US Airways / Star Alliance award seat from Sydney - New York

Hi Guys, Wondering if someone may be able to help me - looking for an award seat from Sydney - New york on Star Alliance in Business on Nov 9th.

I am currently booked with Asiana through Seoul but has a ~14hr layover. Any ideas of other ways I might be able to route that would wouldn't break any US Airways Award rules? United/ANZ didnt have any availability.

Any help would be really appreciated...

Thank you

Given that US Airways will be leaving Star Alliance and joining OneWorld in March this year (see http://www.ausbt.com.au/us-airways-to-join-oneworld-alliance-in-march-2014), your trip in November might be better served by a OneWorld member airline assuming of course that your US Airways miles become AAdvantage miles.

Qantas is the front-runner of course for SYD-LAX-JFK, another option is Cathay Pacific (which goes via Hong Kong but from March will offer Newark as an alternative (see http://www.ausbt.com.au/cathay-pacific-to-launch-hong-kong-newark-service-in-march-2014).

Tough one you have as United are being very tight with their saver award seats (which is what US Airways can access). You can consider going via Beijing.

You wont be able to pair this with an Oneworld flight, as you cant have half / half, and US airways is a roundtrip price.

The option will be to cancel your flight later, which will return your points into the merged American Airlines and try your luck with oneworld flights - but I would say finding QF NY-SYD would be even more rare.

I would say, leave it unchanged and take a quick look around Seoul. If you are an Aussie passport holder - you dont need a visa. I've made a similar quick visit before also.

Cheers

Given NZ doesn't release J to SFO/LAX/YVR anymore, the only remaining option is HNL. I have seen this workout as a possible connection with UA's lie flat service to EWR, but many stars have to align for this! 

I think you actually have about the best option right now. As pointed out, you can also try PEK, or PVG, and connections via NRT, but those are probably not going to be any better than a 14 hour layover in ICN. Plus if you are on Asiana's new J product, it should be a nice journey from ICN to JFK. 

Given all the constraints, I'd also recommend keeping what you have for now, and checking for CX availability that you could switch to once the merger is complete. I haven't researched the connections on CX, but I'd think with 4-5 flights a day from the NY region and multiple (right?) flights a day into SYD, that there could be something better than 14 hours.

I forgot about the EVA option:

If you can get to TPE, then EVA has good availablity and a very good J product to JFK. Unfortunately they only fly 3 times/week (I think) from BNE and the connection is not good to their JFK flgiht, so you would still need to use ICN/PVG/PEK as connections.

Thanks everyone for their recommendations... Awesome responses - appreciate it.