Help on OW160Y Award itinerary (2nd try)
 

I am looking to cash in most of my miles on a OneWorld 35-50K miles award in coach. I am trying to maximize my award and spend around 6 months traveling (South Africa, India, China, SE Asia, AUS/NZ, South America). I am looking for any advice or ways I could improve the routing or stopovers. According to the great circle mapper using all the cities the itinerary is 48071 mi.

Using the latest OW timetable I worked out the following itinerary.

New Itinerary Updated on 8/22 to: AMS-BCN-JNB-CPT-LHR-DEL-HKG-PEK-HKG-NRT-CNS-SIN-SYD-AKL-SCL-GRU-DFW

OLD Itinerary for so other can see my original confusion (x stands for connections NOT stopovers):
AMS-xBCN-xJNB-CPT-xJNB-VFA-JNB-xLHR-DEL-xHKG-PEK-HKG-NRT-xHKG-SIN-SYD-CHC-xAUK-SCL-PUQ-xSCL-EZE-xGRU-GIG-xBCN-AMS.


If there suggestions for any flights that could be bought separately relatively cheap (< $300 US) then I have a few other ideas for additions. Please note this is my first attempt at an itinerary this complex.

The itin is way over the 16 segment limit.

Only 15 Segments?
 

AMS-CPT(1)-VFA(2)-JNB(3)-DEL(4)-PEK(5)-HKG(6)-NRT(7)-SIN(8)-SYD(9)-CHC(10)-SCL(11)-PUQ(12)-EZE(13)-GIG(14)-AMS(15)

By my count I only have 15 segments. My understanding is the number of segments is based on stopover cities only. All the other cities mentioned in the original post were connections (marked with an x). I added this information in because I found finding valid OW routes kind of difficult in certain cases (e.g. No flights from South Africa to India) and was looking for suggestions on routing improvements.

Unfortunately it is not so: 1 segment = 1 flight number.,

Presumably you are redeeming an Aadvantage OW award -- the rules are different in each airline's plan, but the AA rules are the most favourable. QFF allows a maximum of 5 stopovers, for example, as well as other routing limitations. With AA you can easily cut it down to 16 segments and still do the core of the routing. You just have to decide which flights are cheapest to buy (varies highly, for example fares in Brazil are pretty high now due to the collapse of Varig).

Thanks for the input
 

Thanks for all the helpful input. I am redeeming a OneWorld award using AA miles. Looks like I need to do some rework on the intinerary.

Updated Itinerary
 

Okay here is a second try now that I understand the rules on segments versus stopovers. This is for a OW160Y award using AA miles for economy.:

AMS-BCN-JNB-CPT-LHR-DEL-HKG-PEK-HKG-NRT-CNS-SIN-SYD-AKL-SCL-GRU-DFW

Right now I am planning on purchasing some or all of the segments below as add ons, again any improvements suggestions would be appreciated. (JNB-VFA, HKG-BKK-REP-KUL-HKG, PEK-SHA, AUK-CHC, AUK-NAN, SCL-PUQ)

You obviously have trimmed it down to a legal number of segments...but which ones are the stopovers?

Have you considered the C award for just another 60K miles? Should be a grand trip regardless, though.

Pretty much every city is a stopover now except for maybe LHR (although a day rest may be needed) and HKG will be a connection one of the times. I would like to go C for another 60K but I am getting 2 of these awards and only have enough points for Y.

Just a point of reference, the airport code for Auckland is AKL and not AUK. I was trying to figure out why your routing from Sydney to Santiago went through Alaska.

Did you have any reason for making the stops in the order you have them, or can you switch them around?

And having been to Alakanuk (various spellings) I can assure you that it's not a oneworld city.

No reason for the routing except it seemed the most logical based on the OW routes I was looking at and the places we want to visit. Definitely open to moving stops around, any suggestions are welcome. I did try and keep stops in one country together (e.g. China). I am open to starting and ending in or around DFW or AMS based on what makes sense. We are thinking about leaving in Jan. so I tried to keep seasons in mind on the whole but it may make sense to do it in reverse.

I still haven't checked for availability yet so any input or past experience on availability would be helpful especially if certain routes may be a problem.

Thanks for the correction on the AUK vs. AKL certainly a typo on my part but I fixed it now.

I just noticed I could pick up an extra segment if I start in BCN. Pretty sure I can pick up a cheap flight from AMS-BCN.

No problem. Not really a big deal, but it made the itinerary go from 40-something thousand miles to 30-something thousand.

There's a few things you could do to *possibly* get it under the 35000 threshold. Although not enough to do biz class for the same price, you could maybe save a few miles. With the lower threshold, you're looking at 30k more per ticket for biz class. You could buy the 60k miles for about $1500 if you so desired.

This itinerary gets you slightly under 35k, though it's slight and the mileage calculations do vary.

BCN-CPT-JNB-DEL-HKG-PEK-NRT-CNS-SYD-AKL-SCL-GRU-DFW

If push came to shove, you could just go back to MIA and buy a ticket home, which should give more than enough of a cushion. I did take off SIN to do this routing, otherwise, it contains all your stops. The actual flown itinerary would be

bcn-lhr-cpt-jnb-lhr-del-hkg-pek-hkg-nrt-hkg-cns-syd-akl-scl-gru-dfw

A couple of those routes are high demand, so flexibility will serve you well.