I just wanted to thank everyone on this board whose posts I have read that have allowed me to a) get a bunch of AA miles through Citi Cards and other methods, and b) book a RTW Explorer ticket for my mum & stepdad!
I booked:
PMI-MAD-VIE (stop)
VIE-AMM-TLV (stop)
TLV-AMM (stop)
AMM-DEL (stop)
DEL-HKG (stop)
HKG-TPE (stop)
TPE-NRT (stop)
NRT-ORD (stop)
ORD-MSY (stop)
MSY-MIA (stop)
MIA-NYC (stop)
NYC-TXL-PMI (end)
Total cost: 150,000 miles + $772.73 per person in Business Class, and a couple of cups of tea whilst I did the research
The trip will last for about two months (it's good to be retired I guess!), starting in January of 2013.
For people who want to know what the experience was like, and how I went about it, here's what I did & what I used:
I started looking into booking tickets last week, and I used the
oneWorld interactive network map, a shortlist of places I knew my parents wanted to go visit, and KVSTools (for which I had purchased a Diamond membership last year).
It took about five hours of seeing which cities could be gotten to via OneWorld at each stop, and searching KVSTools assiduously, making a note of dates, airlines, flight numbers and times.
Once it was all written down, I called the AAdvantage Award Number (1.800.822.8880) on Saturday, and got an agent who had never booked this kind of award before. So I explained she should look for OneWorld Explorer award, which she did, and after reading the rules for booking she asked me to give her all the flight segments (dates, airlines, airport codes, etc...) and she was able to book it in less than 90 minutes.
I have to say the experience was as painless as it could have been. Whilst having KVSTool is not necessary (you can perform manual searches on AA, Qantas and BA's websites for example), it does make the process a lot less arduous and as such I would recommend using it (or for that matter ExpertFlyer, but I have no experience with the site).
So to AA, FT, and everyone on here, a big ^^^
