Stgermainparis

I wasn't really sure where the best place for this question would be, but since families have to book multiple seats, seems like you all may be able to help.

We are a family of 5 and wish to book a RTW trip for July 2018. I usually start the research about 18 months out so I can ticket 10-11 months out. I'm trying to identify which alliance and which carriers are most likely to have 5 seats. We are highly flexible and can travel any 3-4 weeks in the space of 6 weeks (late June-early Aug).

Turkish Air, Air China (yikes), and Asiana w/ *A all seem to have decent 5x availability in business. And I read that Thai will release 2 at a time, then often 2 more, etc. We can do some split between business and economy, but whoever gets stuck in economy will not be so happy.

I've got plenty of points in cc transfers (1.2M w/ MR; 700k w/ UR) and a few hundred thousand each spread around SPG, DL, AA etc. Ideally I'd like to transfer over to ANA for the 145k points RTW for 125k miles, but having a little trouble figuring out Asia segments with the 5x business.

Can anyone advise on best chance for availability of 5x (or even 4x) per airline?
In any alliance?

Big4Flyer

This would probably be a situation where I would seek out the services of one of the award booking services that many travel bloggers offer. While fighting that many economy seats for round the world trips could be difficult, business class will be even more so. There's a wiki you can check out that has some of the prices available for these services as well.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...eviews-26.html

FindAWay

I think the real trouble is going to be finding all of the availability at a single moment in time to be able to book a specifically RTW award.

You could probably do it (at a higher mileage-cost, of course) by taking advantage of different programs routing rules and booking pieces separately (and at different times). What will make this happen for you is likely flexibility (like your ability to split some flights to smaller groups of 2-3) that includes "destinations" with separately booked short "side-trips" to where you really want to go and settling for a non-ideal itinerary and refining/changing it later (and, not to mention, booking some legs in economy where available and acceptable).

For example, let's say one of your intended legs is USA-Europe (or Europe-USA), several carriers release 5+ bus. class seats at the leading-edge of the schedule (e.g., I booked 5 such seats on UA's ORD-FCO n/s flight)....but, you may not be able to book your next leg yet - either because the schedule isn't open that far yet or because availability hasn't opened-up yet (I had to do this - I booked our out-bound as a one-way and then, once the schedule extended, booked our open-jaw return flight separately).

Sounds like a fun trip!

erik123

This is not the ideal place for this question so I would ask the moderator to move it.

It all depends on where you start and which countries you want to visit.

If you book far out CX has very good availability. Using Alaska to Hong Kong is good value. Combo of SPG and credit cards might do it. Or one way with AA. Within Asia on the shorter routes Avios work very well (and cheap) and are easy to cancel with only a modest fee

There are also often often very good deals within Asia - also at the last minute on many LLCs so don't get to hung up on using miles.

Asia to US - you might want to check Air Asia KIX-HNL which has angled flat beds (quite good). JL often has 5 seat to/from KIX-West Coast US.

Erasmus

Not gonna lie: this will be a lot of effort to pull off. I've personally felt the pain as my own family has continually grown and trips started requiring more and more tickets. Once you get past two seats things get really tough.

If you want concrete advice on particular airlines/routes that are likely to have availability, you're going to need to post a lot more specifics. As a previous poster pointed out, this may well be worth shelling out for an award booking service unless you're willing to spend many, many days and nights getting this put together. You'll likely need to look for second-tier routes/airlines, and summer is high season for transatlantic, so be realistic about your constraints.

erik123

We fly with 5 often and I have had very good success across programs/carriers if booked with enough anticipation or last minute. From some Asian cities you can also fly to Europe or back to the US for a very reasonable fare - so it pays to compare paid to award tickets.

azepine00

Op, why negative on CA?
Aside from that CX is an option but obviously thats ow.

In general i am not sure why you have to do rtw (unless its just an achievement milestone/bragging rights). An rt/open jaw award to asia or europe with some paid flights within can cover a lot of territory...
Where do you want to go?

Stgermainparis

Thanks, everyone for all this good advice. Points and travel are a hobby and so I actually like the time and effort to find the perfect segments (which is partially why I don't want to hire a booking service). In the past I've had decent luck getting 5 of us in J to Europe and also to South Africa, though granted we are only talking about 2-3 segments each way.

The reason for the RTW is that I have the points for it on ANA and it'd only be 145k pp. I'm not sure I could piece together OW or open jaws etc for that. When I looked at other options, it was about 70k OW J to Asia, so each way would basically get me to RTW. I'm mildly interested in a stop in Europe or BOM, so that's another option with the RTW. Would create more booking problems, I realize. And take more vacay days.

I'm thinking either a RT open jaw in and out of any of these: NRT/HKG/BKK. Or the RTW. If there's a quick layover in Europe or Middle East, that works (so could help with getting the right segments). With a jaunt to DPS once we're in Asia. My ideal trip would be any gateway city in US like ORD/LAX/NYC-HKG-DPS-NRT-back to US with about a week in each spot (plus travel days). And if I can talk family into it, a pitstop in ATH on outbound. I can do positioning flights for domestic legs on front and back ends, if necessary.

I was thinking of ANA for RTW with maybe Turkish for ORD-IST (possible diversion to ATH or FCO for few days if needed for next segment) then IST-HKG (week stay). Then I kind of get stuck. I could do Singapore or Thai to DPS w/ a connection and probably get 2-4 J and the others go coach. Then to Tokyo same way via BKK or SIN? Then NRT-ICN-ORD on Asiana in J. But of course that is contingent on there being space on the dates I need (even with my flexibility, we can't stay more than a day or two extra in any given place).

So that's what I've figured out so far on some dummy bookings and research. Garuda has a DPS-NRT nonstop so if I had to I could pony up points for that separate from my main RTW ticket.

Stgermainparis

Maybe a simpler question is this: which airlines (both domestic and international ones) routinely have 5 award seats in J available? Or even 4.

Erasmus

Depends when you book. LA frequently has 8+ seats available at 331 days but they disappear after a day or two. CX tends to open up 5 seats in J at the window as well. DL will often have 4+ seats out of their secondary markets (e.g., PDX, SLC).

My *A J booking experience is very dated at this point, sorry, so don't have any useful pointers (other than to say NZ is likely not going to figure in your award plans).

Stgermainparis

Okay, that's actually helpful, esp the CX at 331 day mark. I could probably swing that. May have to nest that within bigger trip, but since we want to go to HKG anyway, could work. By LA do you mean Latam in South America? I hadn't thought to go there, but could...that could also wipe out fuel charges on a RTW, if I begin it in S.A., yes?

I had not thought about secondary markets. My main hope is J for the long hauls though.