Originally Posted by
pye1201
Next, due to starting so late in the year, I have had to reverse our itinerary. I have (thanks pandaperth for suggesting I better utilise the number of sectors) come up with the following itinerary:
AMM-IST-KUL-SYD-HBA-SYD-LAX-SFO,SLC-DFW-MEM-ORD-JFK-LHR-FCO-AMM
I tried originating in Cairo however, the planner quoted me an increased US$8,000?? We intend to do Turkey & Greece in August 2014, head home for Christmas, quick trip to Hobart in February (thanks pandaperth) and then recommence the American and Italian content in May 2015.
I would have liked a stop in Paris however, I think I can only have 2 stopovers more than 24 hrs in the origin country - thus IST & FCO are the two best ones for us. Am I correct or is the bug that plagues itineraries starting with an FJ flight responsible?
I ran this itinerary through Mileage Monkey and came up with 28,247 miles - would I be better switching to the AA program and forego QF? Icag08 advised me to look into the AA Platinum Challenge, however, even after reading up on this forum and elsewhere I'm still not sure if it will benefit me in this situation as I think we have to fly 25,000 miles before we qualify? So as we are only flying 28,000 in this trip, is it worth it? Of course, it could be me incorrectly deciphering code with which I am totally unfamiliar.
A lot of changes are going to be happening in the next year and I think if you're postponing you should assume you'll need a full re-do of the whole thing when you're ready. In addition to Qatar and Sri Lankan being members by then, AA will (probably) have completed its merger with US Airways, increasing dramatically (or not?) its transatlantic reach. So who knows what the route system will look like? The same goes for the AAdvantage program and things like the Challenges - no idea if they will look the same post-merger as now. Frankly I wouldn't sweat it.
If it were today I'd visit Turkey before Jordan, so that you could conserve a European stopover and not use a short (but expensive) segment of the RTW. Istanbul to Amman is an inexpensive and short flight.
The bump in cost for the CAI origin reflects a bug in the online booking tool (one of many.) It seems that when you exercise the option of finishing in a different country than where you started (e.g. in the Middle East or Africa) the tool picks the
finishing country's price rather than the
starting country's price (which it should do.) The work-around for this is (a) use the RTW desk at AA, or (b) have the trip end where you started, then once booked just do a re-issue with the desired endpoint instead.