Originally Posted by
macks
I have a good bit of year-end travel lined up, so the hope is to do a Platinum Challenge on AA and secure status by the time we set off in January. Is a DONE3 Asia-SWP-S America route worth considering, using accrued miles to take us to Europe after wrapping up in Tokyo? Or is it impossible to get from S America back to Japan without touching N American or Europe?
At present it isn't possible to purchase an xONEx that avoids Europe (which includes the Middle East) owing to no trans-South Atlantic routes flown by Oneworld members.
Originally Posted by
macks
A pricing question as well. When I was playing around with the online tool a couple months ago, LONE4 itineraries starting in Japan were coming in around $5500. The same/very similar itineraries are now pricing out in excess of $9000. Am I doing something wrong, or was there a significant fare hike in the past few months?
Expert Flyer shows the base LONE4 fare at $3459++ ex-Japan, so I'd look again at your inputs. (Note "++" means plus taxes and fees, which, depending on your choice of stopovers and carriers, can be as much as 20% or more of the base fare.)
The economy v. business class decision is obviously a personal one, but I'm not sure I'd try to justify it based on the differential in mileage earned. Yes, you get class-of-service bonus miles (for AAdvantage, 25% in business, 50% in first) but on a 40,000 mile (+/-) RTW that doesn't amount to some stunning total. Really, you could play the credit card churning game and do better, without all that pesky flying.
But of course, 16 flights in business or first class for an average cost of $500 or less is a screaming deal, so I wouldn't discard the idea out of hand. The USD is pretty strong against the Yen at the moment, and a DONE4 ex-Japan is barely twice the price of an LONE4. So my vote (and I don't get one of course) would be to talk it over with your honeymoon companion. Personally, I would willingly step down from a 4-star hotel to a 2- or 3-star one, and use the spread for more comfortable flights, but that's me.
One thing I'd also mention is - as a leisure RTW traveler - you might consider doing a two- or three-year "strategic" travel plan, and see how the RTW ticket might fit into it. In our case, we found that we could break a RTW itinerary in half, come home as a "stopover," and return to work, using the 6 allocated North America segments for work or leisure purposes, then, even months later, continue the RTW back to the start point. That way, in our case at least, we found that we could do most of a year's travel just with one ticket, and in the course of that year, earn enough miles so that a significant amount of travel could be accomplished
the following year on the house.
For example, a DONE4 or 5 that covers, say, 55,000 flight miles, will earn roughly 125,000 - 130,000 AA miles, enough for a business-class round trip from North America to Europe or Asia, or for a couple of first-class round trips within North America or the Caribbean. This is what we did; we'd do a two- or three-part RTW in year 1, usually starting in whatever country was "cheap" (relative term) for DONEx tickets - usually South Africa, but also Japan, or, formerly, Turkey or even Sweden - then fly "free" on the miles in year two, then repeat. With around $6K out of pocket every two years, we usually managed something like 20-22 business class or first class flights over that period, making the average cost something like $300. Not bad for Vancouver - New York in J on CX, or Joburg to Sydney in J on Qantas.
Of course it depends on your own budget, travel style, and work/family obligations. But planning doesn't cost anything, RTW tickets are good for a year, and - trust me - they can become very addictive once you get the hang of how to plan your travel over a longer period than just one trip at a time.