Paul,

The posted itinerary has too many segments in North America (7 instead of 6), Australia (5 instead of 4) and Europe (5 instead of 4). Also as of 2 weeks ago you were only permitted 1 transcontinental segment in North America (you do MIA-SEA and then SEA-MIA). Also let us know if AA will really allow you to go Europe-Africa-Europe.

Chris: I will concur that in First Lan Chile is better than AA unless you are flying on an AA 777. However, the fact that Lan Chile seems incapable of consistently posting miles to AA accounts is a HUGE negative. Also the fact that they seem to only open 1 A Class seat per flight and refuse to clear wait lists until the day of the flight is also a problem.

The Darwin flights are 2 classes however, since they were daytime flights I was not to concerned. Also be careful about that trying to do SYD - PER - SYD on the same day. The 3 class service arrives PER in the international terminal and the bus service between domestic and international is somewhat arbitrary it appears and a cab actually cost 15 AUD. If you try and make the return 3 class service you only have an hour on Sundays (other days the flight leaves Perth before you arrive) and you will need to clear immigration inbound, check in for Sydney, and clear immigration again outbound. All this even though it is a domestic flight.

Just my 2 pesos,
rich

[This message has been edited by RichLond (edited 08-30-2000).]