Using Miles to the South Pacific: Introduction

Finding flights across the Pacific can be hard, especially direct to Australia/New Zealand or to Polynesian Islands.

This turned into an extensive series on finding award flights to the South Pacific, best prices, lesser known partners, stopovers, and a few pricing oddities.

This post and series will go mileage by mileage program, showing a map of routes for each airline partner. At a glance it should help give routing ideas, but I’ll also break down best options for each program.

I’ll only show Pacific flights and flights  to cross the Pacific, not including Asia.

So you won’t see flights connecting you to/from North America to catch those Pacific flights.

You won’t see connecting flights within Australia. The hard part is not finding award space to get around Australia… The hard part is finding award space to cross the Pacific.

 

One common way to cross the Pacific has been routing via Asia. But a flight from LAX to Sydney via South Korea is 24.5 hours (with less than an hour connection), instead of 15 hours direct.

And if our goal is to see a Pacific island, then it’s really a waste of time to route via Asia (unless we’re talking Micronesia). For example, LAX to Sydney via Fiji can be 17 hours… and you might as well book a stopover with Alaska Miles!

 

What To Expect

Most importantly, this post is to have all the maps of partner options to the Pacific, for each mileage program. While I ultimately decided to break this up into a series of posts (instead of the longest post ever), I thought it a good idea to have all the maps in one place.

Plus I’ll mention a few prices and best routes that I’ll talk about in the individual posts. There will definitely be other goodies, tricks, and best redemptions in each post, but I’ll give a little teaser now.

 

American Airlines AAdvantage Miles in the Pacific

Best miles redemptions:

• Fiji Airways via Nadi, Fiji from LAX or HNL = 40k miles
• Intra-Pacific = 20k miles
• Direct flights to Australia on Qantas (from DFW, SFO, and LAX) = 40k miles

Not shown on the map:

• Domestic Fiji flights on Fiji Airways found here
• Intra Hawaiian Airlines found here
• Domestic Australia flights on Qantas

 

FlyingBlue Miles in the Pacific

Best miles redemptions:

• US to Tahiti (Noumea) = 30,000 oneway
  • Boomerang to NOU via SYD = 30k
• Flights within the Pacific = 15k oneway
• See Best Use of FlyingBlue Miles

Not shown on the map:

• Flights from Asia to the Pacific, that I’ll mention below or in the SkyTeam section

 

United Miles in the Pacific

Best miles redemptions:

• Check out the Pacific Hopper with United Miles. (I’ll be giving some updated info on that)
• Japan to Oceania = 12.5k miles
  • Roundtrip gets a stopover
• Oceania to Oceania = 12.5k miles

Not shown on the map:

• Many US flights to Hawaii
• Air New Zealand flights within New Zealand/Australia
• How bad Air New Zealand award availability is

 

Alaska Miles in the Pacific

Best miles redemptions:

• Stopover in Fiji on a oneway to/from Australia/New Zealand (on Fiji Airways) = 40k miles
• Stopover in Sydney on a oneway to/from Australia/New Zealand (on Qantas) = 42.5k miles
• Oneway form Hawaii to Australia/New Zealand with a stopover in Fiji (on Fiji Airways) = 27.5k miles

 

 

Qantas Miles in the Pacific

Best miles redemptions:

• Intra Fiji/Pacific flights as low as 8k miles
  • It’s distance based so it’s relatively cheap
• Air Vanuatu is a unique partner!

Not shown on the map:

• Domestic Australia (and to New Zealand) on Qantas found here
  • And JetAirways flights
• Domestic Fiji flights on Fiji Airways found here
• Domestic Vanuatu flights on Air Vanuatu found here
• Domestic Papua New Guinea flights on Air Niugini found here

 

SkyTeam Routes /w Asia

 

Other Airline Miles

• Delta
  • Virgin Australia to Australia = 45k 
  • NRT-GUM = 17.5K 
• Hawaiian Airlines Miles
  • Pago Pago, Samoa (PPG) or Papeete, Tahiti (PPT) = South Pacific
    • Hawaii – SP = 27.5k/47.5k
    • North America – SP = 47.5k/87.5k
      • The exact same prices as booking two tickets! US-Hawaii-SP
      • Hawaiian award chart here
• Use Korean Miles on Hawaiian (here)
• Check out Complete List of Miles to Tahiti!

 

Conclusion

There are a lot more cool things to come. And even if you’re not interested in Fiji or Sydney (I’ll try not to judge), you can learn a lot about stopovers and pricing tricks along the way.

First up, using American Airlines miles for the Pacific, coming tomorrow.

 

Credits

By the way, the post idea came listening to Stefan of Rapid Travel Chai. Specifically, he mentioned FlyingBlue partner AirCalin (which I’ll talk about soon) and it got my wheels turning.

But he fixed some of my maps and gave some notes I’ll use just by glancing. While I’ll just be talking about using miles in general concepts, Stefan has actually been to all (right?) of the countries in the Pacific, everything from New Caledonia to the Samoas, and it looks like he’ll also be writing a series with practical tips for Pacific Islands. So check out and follow Rapid Travel Chai along side this series.