Okay, so my cousin in Sydney needs to go to NYC and TLV with her hubby, 4 yo, and 4 mo. Has lots and lots of SQ points (say 250k for the purposes of this thread), and a reasonable number of UA points. Needs to go to TLV first week of September for 10 days, then to NYC for 10 days. Wants to minimize cost (including getting as many award tickets as possible), wants to be in biz as much as possible (including using miles to upgrade), and wants as few flights/as little time in planes as possible.

So, keeping this in mind, remembering the lap child (10% of full fare when upgrading), the child (75% of a normal fare, but 100% of the miles for an award ticket) and the other parameters, how would you do this?

I'm thinking one SQ RTW C award, and 2x RTW Y revenue. Deal with Y from SYD-TLV and then use UA miles to UG TLV-NYC and NYC-SYD. Any better ideas?

I would consider one of those LH TA Nett ex-AU fares, or a *A-lite RTW. I know the latter does not book into upgradable classes; some of the former may but may require a separate ticket from SFO/LAX-NYC

Not familiar with the structure of SQ awards, so I've no idea how those 250k points could work out.

*lite books into H, so that's fine except I don't think late August meets seasonality requirements. The LH fare is A$2100 and books into W, whereas the Star Lite is about A$2800 and includes the JFK-SFO segment and books into H, so I think just the Star Lite makes sense. An SQ RTW C award is 240k miles, an SQ RTW Y award is 180k miles.

I don't think that is right. The fare that books into W is about $1500; the $2100 fare books into V, upgradeable with UA SWUs.

The crooked teaser fare advertised as AUD1,500 is in fact ~2,200 when you pay for it, in W class.

The V fare is really 2,700+

This is the Australian way, quoting fares w/o the "taxes". I agree, it stinks. My last ticket shows:

Taxes/Fees/Charges:
AUD 38.00 AU
AUD 42.74 WY
AUD 498.70 XT

which is broken down: XT 6.40AY12.80XA18.00XY12.80YC23.00DE
40.00RA6.60BC19.50UP353.80YQ5.80XF SFO4.5

so 353.80 is fuel surcharges, the "taxes" which are not taxes at all

The ticket i just paid for had around 6-700 in taxes. LH has high fuel surcharges and these fares you need to use LH on the longhauls.

good