Just my two cents, but you may want to rethink this trip. Here's my reasoning. First, you are doing a hell of a lot of traveling in a short time. You have 15 stops over thirty days. Not even counting travel, you are only looking at two days per location. It looks like you're planning for one or two more locations, so you may even have less than that. Accounting for travel, your time per place drops to probably closer to 1.5 days. Second, given that you only have 1.5 days per place, your margin for error is very, very low. If only one flight isn't available, you're whole plan gets thrown out of whack. As others have indicated, getting a seat on certain flights may be easier said than done. Whatever you choose, have a great trip. Sounds like a trip of a lifetime.

its 15 stops over ~ 50 days (I have 6 weeks budgetted off).

and the itinerary is obviously very much subject availablity... just in the preliminerary planning stages... so far, I have JFK-NRT booked for March 29th and nothing else... we see how it goes.

I was told by two EXP agents that the only valid China route on CX using AA miles is PEK-HKG, meaning PVG-HKG (and XMN-HKG) is not allowed (yet?). KA is not joining oneworld until later this year.

CX operates 1 Shanghai-Hong Kong flight with CX metal.

50 days isn't so bad. You initially said a month. That at least gives you three days or so each.

And you can't use AA miles on that flight. But you can on PEK-HKG.

Someone already mentioned the extreme difficulty of getting a seat on the LA AKL-SCL flight. I've done two OW220C awards, and both times found zero availability on that route, booking 330 days out. I had to use my open jaw with an AKL-PPT flight on NZ (only 20,000 UA miles), then take LA PPT-IPC and IPC-SCL--that's a good way to get around the AKL-SCL flight if you have some spare UA miles. Plus, Easter Island is far harder to get to than Japan and China, where you're using a lot of segments.

One thing to remember is that Business Class is not offered on QantasLink services. So that rules out flying J PER-AYQ. Economy on the 717s is pleasant enough though.

Rgds

Well I'm running into problem number 1. I am finding 0 availabilty on domestic JAL legs even in Y. What's wrong?