My wife and I are in the early stages of planning a 4-5 month trip starting next July using the Qantas OneWorld Award; I've just ticked over 280k points (we'll be going in Economy) and are now starting to look at potential itineraries. I've read through the wiki and a few other key articles about how it works - think I've got my head around it.
We're based in Melbourne and are thinking we'll tackle the UK, Western Europe, USA, Canada and Patagonia on the way home. Possibly in that order but not set in stone - open to suggestions on what would work best with airports and stopovers etc. My initial thoughts were:
MEL-LHR (QF9 via Perth on the Dreamliner)
LHR-FRA(?) (surface sector after 3 weeks in the UK and then backpacking around Western Europe for 2 months. Could be any international airport really - next stop is the USA so open to suggestions)
FRA-JFK (assuming JFK makes the most sense when flying from Europe?)
JFK-SFO/LAX (surface sector after a 2-month USA road trip from east to west via Canada. Would you fly to Chile from SFO or LAX?)
SFO/LAX-SCL (couple of weeks hiking in Patagonia)
SCL-MEL
According to the Great Circle Mapper that's ~30,000 miles and 5 stopovers so all good I think. My biggest unknown at the moment is choosing which airports to fly in/out of. We're very flexible on dates and locations; the flights are mainly to get us across continents and we'll do a few surface sectors via train and car rental. I'm QFF Gold so thankfully we'll have access to lounges - let me know if that should influence my choice of airports in the list above?