't want to be too greedy from the start.

Thanks again for all your help, it is much appreciated. Is there anything else you think I should be aware of?

In my view it is currently a complete waste of your FF miles to use the for a trip to Australia because you can BUY a ticket from Air New Xealand for as low as $609 + $158 for taxes, etc.

See

http://www.airnewzealand.com/default.htm

This is a limited time offer but it has been around in slightly different forms for at least the past six months.

I am sure that Qantas offers similar fares.

While there have been some phenomenal deals between Oz and the USA lately they have mostly been from the west coast (OP is in NYC) and in the Y cabin. With just a little bit of effort the OP has a very real chance to fly the route in J or F, something that cannot generally be purchased on the cheap.

Also, the coin deal is only worthwhile if you have a high enough credit limit. Also, looking at the chart here, it looks like it is 75,000 for Y not 70,000 and 125 and 145 for J and F.
http://www.aa.com/aa/pubcontent/en_U...ward_Chart.jsp

It is hard to say what CO will charge by the time you look to book, right now they charge 90/190/285 for Y/J/F on Quantas. It is hard to say what it will be with a *A partner, maybe UA's rates of 80/135/160 are a sign of what is to come.

I am 22 and have banked about 275k one pass miles and just about to finish school. Most of them are not from flying, but charging everything I buy on a CC, doing the same from purchases I needed to make for jobs I had.

I also banked a lot of miles from various 'deals' like the amtrak deal, dollar coin, opening checking accounts ect. I am in milage save mode right now. I am young and not that big a guy, I can tough it out in Y without too much trouble and the help of a few drinks and an lunesta. Personally I would rather save them for entertaining a special someone in the future or down the road when I just can't stand coach.

I recently bought a paid ticket to china because I got a good deal and for the first time on CO will hit Elite status. However, if you need to use miles to make the trip affordable, fly in coach. The miles you save will allow you to take another trip to China or Europe.

I don't know you definition of "high enough" is, but if the OP has a $5,000 limit he could rack up a lot of miles on the coin deal without a lot of trouble. Sure, you can get them faster at $10K, but the major issue is depositing the coins in large amounts. He could easily turn $10K per month with a $5,000 limit and still have 120,000 miles in a year.

I guess if you only use your card for the coin deal you can max it out, I use it for everything so need to leave some padding.

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