Jensine

Hi,

we are departing out of AAL or BLL. We are planning to have the first stop in the carribean and then on to Argentina. It difficult to find any connections that does not take plus 30 hurs. For now we are flying to MIA, spend a few days here before departing for Port Au Prince, Haiti and moving on from Santo Domingo to Buenos Aires.

Can anybody help woth other islands that we can visit on a rtw tickets? It is not to important which one since we have never been in this part of the world before. We arrive late december planning for 10-14 days.

Unterwegs

Just one thing to consider: The paid RTW has only 16 sectors max and you likely will run out of sectors easily. You could use the RTW to get to one point in the area and then buy whatever convenient short flights you find seperate. You will not pe protected in case of a delay, but this tactic makes
things often easier.

dvs7310

Yeah, the Caribbean isn't somewhere that's easy to get around on *A or any other alliance for that matter. Most carriers that fly inter-island are small local airlines. For *A, you'd have UA to IAH, EWR, IAD, and ORD from some islands (EWR is the most common) but that's really far out of the way to fly inter-island, also there is CM to PTY from a few islands, and AV to BOG. That's about it that I can recall, you're very quickly eating up sectors to use any of those. I'd pay out of pocket to get between islands and just take your *A flights to and then out of the the Caribbean at the end.

If you only want major carriers, then AA via MIA is likely your best bet, as well as Air France between a few of the French islands (note KL <VERY> unfortunately does not have local traffic rights on their SXM-CUR and AUA-BON flights).

sbm12

KLM no longer flies the SXM-CUR tag flight. Stopped it this winter season. SXM now gets its own A330 rather than the 744 with the continuing service to CUR.

And I agree that getting around in the Caribbean on *A (or any other alliance) sucks. UA does fly to a bunch of locations ex-EWR but not all are daily. Onward to South America will likely be best served via Copa or Avianca.

dvs7310

What a shame, I guess I was one of the last ones who got to experience the end of a legend. The jet blast from that beast taking off at SXM (from Maho Beach) is pretty impressive. I know AF still has their A340 flight (or did this fall), but it's not nearly as powerful on takeoff as a 744.

For the OP, if it's not already on your trip plan, St Maarten is definitely worth considering as a stop for a morning on Maho Beach if nothing else.

riva31

Once in Santo Domingo you can fly with PAWA to:

Aruba
Curacao
Sint Marteen
Antigua with Stop in SXM
San Juan
Miami

Also they fly to Port au Prince. Not sure how you will reach Santo Domingo from Haiti.

This is their website www.pawadominicana.com

SDQBound

Did you find any solution to the RTW stop in the Caribbean? I was looking for a similar RTW but once you get to the Caribbean it is just impossible to move forward. The only connections I can think of are through destinations where both Copa and United fly, and I've been to most of these destinations already.

riva31's Pawa is not member of Star Alliance, and on top of that, to give an example, if you fly to SDQ and depart from AUA, the mileage between SDQ and AUA will be counted towards the RTW even if you don't fly the route in the RTW ticket.

dvs7310

I think the solution was to fly to an island where UA/CM/AV share and then make your own way around the islands. CM & UA both do POS & SXM. CM, UA, and AV all 3 do SJU, CUR, AUA & SDQ. I think I'm missing some others in there as well, so there are plenty of possibilities.

If you're running close on mileage for the RTW then obviously you'll want to leave off and pick up again on the same island, but for people not trying to maximize every mile they can then it probably doesn't matter if you just do an open jaw. Especially when the open jaw is something really close like SJU/SXM or AUA/CUR.