<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by cyence:
You folks are indeed brilliant. Excuse the confusion my question may have created. Can someone confirm that Air Pacific can indeed by utilized to backtrack in the South Pacific. My agent suggested that was not permitted. All else being equal, if I could manage to include Samoa and Fiji without incurring additional cost, that would be a small victory in itself. The reference to credit cards and Diner's club was about conflict between splitting airmiles between Star Alliance and OneWorld.
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I suggest it may be time for you to find a new travel agent or hire a Flyertalker[actually, there a is thread on this in the community forum]!
Line 147N to 155N clearly talks about what's permitted and what's not in backtracking. Please read the link I provided on the previous for more details. I will just quote the passage here:
8. THE SAME CITY PAIRS/SEGMENTS MAY NOT BE FLOWN MORE THAN ONCE IN THE SAME DIRECTION.
9. BACKTRACKING BETWEEN REGIONS AS DEFINED UNDER APPLICATION IS NOT PERMITTED. EXCEPTION - ASIA MAY BE PASSED THROUGH TWICE PROVIDED THAT ONE OF THE DEPARTURES/ ARRIVALS IN ASIA IS A TRANSIT WITHOUT STOPOVER IN CONJUNCTION WITH TRAVEL BETWEEN THE SOUTWEST PACIFIC AND EUROPE.
Your AKL-NAN-APW-NAN-BNE portion, you will only stop in Nandi, Fiji once and the other time you pass through NAN is solely for the purpose of connection. As long as you don't stopover in the same city twice, you are fine. Besdies, the NAN-APW-NAN is permitted because it's within the same region [South West Pacific] and you did not fly this route more than once
in the same direction. From APW to BNE, it was necessary to connect through NAN so given it's the most direct routing, it would be allowed even if it constitutes a backtracking of some sort. Usually, you are allowed to pass through a same city twice and stop no more than once. And you know what, worse come to worse, do a AKL-SUV (Suva, Fijian capital) open-jaw, surface sector to NAN, which you can visit the country along the way or take about 3 hours of ground transport to Nandi on the other side of the island. You can keep this in mind as well.
As to the credit card question, obviously, this is not a small purchase considering you got 5 people. If you have AA or BA miles as per your Royal Bank Visa, then, why don't you consider buying one of the RTW using miles? Granted, you'll need a separate ticket for the Air Pacific portion, but it's easily doable and I will show you how:
If you currently hold RBC British Airways card, you should consider changing it to the RBC Avion version unless the BA Companion ticket is a must perk for you. The Avion card gives you the flexibility to choose between AA and BA and you will need AA miles for the Air Pacific portion. Then, you will need 140K of BA/AA miles for the Oneworld carrier portions of your itineary if you intend to fly economy or 190K for Business class. Essentially, your itineary doesn't change except you leave out the Air Pacific portion and your Oneworld ticket will simply note an open-jaw between AKL and BNE. Now, use 20K AA miles, you can claim a separate reward ticket for AKL-NAN-APW-NAN-BNE. All these segments are direct and operated by Air Pacific. I don't know if you have any Qantas points, you can use it as well for the Air Pacific portion if you have any. So the Air Pacific portion will allow you one stopover (Nandi), destination = Apia and Open-Jaw to Brisbane, perfectly legal under AA terms. Note that if you want Business, the Air Pacific portion will cost 40K as opposed to 20K. So all in all, if you want to use airline miles to purchase your itineary and face some constraints such as more limited capacity control, the economy class version can be have for 140K + 20 K = 160 K or Business class for 190 K + 40K = 230K It's not unusual to see people with millions of miles so even for family of 5, there are quite a few here who can take their whole family of 5 on a Business class RTW using only miles. So here is the miles option if you can do it.
Now credit cards...you know what, in your case, the best recommendation is neither Diners Club or the RBC card
if you intend to use cash to purchase those 5 tickets. But first of all, it would require you to get rid of your current TA because you need to make your booking with TD Travel Center using their TD Gold Travel credit card. Here is why, they offer you 5 TD pts per dollar spent on purchases with them. Each pt has the value of $0.015 CAD. So by spending a dollar, you earn 5 X $0.015 = $0.075. Because you intend to buy bargain fares, getting cash back will be more useful than getting miles on your credit cards. Here is why:
Suppose you decide to put all 5 people in economy so it will cost $4900 X 5 = $24,500 CAD in total spedning. By putting this amount of money on a miles CC, you get 24,500 of Air Canada or AA or BA miles. Considering the economy version of your reward ticket will cost 160K in total, 24.5K/160K represents only 15.31% value of one ticket. Not to mention, using miles is more restrictive to get seats and don't earn miles when you fly them and - no status. Had you put this on the TD Travel Gold Visa, your 24,500 spending will generate $1,837.5 of travel certficiate which you can apply against your purchase. Now $1,837.5 / $4,900 = 37.5% value of your ticket that's twice more that of miles earning credit card. In addition, when you fly, you will earn miles. Considering your total distance is in the proximity of 32,500 miles in total distance and you can subscribe your whole family to AA's Platinum challenge for this - this means, after your first 10K miles, you can get 100% bonus on the subsequent miles + the possibility of converting AA electronic upgrades into miles. So you are looking at generating: 32,500 + 22,500 + 6,000 = 61,000 miles per person flying! And, in the middle your trip, even if you fly economy, you will start getting lounge access due to your Oneworld Sapphire status when the Platinum challenge kicks in immeidately, your status will be AA Platinum and should be accessible accross Oneworld computer system. So the 61,000 miles generated per person X 5 has a value of 305K miles. This divide by 160 K = 191% or 1.91 times a RTW ticket for your itineary. Let's add the 0.375 from the cash earned previously to the 1.91 obtained here = 2.285, you just got yourself back a bit over the value of 2 tickets. So it's like buy 5, get 2 back. Considering you really only paid 2.715 times your ticket X $4,900 = $13,304. Divide this by 5, and rougly, the average real cost of your ticket per person goes down to $2,661 CAD. Show this to your travel agent if you want, he/she might learn a thing or two.
Good lucks!