Originally Posted by
pye1201
Thanks so much for all the help out there - I know you will roll your eyes at my next few questions but here goes:
Due to an unavoidable work commitment we have had to postpone our trip to the latter half of next year (and must fit in with paragliding weather in turkey for my better half which is apparently August/September) thus my first question is how far ahead can one book a DONE4? Obviously, using the Oneworld Planner is a guessing game as far as dates go if my trip finishes more than a year from now. Am I being completely ridiculous setting up the framework of this trip so far ahead?
The answer is – in theory you can book up to one year in advance. But since the demise of paper tickets, the actual period depends on the computerised booking system (the GDS) used by the ticketing airline – in practice this is about 330 days.
Thus the LAST flight on the itinerary cannot be more than the GDS limit. You can book dummy dates and freely change them later. Just make sure that everything is a stopover not a transit (other than required transits in your continent of origin) – because to later change a transit to a stopover constitutes a routing change and so incurs the USD125 change fee.
There are pros and cons to booking early
Pros:
You lock in the price (future price increase will not be imposed on you)
You lock the fare rules (future adverse changes will not affect you)
Cons:
IF you want to change the first segment in any way AND the price has increased then you have to pay the new price (FYI there has been a recent round of price increases, so the likelihood of increases in the near future is low)
IF before departure you want to re-route the itinerary AND the price has increased then you have to pay the new price (so simply defer routing changes until after the first flight)
You lock in the fare rules (future advantageous changes will not be available to you – for example new airlines joining the alliance cannot be used)
Because you’re talking about a business class ticket, there should be no problem with availability and no advantage there in booking early (for economy tickets there are certain routes where you have to book as early as possible to get seats – for example SYD-SCL)
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
Still not using all 16 segments – you’re just not trying hard enough!
Suggestions for increasing the mileage:
Instead of IST-KUL-SYD fly IST-LHR-SYD – more miles, fly Qantas A380 from London to Sydney
Instead of SYD-LAX… JFK-LHR
fly SYD-JFK… LAX-LHR (and furthermore fly SYD-HKG-JFK – CX business class is very good)
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?
Correct – maximum of four flight segments and two stopovers in the continent of origin
For a stopover you can fly into one airport and depart from another – that’s just a single stopover. So fly into London and fly out of Rome. Also AA flies JFK-CDG – so you could fly into Paris and out of Rome
Edited to add a small correction (for other readers) - maximum of six flgihts if the continent of origin is Nth America
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.
The AA challenge is based on EQP (Elite Qualifying Points). To gain Platinum status you have to accrue 10,000 EQP in three months flying on eligible airlines (AA itself and a small number of other airlines including BA and QF but not MH). In business class you get 1.5 EQP for each flown mile; so you have to fly 6,667 miles to get 10,000EQP. Once you complete the challenge you will get 100% bonus miles (in addition to the 25% bonus you get for flying business class – so 225% all together). This includes the flight on which you cross the 10,000EQP line.
On your itinerary you don’t fly an eligible airline until your SYD-HBA flight and you will complete the challenge on your SYD-LAX flight. On my suggested itinerary you will do better
Accruing to AA, enrolling in the challenge and using:
Edited to add a small correction: on your intra-USA flights you will fly first class and so will get a 50% class of service bonus, which will increase slightly both the mileage figures above