See this Anatomy of an Award post for an example of a free stopover in Hawaii en route to Australia.

Australia and New Zealand are a tough place to get to with miles, especially if you want to go from mid-December downtown seattle hotel through March, which encompasses Christmas, New Year s, and the Southern Hemisphere s summer.
American Airlines allows oneway bookings at half the price of roundtrip awards. From North America to the South Pacific which is the AA award region that includes Australia and New Zealand awards cost 37.5k/62.5k/72.5k AA miles each way in economy/business/first class.
downtown seattle hotel American has a slightly below-market price to Australia. United charges 40k/67.5k/80k each way. Delta charges 100k/150k roundtrip in economy and business, and SkyMiles can t even be redeemed for three-cabin first class.
American does not fly to Australia, but several downtown seattle hotel of its partners do including Qantas, the national airline of Australia, which has flights to Honolulu, Los Angeles, Dallas, and New York (tag leg of flight to Los Angeles).
Some Sydney and Melbourne to Los Angeles flights are served by a brand new Qantas A380. See this Qantas A380 marketing page if you want to daydream about the experience. downtown seattle hotel The plane features First Class suites, Business Class fully flat beds, and miles of economy class seats.
Jetstar a Qantas subsidiary also serves this route with an A330-200 . Its business class is the equivalent of domestic first class pretty rough for a ten-hour flight. AA miles can be used on the Qantas and Jetstar flights from HNL-SYD-HNL.
The other USA - Australia flights are served by 747-400s, which have been refurbished to feature the same fully flat business class beds of the A380 with first class removed. My reading of Qantas s site is that all 747s serving the USA have now been refurbished in this manner.
AA displays a week-long calendar that you can make month-long by clicking Show Full Calendar. Then, to ensure downtown seattle hotel you are only getting Qantas results, change the drop-down menu to Non-stop only. Choose the desired cabin from the color coded Award Legend, but don t expect a First Class option. I don t see any First Class available in the next 11 months between LAX and Sydney for instance.
Even if you don t live in Los Angeles or Dallas, I recommend finding the transpacific flights on Qantas first, and noting what days have availability. That way when you add a search from your home airport, you ll know what days are routing downtown seattle hotel you on Qantas and which must be routing downtown seattle hotel you through Hawaii without having to click each date.
In my experience, Qantas releases its business class seats 350 days out to be picked over by its members and BA members. Then AA gets access to the space 330 days out. If you want premium-cabin space on Qantas, that is the time to book. Space gets much worse over time. I don t see any LAX-SYD space less than nine months downtown seattle hotel out at the moment for instance.
American Airlines awards allow a stopover at the North American International downtown seattle hotel Gateway City the last airport from which you leave North America or the first at which you arrive in North America. See The Five Cardinal Rules of American Airlines downtown seattle hotel Awards for more information.
The other great news is that routing through Hawaii is pretty easy because American has good availability to Hawaii on its own flights and on the flights of its partners Hawaiian and Alaska. And Hawaiian has fantastic availability from Honolulu onto Sydney.
There is one major drawback to flying on Hawaiian to Oceania. Hawaiian s premium cabin called First Class, costing business class s 62.5k miles each way features recliner seats with 40 of pitch. That s basically a domestic first class seat with two extra inches of leg room. For a ten hour flight, many people will find that uncomfortable, and it s quite inferior to the flat beds that can be had on Qantas s mainland USA - Australia flights.
See this Anatomy of an Award post for an example of a free stopover in Hawaii en route to Australia. My brother lives in Hawaii, so his was a free oneway, but if you imagine him living in Las Vegas, his stopover in Hawaii would be a perfect example for this section.
This entry was posted in AAdvantage , Award Booking , Best Of , Hawaiian Airlines , How to , Qantas and tagged American downtown seattle hotel Airlines , Australia downtown seattle hotel , Award Booking Tips , Hawaiian , New Zealand , Qantas . Bookmark the permalink .
I love the post! Just had to figure all if this out this past year. Flying Qantas to Auckland Dec 31 to Jan 19 in economy, but as long as I make it, that s all that matters. Going back in 2 years, want to fly lax-akl nonstop on anz next time.
I am in the thinking stages at this point. My mother in law is almost 86 , but in fair health right now, so it is hard to plan that far in advance, but I am pretty certain we will use you to book our DFW to New Zealand trip next spring or fall of 2013. I would like to look at stop overs and open jaw options, would it be possible to do stop overs other than Hawaii ?? ,say Tahiti, Bora Bora etc. Looking downtown seattle hotel to do the open jaw into New Zealand ,flying back from another city. So I am beginning to study land tour packages there
I started researching serious award travel about 2 months ago, with this exact trip in mind. On Monday, I booked my tickets!! August 7th, 2013-August 27, 2013. I did one-ways using my United and American miles. I m going MCI-LAX-SYD on United in Business class (chose my seat on the upper deck of the 747). And I amazingly lucked out on my return downtown seattle hotel leg on American/Qantas, I got a First Class Suite on the A380 for my SYD-LAX leg (departing WLG in Business on Qantas Jetconnect). This seat was a major goal of mine and what I desperately wanted to use my miles for, and for awhile, my chances started to look seriously bleak. I am so excited that I was looking in the right place, at the right time, and with the right date. I also have a 5 hour layover in Sydney, and will be able to go into Sydney s Qantas First Class Lounge.
As an Aussie resident in the US, I have pretty much utilised everyone of these options to get to Australia. One thing that shouldn t be overlooked is the advantage of the Hawaiian flights is they are day flights which makes it a lot easier on the body and I find I do not usually suffer jetlag from these flights. I was able to redeem Hawaiian points for HNL to BNE for next May in business class at a cost of only 65k per tix.
The Qantas flight from HNL to Sydney downtown seattle hotel would have to be on the crappiest plane in the Qantas fleet. The business class seat is lousy and personally I would never pay extra points for the seat in question.
As an Aussie who has QFF points, it s amazing how much better the AA points are. The mileage difference is not that great (96K return to LAX from Sydney) downtown seattle hotel it s that they include a $500 fuel surcharge in the fees and taxes which is almost half the cost of the fare.
Another couple of options are transferring AMEX reward points to Asia Miles or through SPG to LAN. The redemption offers are different here for AMEX than in the US so it s hard for me to know what s possible.
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Just a note that Qantas has decided to be nice and presently as of yesterday there is far greater Qantas availability than previously on all routes. They have just started their partnership with Emirates downtown seattle hotel and making many more seats available.
I just tried to book a one way award from nyc to honolulu and spend a week in honolulu and then fly honolulu to Sydney for 37,500 downtown seattle hotel miles and was told that Hawaii is not a North American Int l Gateway City and therefore no stopovers allowed and it would be 2 separate award tickets!! Was the AA agent incorrect?
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