Hi all,
Y'all have always been a great help so I'm back for more! I'm planning a trip, to book next month and to be taken in March 2009. I'm going to use AA miles so I'll be doing a OW150C, which (correct me if I'm wrong) will get me 25,000 flight miles to play with. Here's the routing I'm considering:

DCA-JFK-MAD-CAI-AMM-BKK-HKG-NRT-LAX-IAD.

The airlines are:

DCA-JFK = AA
JFK-MAD-CAI = IB
CAI-AMM-BKK = RJ
BKK-HKG = Cathay
HKG-NRT = Cathay or JAL
NRT-LAX = JAL (hopefully!)
LAX-IAD= AA

Questions:
1) The reason why I am starting the transatlantic part of my journey from NYC instead of IAD is that IB has a flight from NYC which gets into Madrid at 7:10am. THe flight to Cairo departs at 4:30pm. Do I have time to go into Madrid? (I'll only have carry-on luggage.) If I don't have time my routing will be IAD-MAD-CAI. I may take a bus/train to New YOrk to start because AAs DCA-JFK flights are not known for their timeliness!

1a) Is MAD-CAI daily? Is AMM-BKK daily? (I know I can look it up myself but if any of you know offhand that would be helpful. If I don't get any responses to this subquestion I'll look it up myself! )

2) What is award availability like on IB and RJ? I know it can be very difficult on Cathay and JAL.

3) Better chance to get a flight with Cathay or JAL from HKG-NRT?

4) WHich airline would be better HKG-NRT, Cathay or JAL?

5) I'm only planning one night in HKG. If so, will I be able to see anything or should i just skip it and do BKK-NRT?

6) WHat are my chances of scoring JAL from NRT-LAX. Would I have a better chance using another gateway? (Either Osaka in Japan, or SFO, NYC...in the U.S.)

7) Does the Qantas award planner still show availability on all airlines. THey seem to have changed the interface from the last time I booked a OneWorld trip and it seems more difficult now.

Thanks headinclouds! One more question. The hold for AA is 14 days. So should I be able to book this all while holding as I add each flight:

Day 1: NYC-MAD
Day 2: MAD-CAI
Day 3: CAI
Day 4: CAI-AMM-BKK
Day 5: BKK
Day 6-11: BKK
Day 12: BKK-HKG
Day 13: HKG-NRT
Day 14: NRT-LAX-IAD

I think the Cairo will work because the flight CAI-AMM doesn't leave until 9:30pm so I'll have 2 full days and I only really need to see the pyramids.

It sounds like he/she is already in Bangkok. In that case, I would just do the BKK-NRT flight. This is a long itinerary and you may not want to add indiscriminate segments. I recently did the same thing and it worked out well. The JL lounge in BKK isn't anything extraordinary, but it's a nice place to kill a bit of time.

Looks from what you are saying that you want to stop in Cairo, Bangkok, and Tokyo. If this is correct, with a little different planning, you would be able to drop this into the ow130c category.

THanks Darren for your response. I will indeed already be in BKK. I want to take JAL because I've never experienced their trans-pac business, and I have experienced Cathay. THat said, I am not wedded to a stop in HKG or Tokyo. I've been to Tokyo (but have friends there), never been to HKG (other than to change planes). So I'd stop in Tokyo to see friends and get a ride on JAL, HKG to see the city.


I wouldn't want to push to First as First would only be available on 1 of my segments (HKG-LAX or NRT-LAX depending on what I choose). But I would like to hold to 130K miles. I know that starting in NYC and ending in LAX brings it close to 18,600miles BUT I've had an experience with AA and my last OW award where their mileage came out differently than the Great Circle Calculator and I ended up finding my own way from ORD-DCA!

Any other thoughts on how to shore up at the 130K level?

Thanks for all of the help!

Actually I see that I could get back to NYC for, in theory, 19,853 miles. But that's assuming AA matches the Great Circle Mapper. on my routing (also assuming BKK-HKG-NRT-NYC). If I just do HKG-NYC its 19,341 miles. Better, but still really close to the 20K limit. I could do Iberia BOS-MAD and lower these numbers to 19,668 or 19,156 respectively.

Ideas as to how close I can expect AA to be to these numbers?

Call them and ask. If you give them the stopover cities, they will give you the mileage. 19,668 should be close enough. If you skip Tokyo, you're well within the limit. If you add Tokyo, I would just leave via JFK, EWR, PHL or BWI.

Incidentally, I have heard a lot of good things about RJ, so you may consider going to CAI via AMM instead of MAD. The MAD-CAI segments are on crappy European "business" class seats, so I would expect one may be more interested in getting as close to CAI as possible in the longhaul. I also recall their timing being horrible. I was going the other way, but it left at like 1 or 2 in the morning, so I can only assume the flight from Madrid arrived rather late.

JL first was very nice. Can't speak for business.

This is my suggested itinerary. What do you all think? I may add another day in Thailand or spend a day in Amman to visit Jerash and Madaba....I think I can do that as AA allows a 14 day hold on tickets. Am I right?

Day 1: Friday

IB6250 DPT JFK 6:00PM ARR MAD 7:10AM Day 2

Day 2: Saturday

IB3734 DPT MAD 4:50PM ARR CAI 9:30PM

Day 3: Sunday Cairo

Day 4: Monday Cairo

RJ508 DPT CAI 9:00PM ARR AMM 11:15PM
RJ180 DPT AMM 2:15AM ARR BKK 3:20PM (Day 5)

Day 5: Tuesday Bangkok

Day 6-11: Wednesday-Monday Bangkok

Day 11: Monday

CX702 DPT BKK 6:40PM ARR HKG 22:35PM

Day 12: Tuesday Hong Kong

Day 13: Wednesday

CX840 DPT HKG 6:40PM ARR JFK 10:00PM
OR
CX830 DPT HKG 9:45AM ARR JFK 1:10PM

Ok...hmm...it seems RJ isn't making any awards available between AMM-BKK for next February. I can't get a look on Qantas (Amman isn't a city option) and the AA reps swear they don't see any. And we're 330 days out! My only options are to keep my fingers crossed that it will become available in the 14 day hold period, cancel outright, or book straight CAI-LHR-BKK, BUT it drops me in the OW150C category!

Any thoughts on RJ availability?