FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - RTW help needed please
View Single Post
Old May 28, 2013 | 4:47 pm
  #2  
Gardyloo
Moderator, OneWorld
40 Countries Visited
2M
All eyes on you!
20 Years on Site
 
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: SEA
Programs: RAA RIP; AA ExEXP
Posts: 12,517
Hi, Piano flyer, and welcome.

You could certainly hit your key points with a Oneworld Explorer RTW ticket. You'd need one for four continents (no mileage limit). In business class this would be a "DONE4" ticket.

At present all the Euro-zone countries have the same base price assigned to this product €6684, plus applicable taxes and fees. Obviously there will be some variations depending on your itinerary - airport taxes, fuel surcharges applied in some cases, not in others, etc.

There are some variations within Western/Central Europe. For example, a DONE4 purchased and started in Denmark is around €540 cheaper, and in Hungary about the same. DONE4s starting in Egypt (which is regarded as Europe for the purposes of this product) are priced at €4530, over two thousand Euros cheaper than in France, Germany, Italy, et al. (Switzerland is more expensive than the Euro countries; the UK is roughly the same.) So if you're prepared to travel to someplace like Egypt, you could save significantly; on the other hand of course you need to pay to get there and back. But maybe you have some Lufthansa or other *A miles that you could use for "positioning."

Oneworld offers an online booking tool for Oneworld Explorers, located here - http://www.oneworld.com/flights/plan-book-online/ You could put together a selection of itineraries and the tool will give you pricing as well as tax and fee information.

Here's one (imaginary) itinerary that might work for you: CPH-HEL-NRT-PEK-HKG-MEL-HBA-SYD-DFW-SFO-JFK-ORD-DEN-DFW-FRA-LHR-CPH. There are ways this could be optimized; for example you could remove Aspen from the RTW ticket and assign the unused segments to some other European segment. Note of course there are plenty of rules for these products, including just two stopovers (>24h) being allowed in the continent of origin.

For FF status, the route above comprises around 35,000 flown miles. In business class this would earn you AA Platinum status (Oneworld Sapphire, the middle tier) which would gain you lounge access on any Oneworld flight outside the continental US, additional baggage allowances, etc. I suspect you could also probably achieve BA Silver (also Sapphire) but that would depend on counting BA "tier points" which I haven't done. There should be plenty of information on the BA board or at BA's website.

Hope this helps, and again, welcome!
Gardyloo is offline