Hi everyone

My Dad is looking at taking a *A RTW trip for a year in J; originally he planned to buy a series of one ways until I showed him the light! Sadly I'm a OW person, so this is all a bit foreign to me. What I have gathered is that it's far better for him to start in Japan, so have put together this itinerary for him so far:

Tokyo - Dehli - Istanbul - Zurich - London - Sao Paulo - Buenos Aires - Santiago - xLima - Cuzco - Lima - Panama - Toronto - Vancouver - Tokyo.

As long as I get the flights _just_ right, this just scrapes in under 29k, with 16 segments, for a price of 823,110 JPY. It seems the Panama - Toronto are seasonal. Vancouver to Tokyo are also annoying, I can't seem to get rid of the airplane surcharge.

As you can probably guess, South and Central America are big parts of this trip. Eastern Canada, he'll spend a bit of time in. Cuba was a must do; I'm thinking we can change Panama for Havana as long as we go through an agent or something else. Machu Picchu is another must do, hence the Cuzco detour. He's also going to Nepal from Dehli, and a bunch of internal Europe etc etc.

Any bright ideas as to further optimisation? I know the Cuzco is a bit of a side trip, and uses up some sectors, but it seems prices to there are pretty high if you're not Peruvian. Any other "expensive" places that we'd be better including on this itinerary?

Last question (promise!) ... he's a SQ silver member, and was planning on working on that. However, I thought he might be better joining up to Aegean or similar for this trip, as he'll get gold easily. Thoughts? He intends to fly J the rest of his life so lounge issue probably isn't an issue; I'm more looking for optimal earn/burn rates.

Cheers!