How best to fly a family of 5 from Melbourne to Los Angeles in Apr 2023 with points?

Flights & Airfares
1

Hi Point hackers,
Next year in April the family are hoping to do a trip from Melb to la. The family consists of myself, wife and 3 kids, 1 is over 12, 2 are under 12. The trip is Melb to LA stay for a couple of weeks (Universal, Disneyland) then LA to Hawaii for a week and then back to Melb.
We would like to fly business class for the Melb to La flight (and Hawaii to Melb if possible). So flights for April 2023 arent out yet andI haven’t landed on who exactly we want to fly with but its looking like oneworld. Ive signed up to an Amex card for my personal card and looking to get one for my business aswell. The wife will get one soon aswell and we will do a churn in 3 months, after another 3 months we should have about 800k points with oneworld, which puts me at around September buying tix for April 23.
All this to say, who should I fly with? Oneworld have flights with JAI in Feb from Melb to Tokyo, Tokyo to La which we would gladly do in business for 1k in taxes, it looks like Qantas go way too quickly. Are there other better deals or better way to make this happen?
let me know what rookie mistakes I’m assuming.

Thanks

2

Hi @Zanzibar

Sounds exciting! I hope you and your family can have the trip of a lifetime!

The two Point Hacks guides below should answer most if not all of your questions. My only advice would be to not set expectations too high, and in particular understand that you might not be able to get your first choice of flights/airlines. Also it might not be possible to find 5 Business Class reward seats on the one flight: consider putting the kids in economy (I know this sounds callous, but I’ve done this and the kids were perfectly fine with it!) or splitting the family onto different flights.

All the best!

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