Hey All,
I have just successfully booked my first RTW (round the world ticket). It took me approx. 4 days, ~20 hours to put together. I had a lot of help from reading this forum as well as some critical advice from @
john c wisconsin, so big thanks to him, and I figured it is best to give back to the community by sharing my thoughts and experiences.
I calculated the total retail price of the tickets to be a whopping $17358 using google flight. That is a close to 17 cents per points of redemption value of my AMEX/ANA points.
All flights are direct flights except for the last segment. All flights are booked in business class.
Itinerary:
San Fransisco-Auckland
(open jaw)
Singapore-Bankok-Dubai-Cairo-Athens-Rome
(open jaw)
Oslo-London(layover)-New York City
Total mileage 17511 miles
Surcharges $522
Tips:
- Miles are calculated individually by each flight using Star Alliance RTW tool and are added together later, upon calling ANA to book, the rep told me it was 17511 and I came up with the exact mile before calling (time to ditch all the other tools)
- Since the total mile is calculated by distance flown, it is recommended to book direct flights when possible to maximize value, especially with international long hauls. (If you fly from Chicago to Sydney and have a layover at Tokyo, the total miles would be the distance between ORD-TKO + TKO-SYD)
- Transferring 105000 AMEX points to ANA took 60 hours.
- Avoid the insanely high-cost European airport departure fees at all cost. (London-$189, Manchester-$142.8, Frankfurt-$116.8, Munich-$98.5)
- Avoid the high-cost airlines fuel surcharges. @john c wisconsinmade a chart about it which helped tremendously.
- The ANA search function for RTW is notoriously unfriendly for the purpose of finding seat availabilities, I only used it to confirm the search results I got from united. com and google flight.
- The ANA reps are professional most of the time, I called in 10 times, there was only one guy who didn't know what he was talking about, others are helpful. If you are planning a complicated RTW ticket and do not want to spend 5 hours on the phone with a rep, I would highly recommend to plan it yourself and confirm seat availabilities before calling in to book.
- The ANA reps do not seem to be able to see some flights with layovers. You will have to find it yourself and tell them the flight numbers.
- Flights can be changed free of charge after booking within the same route and airline.
- The ANA NA(North America) call center will redirect you to their Japanese call center if you call from the states after 9 PM.
Big thanks to John again for his kind help. if you have any questions, feel free to comment below or send me a direct message on Instagram @orkkah
Cheers and happy traveling to all the savvy travelers out there.
