Planning.....

I thought it may be useful to record my pre-trip issues and thinking with booking a suitable Tier Points run.

I've been lurking (mostly) at flyertalk.com for a few years and saw the chat around the ex-EU to Hawaii trips.  Thanks to Raffles who now runs the HeadForPoints blog, he's one of those people who have helped get me into this.  Without his posts and help we wouldn't be travelling in the pointy end at all....and that's really the point.  You generally pay the same as you'd pay to travel in Economy - thanks to taxes and charges - but have a much nicer time in Business.

ITA Software Matrix is excellent but needs a little fiddling with for a newbie.   This Tier Points calculator is really useful, well done owenrudge!  Booking the fare on aa.com required a little creative thinking but I got there in the end.