AA miles can be used on AA flights as well as BA, LA, QF, RJ etc. etc. Look at their website but you the majority of flights will not be in the US but somewhere else. And no you can't transfer them to another program but that wouldn't be necessary anyway.

In terms of hotels, it usually is a waste of miles to use them for hotels. You can, but it is not good value. Some hotels will give you miles for staying there. Again, the better thing to do might be to sign up to a hotel credit card like the SPG one.

Here is a question, can I pay for a RTW ticket with miles? If so, how do I find out how much it will cost (in miles)?

It seems like I can generate a pretty substantial amount of miles through CC "churning" if I don't care too much about my credit.

You can. but it's a distance based OneWorld award ticket, not the same RTW ticket as the paid one. And each FF scheme has its own version. Assuming you mean for AA miles then details here: http://www.aa.com/aa/pubcontent/en_U...orld.jsp#using
(And further discussion on the AA board since it is specific to AA)

Interesting...

It looks like I can get a 35k-50k ticket for 160k miles...

Think I can rack up 160k miles in 4 months?!

Sure! Just spend enough money on your credit card.

Hello All,

Just following up on this post. I did end up getting this ticket and taking the trip of a lifetime with my wife! We are coming to the end of it now, hanging out in France for the summer until we get back to Boston next month.

We ended up getting an explorer ticket:
BOS-MIA-xLAX-NRT-DEL-BOM-BKK-HKG-CNS-AYQ-SYD-JNB-LHR-TLS-LHR-BOS

We did South America on our own (just flew round trip MIA to Peru) since an extra continent was expensive!

Our next trick was taking a 22 hour layover in LAX on our way to NRT so it didn't count as a stop in North America! Plenty of time to see our friends there and be on our way.

We also explored China by train from HKG which was a stopover/money saver!

By backtracking across Asia we were able to catch the seasons in the right order which was nice.

All in all, an amazing trip and I couldn't have done it without you guys!

Here is our blog if anyone is interested: http://rachelandwayne.wordpress.com

P.S. The RTW ticket was a great money saver and we used the rescheduling privileges several times (including rescheduling our flights to Europe when that stupid volcano erupted!)

P.P.S. The miles thing was a bust. Most of our flights were on non-AA flights so we had to manually declare them and we still haven't gotten the points!

Not quite sure what you mean by this. Provided you had signed up for an AA FF account before you left, and that number was added to your RTW booking, the miles should post automatically to your AA account.
With a few caveats:
1) Miles earned on other other OW airlines sometimes take a few days to post.
2) Occasionally, even though your FF number is in the reservation, it gets left off an individual flight; each time you get a boarding pass, check that your FF number is printed on it. If not, ask the TA agent to add it and print a new BP.
Most importantly:
3) I had a quick look back through this thread, but I could not find out if you were flying in Economy, Business or First. If in Economy, these tickets book into L inventory which does not earn any miles on some airlines, and reduced mileage on others. (Notably CX is zero which you probably flew BKK-HKG, and JL/QF/BA vary from 25% to 70%, I think.)

Glad you enjoyed the trip though. I have done 3 RTWs in the past 3 years, to many of the places you visited, and agree that they are very good value - especially in premium classes.

happy Travels.

Is there a good tool to help planning a round-the-world using mileage?
It seems the AA tool plans itineraries but does not reveal mileages.

The tool maintained by SLF that you can link to from this thread allows you to do this.

Right you are - fun and very useful tool. I found the OWE planner part essential for figuring out segments that worked (who knew how hard it is to get to Cairo or New Zealand on OW?).

I also found links at the top do not work:
The original site [ http://jph.bytestacker.com/award.htm ] should be checked periodically to see if the tool has been reloaded there. For other versions of the tool, please see here. [ http://slfft.allhyper.com/ ]

Is there any better way to maximise (mileage-wise) this xONE3? The starting point of AMM can easily be changed too (chosen for low cost!)...

AMM-ORD-ANC-DFW-SAL-LAX-JFK-NRT-DEL-NRT-CGK-NRT-LHR-MCT-LHR-MAD-AMM (55,969 miles)

Sorry, just realised:
AMM-ORD-ANC-DFW-SAL-LAX-JFK-NRT-DEL-NRT-CGK-NRT-LHR-DXB-OVB-FRA-AMM is longer at 56,452 miles

DFW-SJU-LAX is 1,800 miles longer than DFW-SAL-LAX

What class of service? Which FF plan?

But DFW-SJU-LAX-JFK would be illegal - two transcons.

Oops, yes you are right. My apologies.

So to maximise miles, maybe ...DFW-SJU-LAX-ORD...?
However this is only 400miles more than the OP's itinerary