GlobeTrotter2017

Hi Everyone,
Firstly, thanks so much for the wealth of info posted on these forums, it’s incredibly helpful. However, after lots of reading and going back and forth with agents, I’m still uncertain as to how to structure my RTW trip and hoping that people may be able to help.

We’re based on the UK, so could start our RTW in London. This is the basis on which the agents I’ve been dealing with have been planning our itinerary – in fact, they say that it’s no cheaper starting from elsewhere. We have air miles with BEAC so could easily take a flight separately if it meant that starting the ticket elsewhere e.g. Helsinki, Cairo or South Africa would be cheaper.

Some background points to note:

• We’ll be travelling on a 12 month ticket, but we’re both a bit nervous about having an end date on our ticket in case we decide we want to stay in a place for longer
• We’re not interested in Europe as a continent –it’s on our doorstep so not worth including in a RTW ticket from a VfM perspective
• The first stop on our adventure had to be South Africa – that’s the one main rule for our trip. We have family there and want to spend Christmas with them
• Places we want to visit are Asia (Thailand, Lous, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Singapore and if we could, Japan); South Pacific (Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Hamilton Island); South America (Chilli, Easter Island, Argentina, Cuba, Brazil and Mexico); USA (only Miami so that we can take a trip to the Caribbean).

Now for my questions:

1. Our agent says that the cheapest option is to do a mileage based itinerary and has advised against a OW ticket based on cost. However, we collect air miles with BEAC and Amex cards, plus the itinerary they have suggested which I’ve detailed below, means us spending potentially considerable more money on the side trips which aren’t included in the base fair as follows:

London Heathrow to Dubai
Dubai to Johannesburg and back (own arrangements)
Dubai to Bangkok
Bangkok to Singapore (own arrangements)
Singapore to Brisbane
Brisbane to Hamilton Island to Sydney (own arrangements)
Sydney to Fiji
Fiji to Christchurch
Christchurch to Auckland
Auckland to Santiago
Santiago to Easter Island and back (own arrangements)
Santiago to Cancun (own arrangements)
Cancun to Miami
Miami to London Heathrow.
£2388.17 per person

1. We have no interest in going to Dubai really, but the agent can’t seem to get us a London to Joburg/Cape Town direct fair, which I find odd but think it’s because our starting airline is Qantas Not bothered about using this airline in particular though.
2. Given that we want our first stop to be in SA, would it not make more sense to begin our RTW ticket from JNB for example and go from there? This way we could spend around six weeks in SA without the clock ticking on our 12 month ticket and returning to Africa at the end would be no bad thing. We could also stop off in London at some point if we did this as it wouldn’t be our starting city, although again if this means including Europe as a continent in of itself, happy to miss it out.
3. If we did start from SA, do people have ideas about a potential route? I know it’s possible to go from JNB to Hong-Kong, or JNB to Sydney, but not sure which way we would need to go to be in-keeping with the various rules.

What about something like:
Johannesburg - Hong Kong - Singapore – Brisbane - Sydney - Fiji – Auckland – Santiago – Sao Paolo – Cancun – Miami – London – Cape Town.

1. I’m visually impaired and can’t use online maps very well to see how many miles we would travel on an itinerary like this. Based on the above info, which would people recommend – segment-based or mileage-based?

I’m posting this on the OW forum because I’m more inclined to lean towards using OW for our RTW, but if it’s better placed elsewhere e.g. so that other alliances can be considered too then feel free to move. But I’m definitely more interested in collecting miles with the OW partners than the other alliances, unless there’s a significant cost saving to be made by doing this another way.

Thanks all for your patience – I just hate having to rely on agents for these things and wanted to get some advice from the FlyerTalk community.

rens

Some very preliminary comments to help you along.
1. Consider using gcmap.com to check mileage. No need to read maps, just enter itinerary using airport codes.
2. Based on the total mileage, you may fin d a RTW may be most cost effective and also able to pick up some of the on your own segments.
3.Starting in SA seems to fit your timing and plans well. Consider starting in MPM, which is generally a bit cheaper than SA. Although the super low fares are long gone, there is still value there, especially in L
4. Remember that a RTW allows 16 segments, so you have room to pick up some others on your initial itinerary.
5. Consider omiting either SYD or BNE. It is cheap to pick up a one way fare and you have plenty of time to look for a good sale. SYD-BNE is poor use of a segment.
6. For RTW ticket purposes Mexico and the Caribbean are in North America, so may want to consider doing MIA before CUN and working in your Caribbean trip out of Miami
7. Consider working in your Easter Island trip out of Santiago. Since this can be expensive, it would be good to work it into the RTW,
Hope this helps and do let us know how your planning progresses.

Rens

Perhaps others can chime in with more suggestions.

Unterwegs

First of all welcome to flyertalk!

Just a few unsorted comments and my opinion.

Starting point: There can be significant price differences between starting points. South Africa has been cheap, not any more. Cairy is also relatively expensive now. The cheapest point also depends on the class. When a currency tanks (like in CAI) often this becomes the best starting point until the airlines react and the prices change a few weeks/month later.

Validity: The ticket is valid for 12 month from the first flight. As far as i know there is no way to extend past that.

Europe: If you start in Africa you can go to Asia (CX to HKG) without touching Europe/Middle east, but at the end of the trip yo would need to find a flight from North or South America to Africa without touching Europe.

Oneworld: RTW - You have to stay on Oneworld airlines. Your planned itinary would not work with any of the OW RTWs. Not sure what kind of an RTW your agent is suggesting.

Surface Sectors: If you go by land (on an TW) between two places it still will cost you one segment. If you don't want to waste the segment you could position yourself to one place, then use LCCs in the area and back to the place where you left off your RTW ticket. Check the airports on wikipedia and find the Low Cost Carriers wnd where they fly from that airport for separate tickets.

Separate tickets give you a much higher flexibility, but they are difficult to change. On an RTW date changes are free (as long as there is space in your booking class). With separate tickets you don't need to book everything in advance. Also keep in mind that in some parts of the world one way flights are (almost) as expensive as return tickets.

If you want to get an RTW one possible itinary from JNB would be:
JNB-HKG-BKK-SIN-Tokyo
Use LCCs to travel around Asia (Air Asia, Vietjet....) BKK has lots of good options, SIN has less.
Tokyo-SYD or MEL and depending how many segments you have left buy tickets inside Australia and over to NZ or use the RTW.
Getting to Islands like Fiji will be difficult on an RTW. Not sure if there are flights on OW. Possibly other readers can help?
Then take LAN to South America and LAN or AA to the US.
Back to London from there. Stop in London back home and you have another One Way to JNB left.

If you start in London you can do the same thing endin in London again.

Keep in mind: The RTW has 16 sectors max, distance does not matter as long as you follow the rules. If you want to maximize miles you earn you should pick looong flights between the continents and also long flights inside the continents.

My recommendation:
- read the rules for the xONE tickets - google "oneworld rtw rules", look for the pdf with the title SDF....
- go to the oneworld website and play with the RTW planning tool
- use the RTW for the heavy lifting (long flights) and use local LCCs for the shorter flights

headinclouds

1st, welcome to the OW forum. Before giving any more advice, we need some additional information.

Which travel class-1st,biz,coach?
Which cities are must visit?
Which direction-east or west?
Visiting Fiji on a continent based xONEx is not possible, but on the mileage based ticket it is.
There is now a 3 times per week nonstop flight between Sao Paulo and Jo'burg, so you could skip Europe altogether.

Dr. HFH

I'm not sure where the "SDF" came from, but the official rule sheet is here.

GlobeTrotter2017

Hi everyone, thanks for your input so far, I will check out the links and info you've given me. In response to the questions:

1. We plan to fly economy class in order to keep the cost down, but if we find a good enough deal we would love to fly business.
2. In terms of cities we must visit along the way, we are more focused on the countries we would like to visit to be honest, as there is so much to see in certain places. For example, we don't only want to see Bangkok in Thailand, but it would be a good place to land so that we could then travel around the country.

We've actually been discussing the possibility of not going to North and South America on this trip, as we are both a bit concerned about trying to pack everything into a year. Would love to spend a couple of months in South Africa, at least two months in New Zealand, a month in Australia and several months in Asia. So by the time you add all that up, it doesn't leave long for South America, central America and the Caribbean.We propose this to our agent who still thinks that a miles based itinerary would be best. They have proposed LHR - JNB - SYD - AKL - BKK - SIN - HKG - DBX - LHR. This looks pretty good, except I'm really not sure why they keep trying to insert Dubai into every itinerary. We are really not bothered about going to Dubai at all and have said this so I don't know whether it's because of the routing rules or what, but it's annoying. I wonder if there is something else we could put in place of Dubai on the way home?

Obviously this route is from London, so I'm now going to contact BA in South Africa and compare prices if we start from there instead. Any other suggestions welcome, especially if you think we are potentially doing the wrong thing by cutting out South America and the Caribbean for a 12 month long trip. Oddly, there isn't much of a price difference if we do in terms of the ticket so I'm not sure if we are making a mistake here I guess we are taking a year out to get away from all the pressure of work and so I don't want to feel pressurised in another way to complete a very long route. .

GlobeTrotter2017

Hi everyone, I tried to post a couple of days ago but it didn't work so trying again.

thanks for all your helpful comments so far, I'll try and answer some of the questions you raised below.

we will be travelling economy class, not sure if on a RTW ticket you can use your FF miles to upgrade, but if so we will do this whenever we can.

we are both starting to get pretty nervous about trying to pack so much into a 12 month trip, especially if there is nothing you can do about extending the ticket. So, after some thinking, we have come up with the following new itinerary, which cuts out South America and the US.

LHR to JNB to SYD to AKL to SIN to BKK to HKG to LHR
this comes in at just under 26,000 miles, which should mean we could use the global explorer first tier tickets to do the trip. What do people think of this route? Any improvements we could make? Anything that looks like it wouldn't work?

i'm going to call be a South Africa tomorrow to compare the cost of starting the trip in SA or MPM.

in terms of the places we really want to see, Although we do want to go to South America and the Caribbean, Asia and the South Pacific are higher on our list, so we figured that we should use the a 12 month ticket to do these first and then perhaps take another trip to do the rest later.

any comments welcome.

Gardyloo

The trip you're describing is not possible using an RTW ticket. The most fundamental requirement of an RTW ticket is that you must cross both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, in the same direction.

The trip you're describing would be eligible using Oneworld's "Circle Trip Explorer," which is a separate type of ticket that would allow your route. There is no mileage limitation on the Circle Trip Explorer; like the Oneworld Explorer RTW ticket it's based on the number of continents visited, with Europe, Asia, SW Pacific (Australia/NZ) and Africa as the eligible continents. One of the continents has to be Africa.

In terms of pricing, the 4-continent Circle Trip Explorer costs the same (base price) as a 4-continent Oneworld Explorer. So in cost terms, your plan won't save any money.

A route like LHR-JNB-HKG-BKK-HKG-SIN-SYD-AKL-SCL-IPC-SCL-EZE-LHR
would cost the same as your plan, give or take some fees and airport taxes.

Regarding your reluctance to plan for a 12-month trip, my main suggestion would be to think about splitting the year into two separate pieces, using your home as a long "stopover" between these elements. (This is what many of us who use RTWs for leisure travel do.) Start somewhere besides home, fly around, then stop in London before continuing - maybe months later - on the second part of the trip.

For example, say you flew using points to Japan and started the trip there (around the same base cost as Europe/UK.) Then fly something like NRT-SIN-HKG-BKK-HKG-JNB-CPT-LHR, covering your Asia and Africa trips.

Then stay over in London - go back to work, whatever - for several weeks or months, then finish the trip by flying LHR-EZE-SCL-IPC-SCL-AKL-SYD-NRT, ending in Japan and thus completing the RTW. As long as you finish within a year of starting, you're good. Here's a map showing the entire route.