Chicago to Dubai
 

I am trying to plan a trip in 2009 to go to Dubai and Kenya and wanted to know if anyone had any ideas on how to best route this. Ideally, I would like to use AA Miles. If either of these cities is not reachable through AA or OneWorld Partners, then what is the next best alternative. If possible i would look to buy two business class seats with miles the whole way.

Thanks in advance for your expert advice.

Using AA miles the most direct way would be AA to London and then BA onward. Are you trying to do Dubai and Kenya in the same trip? If so, you may want to look into the Oneworld awards. Do it ASAP prior to August 1 if you want to get the most bang for your buck, as the rules change after this to your disadvantage.

I suggest doing a little research in the Oneworld Award sticky threat at the top of the AA forum.

Cheers.

AFAIK, AA doesn't fly to Africa and One World is really weak there. You might have to keep connecting via LHR - that's when you wish you belonged to another alliance. :) Anyway, you can try to combine these airlines for the following legs-

ORD-DXB: AA, BA, RJ
DXB-NBO: BA, RJ, IB
NBO-ORD: AA, BA, IB

As pointed out above, it may be better to consider a OW award. And it may be advantageous to book before the new rules take effect.

Later edit: The following itinerary should be bookable on OW carriers. It will be under 20K miles (under old or new rules) and thus make a nice OW award (for business class, the relevant award is OW130C and will cost 130K miles, see http://www.aa.com/aa/pubcontent/en_U...s/oneWorld.jsp):

ord - lhr - dxb - amm - nbo - lhr/mad/amm - ord

The old/current rules only consider direct distances among cities you wanted to visit and skip the connecting ones; in this case it would be ord-dxb-nbo-ord (17,478 miles). The new rules will consider the actual distance flown,eg, ord-lhr-dxb-amm-nbo-amm-ord is 19,413 miles.

AA to LHR

BA to DXB & NBO

is an openjaw possible on oneworld awards? maybe >

AA XXX>LHR
BA LHR>DXB/NBO
buy kenya airways or EK DXB/NBO>DXB/NBO
BA DXB/NBO>LHR
AA LHR>XXX

I'm going to forward the thread to the OneWorld forum, to see if we can attract a bigger audience.

the cutoff date is actually September 1st I believe, not August 1st

I just booked my first OW130C because of the mileage change.