Maximizing Points - Need help with creativity...
 

Allright all of you experts. My sister, brother-in-law and I are planning to surprise our parents with a trip to EU next year. Would like to fly into CDG, but we are flexible. But the MAIN thing is, we'd like to use or maximize the value of some of the points we all have. Here are the details:

Me:
UA - 18,456 miles
UR - 103,520
BA - 54228 Avios

My sis:
DL - 117,061
AA - 51,917
UA - 12,514
Amex PRG - ~180,000

My bro-in-law:
AA - ~80,000
DL - ~40,000
UA - ~30,000
WN - ~50,000

I live in CLE. My parents & another sis live in CMH. My other sis / bro in law live in TPA. And my sister's mother in law lives near DTW.

My plan was to find award tickets (checked UA and in Y was 30,000 One Way from NYC to both CDG and other bigger EU cities) from NYC, which theoretically should give me the most options and I could easily use Avios or WN to get connections.

With my UR transfer to UA, I could easily get 3 Y tickets. Problem will be the rest. For a total of 5 tickets, I need some creativity. Would anyone be kind enough to chime in and help me out? One option could also be to transfer to BA Avios and then use that to book tickets :)

Also looked at Virgin. Was getting 12.5k points + ~$150 in Fees per ticket. Can look towards that as well. But that would mean flying into LHR.

Should I even consider taking one-way award tickets? Could I be creative and have Award tickets with 'stop-overs'? That way at least I can avoid using LCCs in EU. We plan to travel next may (labor day) or end june (July 4). Of course we would prefer July 4 weekend.

Any help is appreciated!!! PM works as well...

Do all 5 need to be on the same flight? That might be a challenge even if you easily had all the points where you wanted them.

AmEx points can transfer to AC or NH which generally could be redeemed to match the awards you have on UA points (slightly different rules, but assuming a simple trip not really different). Do keep in mind that both may apply a fuel surcharge.

Not really. We are a total of 8 people. We are willing to split 4 + 4. I know finding 8 seats will be impossible, so completely OK with splitting as long as we get to same destination. How we get there is irrelevant. I just want best use of the points / miles we have accumulated. Also my sis tells me she has almost 154k SPG points at her disposal as well!!!