SkyTeam - Skyteam for a RTW trip (paid)?

Good morning everyone,

I am currently thinking about taking a 3-month break next year and to fly to Asia (Laos, Vietnam, Burma), Australia and NZ, Vancouver and probably Chicago.

Since I have an Amex FB Plat (Silver status for now), I was thinking about taking Skyteam for that RTW trip though AF is not exactly my definition of the perfect service.

A useful precision is that I'm planning to fly in Business class (if I can manage to find all the flights for less than 6-7k€)

Any advice and recommended readings/topics would be much appreciated.

Thank you for your help :D

I am moving your thread to the Skyteam forum (with a link here). In that forum there is a sticky on RTW Skyteam tickets as well.

Gajan

1. Note that the price for a RTW-ticket depends on the distance flown and on the point of origin. If you fly from LON instead of LUX, this will save you around 1500 EUR.

2. Your itinerary seems to be just below 29000 miles, if you are prepared to pay for some additional cheap flights between the Asian countries you'd like to visit and if you are willing to use NZ, QF or DJ for flying AKL-SYD. In this case, and if you fly from LON, you should get along with 6-7kEUR. (Up to 29000 miles from LON is a bit more than 5kEUR without taxes and fees.)

I know you can get the fare rules for the SkyTeam RTW fares out of ExpertFlyer. The top-line summary:

Up to 39000 miles = €8,717
Up to 34000 miles = €7,562
UP to 29000 miles = €6,669

(All fares for business class.)

Since there are limits on the number of segments (looks like 16), you might consider buying some of the short intra-Asia flights separately. To the ST RTW, it will look like a surface sector. Australia on SkyTeam can be a bit of a challenge, since (right now), all the members tend to be northern and will eat up your miles. Might try coming in from ICN on KE (or CAN on CZ) and then out from SYD on DL to LAX and then on to CHI. Depending on when you're doing the travelling, GA might be an option to go south without having to go north first. (I know you'd want to do VN to Australia.) However, I don't think there's a date announced for GA to join other than "2012".

ETA: The RTW fares I quote above are for LUX as start/end. Didn't realize LON was so much cheaper. I'd assumed an RTW fare was an RTW fare, for some silly reason.

Wow, you guys sure are knowledgeable on that matter. Thank you very much for the details.

I can actually fly from CDG, FRA, LHR or MUN as a starting point.

Would it be better to fly with OneWorld or StarAlliance for the trip mentioned?
in terms of:
1. miles earned
2. price
3. status reached after
4. IFE and on-board comfort and lounges quality

Many thanks

I can actually fly from CDG, FRA, LHR or MUN as a starting point.

You have to buy your ticket in the country where you start the RTW.
England is the lowest price for Skyteam RTW in Europe.
The ticket must be bought 7 days before the first flight.

OW RTW with LON origination start at EUR5654. I believe that's a three continent fare (including the starting continent), but their fare rules are a lot more complex than ST's. *A starts out at EUR6416 for the lowest business class RTW originating at LHR.

There is a RTW trip planner (http://www.skyteam.com/en/your-trip/Round-the-World-Planner/) currently being prepared by SkyTeam - it should (hopefully) be available on their new website soon.

Wow, you guys sure are knowledgeable on that matter. Thank you very much for the details.

I can actually fly from CDG, FRA, LHR or MUN as a starting point.

Would it be better to fly with OneWorld or StarAlliance for the trip mentioned?
in terms of:
1. miles earned
2. price
3. status reached after
4. IFE and on-board comfort and lounges quality

Many thanks

There is no easy answer to this question.
In the end you will have to find out the itinerary for your RTW on each of the alliances and price it.
After this you will have to find out how many miles you would get with which Frequent Flyer Programme and which status this would lead to. (Each programme within an alliance is different. So it also depends on what you want from your programme, what you want from having status, etc.)

Regarding your 4th item: the differences between the alliances are not as big as some people think they are. If you do not have a specific preference for some airline, I would keep it out of the game for the moment. The rest is complicated enough, if you want to "optimize" your trip.

To start things with the Skyteam itinerary:

On Skyteam, your itinerary would look something like this (with details depending on convenient flight conections and availability of your fare class):

LON-CDG-SGN-
(now some flights to the Asian destinations you would like to go to:
some of these from SGN or Hanoi with VN, some others maybe bought outside the RTW-ticket - so that you will just use up the 29000 miles of your RTW ticket)
-SYD-
(now a flight with NZ or DJ to AKL outside the RTW ticket)
-LAX-SLC-YVR-
-MSP-ORD-
-CDG/AMS-LON

This itinerary has 25762 miles, so you have 3238 miles left for flights within South East Asia on VN. (So it might well be that the only extra ticket you will need (outside your RTW-ticket) is SYD-AKL-SYD, which is quite cheap on DJ.)

[Note: you could also fly directly to AKL on Skyteam, but I doubt that this would be a good idea as it would use up quite a few of your 29000 miles, and SYD-AKL-SYD is not very expensive anyway.]

Thank you very much Cityflyer369. You sure gave me a lot of tips for my trip. I'm now considering doing Asia only otherwise would be too exhausting.

There's only one thing that has been said that I don't agree totally with. There are real differences between level of comfort for each company.

Cannot compare AF C Class and SG C Class for instance... I'm not even talking about the service...

In any case, many thanks and I'll post my finale trip when I'll have booked it