Hi all, I have priced out an LONEX ex-Australia for May 2015, and I am looking for any obvious savings or better routings/carriers for logging miles to American (unless there is a way to log to Alaska?), plus assistance with a couple niggling problems. I am open to changing all routes, my primary itinerary is MEL, SCL(IPC), LON, SIN, HKG, MEL, with a lot of surface travel on each continent.

MEL-SYD QF
SYD-SCL QF (Cannot find any flights when I try MEL-SCL, also hard to find availability SYD-SCL without hitting North America)
SCL-IPC LAN
IPC SCL LAN
SAO-LON BA
IST-DOH QR
DOH-SIN QR
HKG-MEL CX

Total USD$4635, 11 segments.

If there were a country in eastern Asia with a significantly cheaper base fare I would be happy to book from there instead. (I am actually starting in Seattle, will fly to my start point). This fare was generated by creating the itinerary directly at rtw.oneworld.com - I did notice that after I opened the rtw tool through Qantas.com, the base fare on my existing open tab jumped by about $1500. When I opened a new browser and reopened my saved itinerary, it showed the original price. What is going on there, Qantas fees getting hidden in there? Is this what it will charge me when I actually put in my CC#? (summary page with qantas logo showed cheaper fare).

Sao Paulo - I am not attached to this over Rio, but it seemed easier to find availability to London. I can switch the BA flight to TAM for ~$250 less fees, don't know if that's worth it - seems to be a fair amount of complaining about TAM? I would like to add a flight from Porto Alegre to Sao Paulo but for some reason Porto Alegre does not show up in the booking tool (although it is shown in the Oneworld Timetables app…?).

I will be making a few short-haul flights around both Europe and Asia during my surface segments but I haven't got specific destinations yet and expect it will be cheaper to buy them separately anyway. (eg adding London-Geneva adds USD$110, I'm confident I can book that for less).

thanks for any suggestions!