thank you...... so when would I book quantas,or when would I book AA or another airline? this is where it gets cloudy, how do I know which is optimal for what trip? Would it be less Avios thru QUantas bc of the distance? I guess I'm asking how do I translate the Avios needed for an AA flight? So checked out awardhacker which is pretty cool, but is it accurate? I'm inputting flight from LAX-Auck and it's showing me 35k BA miles.....
BA doesn't show availability to AKL. So there is probably a connection and you have to search by segment.
If you use Avios to book Quantas or AA or any other One World airline for the LAX-SYD trip it will be 54,500 Avios because Avios is distance based. The distance flown from LAX-SYD won't change regardless of what airline you are flying.
As you already discovered, if you had and used American Advantage miles to book an AA flight it would cost you 40,000 AA miles for that flight. The same AA flight booked with Avios will be 54,500 Avios. The segment for SYD-AKL is 10,000 Avios.
I base my decisions on which points to use based on how many points do I have in a program and how easy or difficult is it to accumulate those points. I'll share a few examples of what I mean. Here is our current balances in some of the programs we use the most;
AA - 1,000,000 + miles
UR - 400,000 + points
BA - 362,000 + Avios (current companion pass)
MR - 300,000 points
SPG - 138,000 + points
UA - 205,000 + points
Let's say I want to fly to London from Miami. I check UA and they have no flights for that route with lie flat seats. for my dates. That takes them out of the equation immediately. I look at my other choices and see I can get a flight with lie flat seats in first using Avios for 100K each way. So RT for 2 of us would be 400K Avios I find a saver award on AA and can use 85K AA miles each way. So RT for 2 of us would be 340K AA miles.
Even though I have over a million AA miles and I would need 60K less AA miles than Avios for the trip, I'm going to go with the Avios for the following reasons. First, I have a companion pass, so I only need to redeem 200K Avios plus an obscene amount in taxes and fees to get the flights. But even if I did not have a companion pass and taking the taxes and fees out of the equation, I'd still go the Avios route. Here's why. UR, MR and SPG all transfer to BA. I can earn UR points faster than any other points currency due to the Chase Quadfecta of cards I use for UR earning. While I wouldn't likely transfer SPG or MR to BA or AA, the option is there. In addition, I know that I need to book flights for our trip to Antarctica later this year. It could potentially cost me 780K AA miles so I am currently hoarding those just in case. Last year, we transferred over 400,000 SPG points for a flight. SPG points are the hardest to earn since there are no bonus categories. I made that decision based on the flight, a suite on SQ, so it was a unique experience. Also the fact that no one knows what will become of the SPG card in the near future so I wanted to get a really cool experience out of the points we earned.
So there you have it. That's how I decide what point currency I'm using on a given flight and why. Hope that helps
@hsmamato2
HAHAHA!
