elbejt2

Planning a special trip next fall for a big anniversary. Always wanted to book a round the world award with Star Alliance but looks like UA discontinued. Looking for some advice. Have plenty of miles. Booking award travel. I am lowly UA sliver.

• Prefer to book first then business then coach
• If I can swing ANA first class at some point that would be awesome
• Sure, the island hopper would be great as long as I’m dreaming
• Would like to at least spend a day or two in India
• After that indifferent to where we go – would be happy on UA or LH metal from Germany to ORD
• But, if possible, would go FRA -> ZRH -> ORD

Yes, stupid, I know. Availability probably blows, I know.

not sure how to think about the tradeoff between availability, class of service, miles redeemed. Don’t know where to start.
Finally, if you tell me to use an award booking service, you’re probably right.
Any thoughts appreciated.


also is this substantial or not a good deal? https://www.firstclassflyer.com/the-...-award-ticket/

PrivatetoComercial

It's so hard to piece these things together...especially with UA.
if you have amex points, the ANA deal is really good.
I have also found some good value with BA for rtw...I recently booked LAX-HKG-MLE-DOH-AMS-LHR-PHX (for a major anniversary as well) in a mix of business and first and spent 200,000avios + $673 per ticket.
Good luck. I look forward to seeing more educated responses than mine!

WineCountryUA

Beleive you still have until 31 Oct 2017 to book RTW with UA miles (seen nothing that suggests RTW when away before 1 Nov 2017).

There are many threads on RTWs in the *A Forum.

jsloan

The RTW award went away with the introduction of the Excursionist Perk (not that it was a great value to begin with, sadly).

WineCountryUA

Yep -- brain freeze -- wrong set of changes

WheelsUpGal

I first flew around the world in 1985 when I turned 30. Bought a ticket from a travel 'store' in Amsterdam.

Amsterdam - Frankfut - Hong Kong - Bangkok - Singapore - Sydney - New Caledonia - Auckland - Fiji - LA - NY - Amsterdam

It was $1100 and I took 18 months.

GREAT IDEA to do it for a special occasion! I remember faring out a RTW with United a couple of years ago that included everywhere I wanted to go including Australia and South Africa. Business Class came to about $7000.

Anyway, this company is where I bought subsequent RTW tickets and I am only including this link for routes.

http://www.trailfinders.com/flights/...world/business

"One or two days" in India doesn't even sound like enough time to leave the airport. Can you use United for the long haul flights and then local airlines for the shorter ones? I would think you'd need at least 3 weeks? Unless you just want to literally "FLY" around the world and not see much?

stimpy

I book lots of C-RTW's with UA, including just a couple months ago. But all paid. I've never tried an award booking. But at least I can say paid bookings are pretty easy to build. And for the UA or LH legs I always try to upgrade to First class, if there is a first class. However as First class cabins are less and less popular around the world, it may not make sense to book a F-RTW anymore.

I don't know the OP's nationality, but if you are American then factor in the cost and time to get a visa for India. And the hassle of getting around an Indian city. It's not a super easy place to visit and two days could be eaten up mostly by logistics.

elbejt2

good question. Part of it is the flying. If I was going to cut the trip short, I would go Hawaii and then the island hopper. As long as I am that far though, part of me just wants to keep going around. Might be too ambitious though. Maybe the right way to go is Island Hopper then make my way to NRT to ride ANA home...

sbm12

Are you stuck only on UA points?

There are some games you can play with a long-haul r/t on UA plus the Excursionist segment to cover parts of the trip and then fill in other bits with other tickets, too. Expecting a pair of F award seats on the Hopper is probably going to leave you disappointed.

And I'll echo the above statement about "a day or two in India." Really not enough time to see much of anything at all. Same for most destinations, really. I'd cut the number of stops and increase the time at each if at all possible.

jsloan

(These instructions assume you're using MileagePlus miles for the redemption).

To start, do one-way searches on United.com* for the award space you're interested in. UA is going to price the awards for each leg separately, with one exception that I'll explain momentarily.

* (Except, Singapore Airlines flights can't be booked online, and, the last I heard, Ethiopian awards aren't appearing either. You can search for those on the ANA website; you'll need an account, but you don't need any miles in it).

Collect the dates and flight information and prepare to book. You're going to need to decide what's most important to you -- reducing the cost of cancellation, or using the fewest miles to go the most places.

That's important because of the Excursionist Perk, which allows you to get one free intra-regional award segment on awards that begin and end in the same region. (The region chart is here). If you want to minimize the cost of cancellation (or cutting the trip short), you'll want to book as many of your segments as possible on a single award, because cancellation fees are per traveler, per award. Your first intra-regional segment will be free.

(In each example, / means a stopover and - means a connection; you want to search by stopover point; the connections are included as an example of a valid routing).

For example:
ORD-NRT/HND-ITM/KIX-BKK-SIN/SIN-DEL/DEL-MUC/MUC-FRA-ZRH-ORD

If you're able to ticket all of that together, HND-ITM would be free, as the first (actually, only, in this example) intra-regional segment.

However, if you're less worried about fees or the ability to give up halfway through, you can set things up as separate awards (each award on a single line; free segments listed with an asterisk). This one adds in additional stops.

ORD-NRT / NRT-SIN / BKK-SIN-DPS* / ZRH-ORD
NRT-GUM-TKK-PNI / PNI-KSA-KWA-MAJ* / MAJ-HNL / HNL-NRT†
SIN-BKK-SYD / SYD-AKL* / AKL-BKK
DPS-SIN-DEL / DEL-GOI* / GOI-BOM-FRA-ZRH

† The only way to get from MAJ to NRT on a single award is to go back through the Island Hopper. I set it up this way in order to get you a shot at ANA F; otherwise, I'd go ORD-MAJ / MAJ-PNI* / PNI-wherever.

You obviously have to interleave the dates carefully, but basically the Excursionist Perk gives you the ability to get quite a bit of extra travel. (I didn't even really push the bounds of it on this example; get creative!

Anyway, the downside to this multi-ticket trip is that you will have to pay a lot of money in redeposit fees if you change your mind about the trip.

Finally -- if you really want to fly in F, you should be prepared to pay some last-minute change fees on the awards. Award space in LH F is common, but it doesn't open up until 14 days (or fewer) until departure. That's another advantage to booking several smaller tickets -- there are fewer things that can go wrong. Making changes to a partner booking can be an adventure, and not the fun kind.

Also, LX does not release F award space at all, so if you fly ZRH-ORD, it won't be in first class.

Looks like a great deal, if you have ANA miles (or Amex or Starpoints). It can't be booked with UA miles.

Hope this helps. Have a great trip! (And, yes, good luck on the availability.

dvs7310

India is on the e-Visa system now, it's no longer a major issue to get the visa. I forget exactly when it started, maybe a year or two ago. Many countries' citizens are eligible, including USA.

https://indianvisaonline.gov.in/evisa/tvoa.html

coolbeans202

We did an around the world back in January for our honeymoon, though we had access to both UA and AA miles which really broadened our options.

We spent A LOT of time planning this well in advance of the 330ish days the tickets start to be released. We had a couple of wants; the Maldives were a must and we hoped to get the EY apartments from AUH-MEL (we did). Aside from that, we were pretty flexible with the rest of the trip and cobbled it together based on what was available.

I would highly recommend an Expertflyer subscription to help you do the research. Find out who flies where and when. See what kind of award seats seem to be available. Etc...

ermintrude

Another blogger wrote a series of very good articles which guides as to what can be done.

http://travelisfree.com/2016/10/25/n...oundtrip-hack/

However I still haven't got over how much the old award system was gutted.