brahms77

After all the years of lurking in trip report section of various fora in the internet, the time for me to step up to the plate has come! Now, this report won't start with an elaborate introduction or pictures as I am lagging behind with my work (this around the world is part of my work trip). But let me get the trip report thread started off by brief background and the ticketing process, which can potentially help others organizing similar trips.

I started the new year with a rather extensive travel plan for work that would take me to India (four cities in three and half weeks), Peru (Lima), Swiss (Geneva), and Thailand (Bangkok) in about 70 days. Because the travel has to occur in consecutive manner, I thought this was a great opportunity to utilize an Around The World (ATW) ticket. I have initially set up a CRTWSTAR2 (ex. ICN) and sent in a travel approval form to my company and was approved at the price of 8,300,000 KRW, inclusive of taxes. But working on a CRTWSTAR2 to accommodate the cities in order listed above did require a lot of brainstorming... not to mention, brainstorming (really agonizing) for maximizing miles.

When I was about the purchase CRTWSTAR2, I came across several threads in the FT's oneworld section about DONE3s DONE4s, 'routing check please,' 'maximum mileage out of xONEx' etc. Having read several of these, I quickly realize what a great deal xONEx ATW ticket was and realized that it would accommodate me well with my travel plan. Careful studying of the rules, and asking on FT... as well as a very helpful "mileage monkey" tool allowed me to construct a valid itinerary DONE4 in a very short time. There were two goals in constructing the itinerary:

1) visit all four destinations for work in order
2) maximize mileage (as xONEx is a continent based)
3) visit at least two new places that I have not been to in between work destinations.

So, here's what I have constructed (initially Bangkok was planned immediately following India, but was shifted back after Geneva) and ticketed initially):

* ICN-NRT (less than 24hrs - visit my friend) - DEL
* DEL-NRT-BKK (what an odd way to travel to Bangkok from DEL )
* BKK-SYD (short stopover to claim my sixth continent traveled)
* SYD-EZE-LIM
* LIM-SCL (weekend get away)
* SCL-LIM-EZE-LHR-DXB (visit a friend)
* DXB-LHR-GVA
* GVA-HEL
* HEL-ICN

The mileage was around 49800 miles flown.

And here's my recently modified routing (after having flown first two segments ICN-NRT-DEL, plans for Bangkok changed):

* DEL-NRT-SYD (3 days stopover)
* SYD-EZE-LIM
* LIM-SCL-IPC (Easter Island, baby! )
* IPC-SCL (short stopover)
* SCL-MAD-GVA
* GVA-LHR-DXB (visit a friend)
* DXB-LHR (short stopover for acamdemic purpose)
* LHR-HKG (buy a separate ticket to BKK - approved by work)
* HKG-ICN

This new routing was around 50300 miles... was to take me to world's most remote airport (IPC), first time to Middle East and net me One World Emerald status with LANPASS (6 business class segments with 90,000 km logged, counting 25% class of service bonus).

The ticket was 7,300,000 KRW in total (plus 125 USD I have paid to change the routing post ticketing). Compared to what I had initially with CRTWSTAR2 at 8,300,000 KRW, this ticket saved me 1,000,000 KRW (approx. 700 US) and will take me to several places I would have not been able to go on CRTWSTAR2. One big reason for such big saving is due to the fact that I issued this ticket with American Airlines. AA doesn't collect partner airline fuel surcharges and with no AA segments, I was lucky to be able to ticket this with AA. Otherwise, the cost would have been just about the same as CRTWSTAR2 ticketed with AC.

Now, in this trip, I will be flying BA's new club world at least twice, IB's business class, LA's business class on all LA routes (booked 763 flights), and QF's new service to EZE... not to mention JL's shell flat seats. Six Oneworld carriers, more than 60% of flights in completely flat business class seats, more than 50K butt in the seat (BIS) miles... for 7,300,000 KRW (approximately 5600 USD) is a complete bargain. I didn't purposely start in ICN due to the currency devaluation (others on FT flocked to ICN to get great pricing for these premium fares due to currency devaluation) because I am based in Korea... but it's still a bargain for me as the company pays in USD and I get paid in Euros.

At any rate, immediately following this long trip, I planned for an official vacation and this time, I am going to take my parents to Australia and New Zealand. It's a good thing that I will get a brief taste of Sydney at the end of this month. United's recent devaluation of Mileage Plus (now Mileage NONE) program motivated me to not only switch to Oneworld, but also dump all my miles before January 1st 2009.

So, I quickly booked three C awards to Australia and New Zealand on OZ and NZ from ICN (75K miles each), and one New Zealnd to India award in F for myself (after I finish traveling with my parents) measly 80K miles. My UA mileage balance is now at 10K odd miles, with 7 SWU upgrades waiting to be disposed in the next 12 monts. Perhaps it's time to gift to friends and relatives.

In concluding this introductory post, let me summarize my routes and flights:

ICN-NRT-DEL-NRT-SYD-EZE-LIM-SCL-IPC-SCL-MAD-GVA-LHR-DXB-LHR-HKG-ICN-(SYD-AKL-[SYD-SIN-BOM-SIN-MEL-AKL]-PVG-ICN).

Airlines flown: BA, JL, CX, LA, IB, QF, (SQ, NZ, OZ), TG (separate ticket for work)
Classes flown: F and C only (of course I will be flying a few internal India flights for work in Y)
Segments flown: 28 semgents (including HKG-BKK-HKG)
Cities visited (NEW): Geneva, Madrid, London, (Easter Island), (Santiago de Chile), Lima, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Shanghai, (Sydney), (Auckland), (Bombay), (Kolkata - separate ticket), Singapore, (Hyderabad), New Delhi, Chennai, a total of 18 cities around the globe.
Total cost in tickets (approximate): 6800 USD (including domestic India tickets and HKG-BKK RT in Y and taxes on UA award tickets) + 155K UA miles.
Total miles flown: 80761 (http://gc.kls2.com/cgi-bin/gc?PATH=I...OR=&MAP-STYLE=)

Will keep you updated with my flights (hopefully I will have pictures)

brahms77

Here, I will update conclusions of each flight and short impression of each cities I have visited.

I will update the flights individually as new posts in this thread.

flatbedfan

Sounds good, brahms77, looking forward to a cracker! Try and get row 62 on BA (Upper deck) Lots of pics please, regards fbf.

brahms77

So, no one seems to be interested in reading these trip reports that do not accompany pictures. I get that... I am also one of those who like to flip through only pictures and read later. But for current given circumstances, I have no pictures to upload or have good internet connection to upload pictures. So, if you guys can bear with me on few more of these posts without pictures, I can get those nice set of pictures updates to these posts.

As mentioned in my introduction, there were several reasons in choosing DONE4 as my first ATW ticket. Having invested so much time and money on *Alliance, the obvious choice was to go with CRTWSTAR2, but I couldn't give up the opportunity to fly on quality airlines I have not flown before... and JL is one of them. Actually, all of these OW carriers that I have selected to fly in this ATW are carriers that I have not flown before... so this trip awarded with a lot of "firsts."

To start off on my around the world, I took a flight from my home city, Daegu, South Korea to ICN. KE has a daily service on this route with no other competition... but the fare is around 70,000 KRW so it's not too bad despite the monopolization. KE only awards 160 miles for this route regardless of how much you pay (though there really isn't much difference - two types of fares offered C or Y). The flight is only 35 minutes and just a quick drink service is offered. So, there is nothing much to write but to say that I've flown this route more than 20 times since it was implemented, but it's very inconvenient if you have late hour flights ex-ICN as there is only one flight a day in the early morning. Daegu has seen a lot of flight cuts (domestic flights) due to KTX (Korean version of TGV). There used to be almost hourly service to Seoul Gimpo back in the day, but now all of the GMP flights have been suspended due to non-profitability. Alas, when you can reach Seoul in 99 minutes by KTX, there is really no point of flying.

JL has about four to five flights per day to NRT from ICN and two daily flights to HND from GMP. But if one wants to have international connection ex-NRT, you need to fly out of ICN as xONEx rules indicate that NRT/HND and GMP/ICN are not recognized as co-terminals so one/two segments will be used up as ground transportation. So, convenience of flying out of GMP or HND is out of the question on xONEx. I was booked for JL 954 leaving at 2PM, but wanted to switch to the 12PM flight as I wanted to meet up with a friend who is dropping off her sister at NRT around 2PM. However, today, all of the flights are oversold. So, I had to just check-in for the 2PM flight. Few friends of mine were also at ICN so I spent the odd hours before my flight (arrived in ICN around 9AM) with them.

When the flight time approached, I cleared the immigration and headed to the JL Sakura lounge in the Concourse A (all foreign carriers depart from the new concourse A). Sakura lounge in ICN is small but has nice tarmac views (most ICN lounges have this except for the new OZ lounge in this concourse). There was not much to do in the lounge so I went for brief shopping for sun glasses and proceeded to the boarding gate for boarding.

The ICN-NRT JL flight today was on 777-200 configured with the older style recliner. The flight was completely full and I had 1A. The flight itself was non-eventful but the service level and the professionalism maintained throughout the flight by the cabin crew were top notch. American and European carriers really must learn from these Asian carriers in providing service and making customers feel at home. Some may disagree, but at least this my personal opinion on this matter.

The flight arrived about 15 minutes ahead of schedule and I was back in the NRT T2 for the first time in 4 years or so since I took NH flight (back when NH operated out of T2) to ICN. T2, compared to the new *A terminal in NRT looks very outdated and requires renovation in the coming years if it were to serve as a OW hub.

Anyway, my bags were out early with the priority tags (JL has several of these priority tags and I was surprised that first 40 bags or so were tagged as First Class) and left the customers within 20 minutes of landing. My friend was waiting for me at the greeting area and I was off to the Tokyo city to spend a night before my NRT-DEL flight the next morning.