re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread
OK, since you are looking to depart that soon, maybe you are better off looking at more than one award.
Trick is I will have already flown enough miles to 'tick over' my booking into the 280k OW award; MEL-KUL(stop)-HKG-ICN-LHR-(JFK/YYZ/BOS), adding the sector from JFK-MEL (for example) doesn't cost me any more points; just the taxes $... If I booked it separately, I'd only be booking in Y whereas under my 280k OW award I can tack-on this flight in J (costing me 0 points + taxes).
I spoke with QF phone service about this, and they agreed it would be a 'gamble', but then they offered me a comforting piece of advice, I wrote the exact wording of this down (not with me now) but it was words to the effect of:
"Passengers who have commenced travel on a classic award booking, can apply for a refund of unused taxes/fees/carrier charges for unused coupons on the e-ticket, provided that these are the only coupons remaining on the e-ticket" (or something like that) - essentially he said that if I could ask for a refund of the taxes on the JFK-HKG-MEL flights if I gambled, and then found I couldn't change the date to something useful, although I would have to wait until I'd used up the other 4 journeys on the itinerary before I ask for the refund. Frankly that's a gamble I think I'm prepared to take!
EDIT: Wanted to add, for anyone playing at home, a few pages back I was asking about how to build my itinerary so I could have the US DOT rules apply to the entire journey (and get the "piece" baggage system rather than weight).
After some of the helpful posts on here, I managed to establish that if I fly MEL-KUL-HKG-ICN-LHR-BOS-HKG-MEL, then "MEL-BOS" distance is the furthest point on the itinerary, and therefore the US DOT baggage rules apply. Substituting BOS for JFK, ORD etc. gives me the journey-by-journey calculations (so I end up with different allowances for each 'journey'). IMO for the travel I'm planning on doing, having the piece based system is very important (as I'm relocating for the medium-long term to UK) and this is a worthwhile exercise.