I am experienced with *A bookings and new to OW.

I checked on AA for PEK<>MCO and got no results.

Current miles status:
AA - 162,030
BA - 100,046
Chase - 164,036

Looking for:
3 business class ticket 2 adults, 1 child 6 yr old
Nov 28, 2015 - December 30, 2015 (both dates flexible)
PEK<>MCO (visit Disney World)
If OW allows stopovers could also take advantage of those.

I understand it is too early to book these and am just preparing by training myself to search for OW tickets. I can't even find a single award flight for PEK<>MCO.

What do you advise?

I suggest you 'train yourself' by looking for a single ticket

I'm seeing plenty of availability for a lone traveller in November

I expect that to snag 3 seats, you'd have to look at 331 days into the future (the furthest ahead you can book on AA). I just tried this and can see availability for 3 seats in business on dates in early February

(all checking done on aa.com)

pandaperth,

Great, thanks. That is just the type of info I was looking for.

Good news.
- I was also able to find availability far enough out on both BA.com and AA.com
- Additional charges is quite low, less than $50 per ticket (both BA and AA). I had heard horror stories about BA.

Not so good
- Seems BA is 155k compared to 110k for AA. I guess no saver awards for BA
- Available routing is different between the two sites. Might have to do this over the phone.

Next steps
- Plan the trip 365 days in advance and then book first day available.

Questions
- Do both AA and BA offer one way awards that are 1/2 the round trip rate such that I can book the going 331 days in advance then wait the length of the vacation (1 month for example) and book the return 331 days in advance of the return, or do I have to wait until 331 days in advance of the return to book the complete routing at once?

Have you looked at AA & BA freq flyer web sites?
If learning about OW its best to look at the web sites and do some basic research
Airlines award cost is not the same for all airlines. Earn/burn will be different

Yes. Both offer one-way awards. Also, AA does not show all partner availability on aa.com - you need to call in.

bhomburg,

Great, thanks.

BA and AA programs are quite different.

BA charges per segment based on distance and class.
AA charges per zone.

For example HKG-LAX-DFW-JFK would be the same as HKG-JFK on AA, but very different through BA.

There is no general oneworld rule about stopovers etc, it is down to each oneworld airline program.

Agreed. I would never use BA points for PEK-MCO (or similar) even though I have a lot because the segment by segment pricing is a killer.

AA/CX via HKG is my general my preference (if I have time enough to kill to spend a night in HK in order to justify the serious backtracking). My second choice is JL, but this almost always entails an overnight in NRT (when going to the east coast). I really dislike AA between PEK and ORD (early morning departure and you have to endure AA).