Yolalon

Hi all,

I am being made redundant soon and I would like to do RTW trip to start as soon as it happens. I have been gathering information on these forums and playing with the Oneworld explorer online tool until I have found two itineraries I am happy with, but the rules are so complicated I am still really confused about a lot of things.
The two itineraries I'm contemplating are

Itinerary 1 - LON - BKK (via HKG) - CNS (via SYD) - SYD -IPC - SCL - BOG -MAD - VLC - LON
Itinerary 2 - VLC - LON - BKK (via HKG) - CNS (via SYD) -SYD - IPC - SCL - BOG -MAD - VLC

Both itineraries have similar prices. The most convenient one is itinerary 1, the problem is that I don't know yet what date I will finish work, it will most likely be April or May but I will find out only a month in advance, so I would need to wait until I get my notice to be able to buy the flights. Itinerary 2 is a bit more inconvenient as it means having to get separate flights to and from Valencia but solves the dates problem.
If any of the more experienced flyers in here would be kind enough to solve some of my queries it would really help me decide between the two itineraries and when/how to get the ticket:

1 - Do prices for rtw tickets tend to fluctuate a lot? I've been trying similar itineraries over the last few weeks and they haven't really changed much, but I'm worried if I leave it for a few weeks before the trip it will became a lot more expensive
2- If I start the trip from London, would I need to book it with Cathay, that operates the first flight I'm taking? As I'm based in London it may be easier to book it with BA, but I don't know if that would be possible, as I'm not taking any flight with them.
3- As the flights are all quite long I was considering business class to make both the flights and airport waits a bit more comfortable, but the DONE4 is more than twice the price of a LONE4. As each flight is with a different carrier,would I get enough miles if I join a frequent flyer program to make it worth the extra money?
4- How easy is it in reality to change flight dates? And if I decided to change, for example BKK-CNS would I need to contact the ticket issuer or the carrier for that flight? For what I have been reading in theforums I get the impression some airline staff are not very familiar with the rtw rules and I'm worried to chose the dates and then have trouble changing them, particularly as I have a few flights with LATAM!

Apologies for the long post and many thanks for all theinformation I have already found in here to help plan my trip!

pandaperth

Welcome to FT Yolalon and congrats on your first post. Taking a RTW trip is an excellent way to celebrate redundancy IMHO.

To answer your questions:

1. No. Oneworld Explorer base fares do not vary. From time to time they are raised, more or less in line with inflation.
   
   In particular, there is no price variation depending on how close in to your departure date you decide to purchase your ticket.
   
   However purchasing close-in to departure might mean you have problems with availability, especially in economy class and more especially in economy for flights such as SYD-SCL-IPC-SCL for which finding availability is always difficult.
   
   The small variations in total price that you have seen as you tried various itineraries will be because of differing taxes, fees and charges for the flights and stops.
   .
2. In theory you can purchase a Oneworld Explorer from any Oneworld airline, however only the first airline in your itinerary is obliged to sell it to you; other airlines can refuse and many of them will if you have no flights with that airline.
   
   In your case, to purchase with BA you can simply have your first flight (LHR-HKG) with BA (or you could fly LHR-BKK direct with BA).
   .
3. You don’t say which FF programme you would accrue to. All your flights can be accrued to the one programme, but economy class earning can be quite poor, as low as zero on some flights.
   
   Business class earning is better, but in my experience the ‘value’ of the FF miles earned comes nowhere near to offsetting the incremental cost of business class over economy.
   .
4. It is true that the competence of airline telephone agents varies considerably when it comes to making changes to these tickets. In my experience it always takes at least 30mins to get even a simple change done (hence I always use Skype to telephone!). I’m always put on hold while the agent verifies that (a) I’m allowed to make the change, and (b) in the case of date changes, that there is no charge. I’ve found BA is reasonably OK, and I’ve read reports on FT that CX is OK too. (the one exception I’ve had is the AA RTW desk; they know the rules and I once got a date change done is less than 5 minutes!)

Unterwegs

You could also use a travel agent to book. There are some pretty experienced agents around. You pay a fee, but booking, changing flights or even the routing is much, much easier that way.
I book everything else myself, buy I find for RTWs the money for the agent is well spent.
Also keep in mind that you can do 16 sectors. You could add a trip to the middle east at the end (as long as you don't touch your starting point. And I think you cannot have more than 2 stopovers in your continent of origin and also no two stopovers at the same city.
Or you could add another place from HKG (Japan, Bali?)
If you run out of sectors: You could go LHR-BKK on BA if you don't want to stop in HKG, then go to HKG later and to CNS on CX, then do SYD later. Just some ideas.

Personally I would do the trip in Business Class, but then the additional cost is significant. For me it s much easier to get over jetlag when I can lay down and sleep, you also can use the lounges, priority check in and have a higher baggage allowance. But then you never want to go back to economy on long flights.

pandaperth

You are limited to two stopovers in the continent of origin
but there is no limit to the number of stopovers at the same place

Good idea to point out the possibility of adding another trip at the end (which could of course be at the beginning instead)

Using the OP's first itinerary for example:
LHR-xHKG-BKK....BOG-MAD
stopover and return to LON on a separate return ticket
then later
MAD-TLV-LHR

Gardyloo

Indeed, welcome, Yohan!

A few points to consider:

- In addition to cheaper or more expensive base prices depending on the country of origin, the choice of issuing carrier and the original departure point can matter a lot. British Airways, for example, adds heavy surcharges and fees to RTW tickets that they issue; the same ticket issued by another airline might have a surprisingly smaller "bottom line." Once you get into the thicket of fare construction and taxes/fees computation, it all goes into a black box at the issuing airline, and - sadly - these computations are neither transparent nor debatable. The Oneworld online tool is notoriously buggy on this front; many people think the tool has given them a good fare but when they go to put in their credit card information it all goes to hell.

- Starting longhaul flights from places like the UK can attract big departure taxes (in the UK, air passenger duty) - a series of these can bump the final price quite significantly.

- You're probably not in a position to know what your travel patterns will be going forward, so using an RTW trip to amass a quantity of frequent flyer points (miles/Avios etc.) would only be beneficial if you knew how you'd plan to use them. But given you have time to plan and do "what if" thought experiments, why not take the time now to "model" your proposed trip with a couple of major FF schemes. How many Avios and tier points would your itinerary earn if you credited them to BA? How about to Iberia? You can look up the Avios and TP earning tables for both economy (fare code L) and business (D) and see the differential. Note that if you plan to travel after the RTW, the elite status might mean more to you than the redeemable miles/points. Or with BA, your Avios might not get you a lot of free flights, but might enable you to upgrade using points more often than you'd do otherwise.

- Especially for residents of the UK, starting somewhere else not only can help with the base price and taxes/fees/surcharges, it can also allow you to start or end using home as a stopover point. For example, the cheapest origin point for business class tickets in Europe is presently Norway; a DONE4 from Oslo has a base price £684 less than one from the UK. And if your first flight was to, say, Helsinki, you could have Finnair issue the ticket and possibly avoid big BA surcharges. You'd have to pay for "positioning" flights but those costs would be far less than the savings on the RTW ticket itself. (FWIW Norway is almost £200 less than Spain or the Euro zone for an LONE4 and almost £500 less than Spain/Euro for DONE4s.)

- Finally, you could also use your time to see if an RTW ticket makes the most sense in terms of total cost. Look at these FT boards - http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/mileage-run-deals-372/ and http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/premium-fare-deals-740/ where members post alerts on good deals. For example, right now there's a thread where people are posting business class deals to/from Australia for £1500 or so. It's entirely feasible to construct a flight plan that uses cheap business class return fares for longhaul segments but also uses low cost carriers or inexpensive economy fares for shorthaul ones, where the perks of business class - flat beds, lounges, etc. - might not be as important. Most people can survive a couple of hours in an economy seat in Europe or in Asia without lasting damage.

Again, welcome to FT and to our mad little corner of RTW travel!

Yolalon

Thanks so much Pandaperth, Unterwegs and Gardyloo for your replies. Knowing that prices are not so volatile as normal airfares makes a great difference, as I can spend more time trying out different options for the itinerary.

This is quite useful to know, thanks! I will keep an eye on those fares and if I see availability starts to reduce I can just buy the tickets and get them re-priced later if I need to change the departure date

That was the first option I tried, but then playing around I realised flying via Hong Kong from LGW was over £300 cheaper. I don't mind splashing a bit if I get some value out of it, but I found the difference in price quite excessive for the benefit of a direct flight.

I don't have any FF programme yet, I need to spend some time on the relevant forum to try and find out which one would work better for me. I guess probably BA or Iberia, which are the airlines I'm more likely to use but I need to do some serious reading on that point

When I decided on the trip the first thing I did was going to Trailfinders, but the agent I spoke to told me they only had trips with two stops in South America, as they don't get much interest for that area!
Now I realise how hard this is I may give it another go and try some of the other travel agents to see if any of them would cover the trip I want.

After reading the 'lay down and sleep' bit I've gone straight to check out photos of business class seats and I'm really tempted to go for Business! Even if it doesn't add enough value from a mileage point of view I think it definitely will from a comfort point of view!

Adding a trip at the end will be tricky as I want to start looking for a new job in January, and when I fly back from Bogotá I will staying in Spain for Christmas. But I will look at possible stops in the Middle East on my way to Thailand to make the most of my sectors.

Thanks for this information Gardyloo! As I'm getting a breakdown of taxes and fees for the itineraries I had also assumed everything was included! If I decide to book directly with Oneworld rather than a Travel Agent I will make sure I phone one of the airlines to get a definitive fare, rather than trying to pay in the online tool.

Yes, I will start doing some reading on the FF schemes to see which one would work for me, as I haven't paid enough attention to that side of the planning yet, up to know I've focused mainly on trying to get the itinerary sorted! But now I'm slowly getting there I can start looking at the miles too

Thanks! I will try the itinerary starting from Oslo if it's that much cheaper for business. And I haven't been to either Oslo or Helsinki,so I could take the chance to visit them!
If I do OSL-HEL before flying to Bangkok would it allow me MAD-LON-OSL or would that be one stop too many in Europe? It would be useful to go to straight to London and leave the last leg of the journey for a weekend in Oslo in the spring once the weather is better.

I'll have a look at those board as well, thanks! I've survived London-Quito and London-Bali in economy, so a few short flights in economy would be nothing for me
But I think the problem in finding good deals would most likely be on the South American sections, particularly Easter Island!

Yolalon

Hi all again,
I'm really sorry if it gave the impression I disappeared without so much as a thank you, but for some reason my posts are not appearing! I've tried to reply twice since last week and both times got a message that my post had to be reviewed by a moderator, and that's as far as it got
I'm hoping just a quick reply with no quotes will go through, so that at least I have the chance to thank you all, Pandaperth, Unterwegs and Gardyloo for taking the time to reply to my post with all your suggestions. I've taken notes of the points you have suggested and will be attempting to improve my itinerary as much as possible!

Gardyloo

Sorry you've been having problems. I'm the moderator and I should see if a post is being held for review. If it happens again send me a private message and I'll get right on it.

Gardyloo
Oneworld moderator

Yolalon

Thanks Gardyloo. I'll contact you if I have trouble posting again