Questions and Answers

Am willing to stop in Asia. Wondering the best way to use BA and UR to get to Australia from
the west coast. Any suggestions sincerely appreciated.

With BA your best bet is going to be on Qantas. If you can book more than 330 days, out you’ll have access to Qantas space via the BA calendar that folks booking with AA miles can’t get to yet as the AA calendar only opens up 330 days in advance. But there’s no guarantee that Qantas will open up space that far in advance. Just keep monitoring the BA site and when you find space, jump on it. Keep in mind that there will be fuel surcharges, probably in the $300-400 range each way (for a premium cabin) and you can route via Asia but since BA prices each leg of the trip that would be very costly.

You can also use BA Avios to fly on AA if you can actually find award space though that’s often hard to come by.

With URs you can transfer them to United and fly non-stop from LAX/SFO on United or from Vancouver on Air Canada. You could also use UA miles to route via Asia on Singapore or ANA.

You could transfer them to Virgin Atlantic (yes, Atlantic) and then use that to fly non-stop on Virgin Australia.

You could transfer them to Flying Blue and fly on Korean via Seoul.

The “best” routing is going to be the one where you find space. Australia is not one of the easiest places to reach in a premium cabin using miles.

Good luck!