RTW in J for $3,000 Less

[serfty]

Canada has legislation outlawing the "higher of the two fare" type sales restriction as outlined in clause 15 of the xONEx rules.

(Canadian TA's are aware of things like this and often charge hefty service fees - e.g. I have seen CAD600 mentioned.)

Search Canada on the FT oneworld forum for more information.

 

[pyffii]

Mrs Pyffii and I are planning a DONE for new year with the following itinerary
SYD-HKG-LON-SZG-LON ( Gatwick )-MAD-LIM-CUZ-LIM-MIA-LIR-DFW-JFK-LAX-MEL-BNE-MEL-BNE-MEL-SYD.
Does this itinerary fit the rules ?
Thanks for your help

 

[NM]

Mrs Pyffii and I are planning a DONE for new year with the following itinerary
SYD-HKG-LON-SZG-LON ( Gatwick )-MAD-LIM-CUZ-LIM-MIA-LIR-DFW-JFK-LAX-MEL-BNE-MEL-BNE-MEL-SYD.
Does this itinerary fit the rules ?
Thanks for your help

You have 5 sectors in SWP at the end of the trip. You cannot purchase additional segments in the continent of origin, so will be limited to 4 segments. And you are limited to 2 stopovers in the continent of origin.

 

[serfty]

Mrs Pyffii and I are planning a DONE for new year with the following itinerary
SYD-HKG-LON-SZG-LON ( Gatwick )-MAD-LIM-CUZ-LIM-MIA-LIR-DFW-JFK-LAX-MEL-BNE-MEL-BNE-MEL-SYD.
Does this itinerary fit the rules ?
Thanks for your help

There's a good utility made available by interested Frequent Flyers that validates routes.

For some reason it has an unusual "name". Anyway here's the link:

• MileageMonkey

Plug your routing into the "Oneworld Explorer Validator" section, Select "Ignore errors (for expert users!)" and off you go by clicking GO.

You will see the error as noted by NM in the resultant output.

Note that LHR/LGW connections are generally considered a "surface segment" these days and count against your 20 (16 from 1 Jun 08) segment limit.

 

[zan5hin]

This thread is awesome. Thanks to the OP!

I am about to go through this process and the way you've outlined the steps will surely help make it easier.

I wish to start my DONE4 on 7th Oct. I need to book before June 30th because of the sector rule change. I'm starting from South Africa because that's even cheaper than Tokyo for a DONE4, using 42k FF points to get from SYD. This way I get two extra flights in Asia as per the rule of no more than two stopovers in continent of origin.

I have one question only:
I wish to join AA and take the platinum challenge. Can I join now so I have something to quote the AA RTW desk and then choose to start the plat challenge on 1st Oct?

 

[Keith009]

I wish to start my DONE4 on 7th Oct. I need to book before June 30th because of the sector rule change.

You need to get ticketed before June 1st to avoid the change to segment allowance.

Can I join now so I have something to quote the AA RTW desk and then choose to start the plat challenge on 1st Oct?

You may join AAdvantage at any time. Then simply ring up AAdvantage Customer Service to nominate a date for your Challenge to begin when you are ready.

You might want to firm up your award flights to South Africa prior to ticketing the DONE4, as availability for those flights can be scarce.

Also, if you're intending to drop in to pick up a paper ticket, AA's office in South Africa is actually in CPT. They might be willing to courier at your own expense though.

 

[liebs]

Sorry if this is covered elsewhere or is somewhat obvious but
if its essential to travel from the city where the ticket is being purchased eg Tokyo (which I gather is $3000 cheaper than booking in Australia) - does it not even itself out given I would have to purchase a return ticket Melbourne to Tokyo in order to start /end my flight.

Again, I apologise if this is covered elsewhere.

 

[simongr]

QF009 used a oneway award to get to Tokyo and plans to do multiple DONE4s - so he now always retruns to Tokyo to start the next one using his last flight on the current DONE4.

It depends on how you value points - if you are happy to jump in Y to NRT to save $3K on your RTW trip it might be a good use of points.

 

[vt01]

vt01's final routing is SYD-SIN-HKG-JFK-DFW-RDU-DFW-LAX-ORD-LHR-MCT-LHR-ZRH-LHR-HKG-BNE-PER-DRW-ADL-SYD.

Thanks to much incompetence at our corporate TA, my final routing at the moment is
SYD-LAX-DFW-RDU-DFW-LAX-EWR-ORD-LHR-MCT-LHR-FCO-LHR-HKG-BNE-PER-DRW-ADL-SYD.
It turns out I could not get the corporate discount on this fare if I used AA codeshare flights on CX metal. My TA decided to tell me this 2 weeks before I depart!:evil: The addition of the SIN-HKG-JFK flights was made in early March and yet they waited until April 4 to tell me even after they assured me in March that the discount was valid.
Had I known this, I could have got D class and routed SYD-NRT-ORD etc....
My ticket is now due to be issued on 14/4 (Monday) and I have waitlisted on NRT-ORD, NRT-LAX, NRT-DFW, PVG-ORD on 18,19,20 April hoping that one will clear. Although EF shows availability in D, the TA in Sydney can't find any. So fingers crossed....

 

[Keith009]

QF009 used a oneway award to get to Tokyo and plans to do multiple DONE4s - so he now always retruns to Tokyo to start the next one using his last flight on the current DONE4.

And like I said before after 2 or 3 overseas cheapies you'd have saved more than enough to make up for the cost of positioning there in the first place. I find that one ticket can sort out my entire year's travel, or at least broken up into a few different trips. It depends on how you value your miles but IMO miles are there to be used and it's no different using them to reposition myself so I take advantage of my DONE4 and get more holidays out of a single ticket vs using miles for extra holidays in their own right. At least I am earning miles to make up for burning them doing the former.

Also helps of course that the point of origin is somewhere you actually want to visit in the first place, so you could consider the costs of accom, food etc while you're there to be costs that will be incurred one way or another anyway.

As always YMMV.

 

[zan5hin]

Just want to update this thread with my experience booking a DONE4 starting in Sth Africa. I did a 20 segment booking before the 1st of June, now it's 16 but if you are considering it, I would advise getting it booked ASAP because the way things are going I wouldn't be suprised to see the base fare from Sth Africa jump 30%:!:

The hardest thing for me was nailing down an itinerary I was happy with, getting where I wanted to go and maximising my miles.

Once I had my route established with mileage monkey and the itinerary planned I called the AA RTW desk in Dallas. The OP is correct, as long as you have everything in front of you with your dates and times and routes the whole process might take 10 minutes to go through. I told the operator that I had an AAdvantage number, I had registered for AAdvantage a few days before, so I then said I pay in South African Rand and that was about it, he gave me my booking number and it was all good. Within 30 minutes it was all up on my AA account page.

By joining AA and doing the platinum challenge I can get some nice FF miles - 50,191 Flying Miles + 25% Business Bonus + PLT Status from HKG-JFK onwards gives me a total of 90,130 miles at the end of my trip. If I can complain, get bumped, etc and get another 10,000 miles I will have enough points to then fly JNB-HKG-TPE-BKK-MNL-MEL for free plus taxes.

I was also keeping in contact with mindpearl in cape town, and they were very responsive via email. I was actually emailing them questions before I booked the ticket through the AA desk.

I knew they needed a fax of my credit card and passport but my fax wasn't working, so I scanned and emailed my authorisation and identification instead of faxing and it was fine. Faxing is so 20th Century

The base fare was actually calculated as ZAR40020 and taxes are ZAR3542 plus ZAR233 booking fee for a total of ZAR43795. This equals just a smidgen under AU$6000 which is very nice indeed!

So by avoiding LHR and going through AA, taxes were only 9% of the base fare.

I used my Wizard Clear Advantage Mastercard to make the payment and was charged next to nothing for currency conversion. Highly recommended.

All up, pretty painless! I am spending 2 weeks in Cape Town so I will send them an email before I leave letting them know I'm on my way.

The best thing so far is how shocked everyone is when I tell them I'm getting 18 business class flights for $6000. No one can believe it, even frequent fliers. :shock: :shock: :shock:

 

[opusman]

Just wondering - is there any disadvantage to booking a DONE4 out of say Jakarta, and then throwing away the last leg that gets you back there? I'm thinking of a DONE4 for my next trip, using QFF to get to CGK and then ending back up in Australia without returning to Jakarta.

If you simply don't turn up for the last leg, will anything bad happen?

 

[serfty]

Theoretically, you could be hit with a bill for the amended travel consisting of the sum of the standard cost of the D class travel undertaken less the standard costs of the D class travel skipped.

In almost all cases this would be more than the cost of the original DONE4.

Some use this last segment to position for their "next" trip.

 

[Evan]

Just use the last leg one day when you need to visit Singapore ? cheap flights from CGK-SIN all the time, SQ, LH etc. Maybe a shopping trip or something like that

This problem is one reason its tempting for me to already look at the purchase of a follow on fair for my current trip well into 2009, just difficult to know what date to start since its a pain in the you know what to change a start date.

I just used points for positioning flights for JNB, SGD $179 in taxes is all my fare cost to get there.

E

 

[v8Statesman]

I wouldn't be suprised to see the base fare from Sth Africa jump 30%:!:

Do you have any evidence that this may happen?

 

[MelUser]

There was a massive jump for DCIR fares out of Phillipines in the last fortnight. [3816 to 5400 (USD) for the DCIR 22000 miles]. Is Indonesia next?

 

[zan5hin]

The evidence is everywhere, those DCIR increases, the amount of extra whinging the airlines are doing lately and the price rises from AA's $15 first checked baggage to Qantas's 7% international price increase in the past month. I even read one of the airlines is stripping off the old paint on their planes during the next repainting instead of just painting over the top like they have always done. Those few extra pounds of paint add up apparently.

The xONEx prices are still working off $80 a barrel fuel. It does not take an aeronautical engineer (read: rocket scientist) to figure out there is only one way those fares are going to go.....

 

[Evan]

Although until price have remained ok there i see one thing that may keep the costs down a little, the drop from 20 segments to 16 but i would have guess only a small number of people would use those extra 4 segments.

You would have to guess we are in for a price rise some time soon, as much as we all hope not.

One of the reasons i am thinkinging of booking my next xONEx soon for starting in 2009 instead of waiting even though i am not sure if i will have a tag along this time, could be worth getting atleast 1 ticket cheaper for now.

E

 

[austrider]

This is a great thread.. I planned to do a DONE4 a while back but never got around to do it... this greatly simplify it!

I hope I'm not hijacking the thread but I think the answers to my questions below would contribute to the thread.

I just followed the steps and called AA ATW, but with a few issues:

1. Payment. The agent insisted that if I do not have a credit card that has Japan billing address, then someone has to be physically in Japan to purchase the tickets, and I cannot call and pay over the phone with AU-issued credit card. Is this true?

2. Routing. The agent insisted that the HKG transit JFK-HKG-MEL is not legit, and booked me on JFK-LAX-MEL instead. Personally I don't mind either way (slightly less SC via LAX according to MileageMonkey) but what will happen if he's wrong?
(NRT-TPE-HKG-CDG-AMM-DME-MAD-MEX-YVR-JFK-MCO-JFK-HKG-MEL-HKG-TPE-NRT)
EDIT: Sorry I meant to ask even his routing looks wrong (according to Mileage Monkey) as the JFK-LAX can be considered as the second trans-continent N. American? If he is wrong, what will happen? (does it get picked up at ticketing?)

3. The agent xfer'ed me to another person to take my QF#, who then tried to persuade me to use my AA# instead. She indicated that she doesn't know if QF would credit me the mileage for all the flights (even though they are all ow partners!) and that the system does not want to take my QF number (?!@#) Anyone had this experience? (I'm planning to call back and try another person)

4. For QF/AA codeshare (JFK-LAX-MEL), is there's a difference between booking it under AA or QF?? (QF metal)

Thanks all!

 

[Keith009]

1) Did you speak to ATW Desk or did you speak to AA NRT? Each issuing office has its own policy with payment and ticketing, and AFAIK AA NRT accepts foreign credit cards and payment over the phone so long as the itinerary is eticketable (in the brave new world of 16 segment itineraries I can't think of many itineraries that CAN'T with eticketed).

2) The agent was right. You can't enter/exit Asia more than once unless one of the entries/exists is in transit or on a single flight number service between the South West Pacific and Europe.

3) I have no had this experience as I use AAdvantage but it sounds like you've got an inexperienced agent. There has been a huge turnover of staff at the ATW desk in the past few months - many experienced staff have left and they've put lots of inexperienced new recruits on the desk.

4) Booking on the QF code will mean you avoid AA's transpacific fuel surcharge as AA limits collection of fuel fines to its own flights. The QF codes will also count towards the 'min 4 QF group segments' rule for QFF status.