Star Alliance - My first thoughts on planning a '04 Star RTW trip...

OK, I have some very remote thoughts about a RTW in 2004 (yes, that far away...). Based on what I always wanted to do, I put together a routing that I think could be a good idea, and it was much more easy in my opinion than I thought, so I wonder if I am missing something. Perhaps you can take a look. I'd like to do the following (or something like it):

flight | segment | cummulated | Stop
LH CGN-FRA 0084 miles 00084 miles
LH FRA-DXB 3014 miles 03098 miles STOP 1
SQ DXB-SIN 3633 miles 06731 miles
SQ SIN-MEL 3743 miles 10474 miles STOP 2
NZ MEL-AKL 1644 miles 12118 miles
NZ AKL-RAR 1873 miles 13991 miles STOP 3
NZ RAR-LAX 4670 miles 18661 miles
UA LAX-SFO 0335 miles 18996 miles STOP 4
UA SFO-LAX 0335 miles 19331 miles
UA LAX-IAD 2288 miles 21619 miles STOP 5
LH IAD-FRA 4080 miles 25699 miles
LH FRA-CGN 0084 miles 25783 miles

Basically this is Dubai for some days of initial relaxation, Melbourne (our "destination") with the touristy stuff (and some sidetrips within Australia not covered by this ticket), some snorkeling/bathing on the Cook-Islands, then visiting friends and family in San Francisco and Washington. Will this routing work for a StarLite RTW?

With my SEN-bonus, this trip will yield me 35037 status-miles in Economy, priced at about 1950€ plus tax. I have not checked schedules so far, but most segments seem to be at a bearable length, and the DXB-SIN-MEL connection can probably broken up with a <24 hour stopover in SIN so we can get some sleep. Total trip time for this, btw, is five to six weeks.

On the other hand we could do that in C with the 29000 miles RTW for about 4300€ yielding me 77724 status-miles for that trip, plus about 3000 flight miles to spare for some US-sidetrips (carefully planned stuff like SFO-RNO-SFO-LAX-LAS in a day) surely shifting me over the 100K requal-barrier plus an additional stopover in SIN/BKK/LAS or wherever. Not sure, however, if this would be worth it for me...

So...what do you think? Go for the "cheap" Lite, or travel in "style" for twice the money and requal for SEN on one trip? Mileage-cost for accrued miles would be slightly below 6ct in both variants.

But more important: Did I understand the rules right or did I misinterpret something on this RTW-plan...? I have never done something like this before...

Thanks in advance for any suggestion!

Greetings - Dirk

edited to clear up the "table" of flights

[This message has been edited by djohannw (edited 10-18-2002).]

Everything seems OK ... I'd probably do it in C !

and remember that its max 28 segments which means you cant do to many SFO-RNO-LAX-LAS etc.

Sounds fine to me other than you may be breaking the only one stopover allowed in any city in LAX.

Check the full rules here over a glass of wine.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum82/HTML/000761.html

BTW, splash out and travel in C!