Stephen, Wow thanks for the call out and I hope you can plan a great around the world trip. You are in that tough spot of being tied to when award space is being released. Some shows up right around 11-12 months out and some won't show up until very close in. There is one feature that is sort of to your advantage. Once an airline/route segment is booked you can always change it to a later date if/when its available. So if you can find routes that typically show some availability AND have more then one flight to choose from AND you realize you might have to accept economy you could hedge your bet on booking.
For example Lets say your booking now and your trip starts June 1st but you want your final flight home to be May of 2020. You are not going to find anything for May 2020 this far out. If your last leg was getting from Japan back to USA you could book a route like NRT-LAX on ANA that has a couple of flights a day. You would book it for January of 2020. Then from the end of May 2019 until January of 2020 you just need to find an available day you can change the flight date to. Using a route that has more then one flight might help your chances and of course being willing to fly economy opens up so much.
A few other possible strategies if USA was start and finish(adjust for Europe):
- Don't focus the around the world trip on any short flights on sections you plan to use more then 365 days out. Use the open Jaws and main hubs to your advantage. This would save on total distance and you could use miles you saved and cash on short hops. So for example JFK-FRA-CAI-SIN-NRT-LAX(19,580 miles). If you want to hit southeast Asia use Singapore as your base and don't tie your far out RTW dates up with flights like SIN-BKK or SIN-SYD book those separate.
- If you are going to start out booking business class realize that when changing those far out dates later you may have to take a seat in economy. The good news I have heard is that because it is still a business class ticket when the flight day comes you are suppose to get priority to the open business class seats before any other travelers get their status upgrades. I have only read this can not say its 100% true.
- Easier said then done but know the routes that generally will have availability later. For example, through planning my trip and helping a couple of others I have come to realize you can almost always find availability from SIN-KIX but not always from SIN-NRT. Singapore Airlines flies a daily 787 and an A380 SIN-KIX. If I was in your shoes trying to book a route that later was going to change dates by months I would of course try to book SIN-KIX knowing you can get a 1 hour flight from KIX to NRT for $79. For the USA example maybe do an open jaw from west coast to east coast.
- One last strategy might be to book now what you want and keep checking. You will have the ticket locked in but perhaps a month out from departure you can find a whole new route in the 11 month window that will also work and you can cancel original booking and rebook. As its been posted you need to find "new" availability as your canceling will not put those seats back into inventory as award space.
- Use the Expert flier trip alerts to catch when availability first opens up for possible date changes. You get 200 alerts for free now with the $10 a month service. It may take awhile to set up but when the times comes and you are busy "vacationing" you will know the day some availability shows up.
- Finally, and this is a odd one to even type. Go into the last long leg(s) knowing that if you can't find replacement dates you can walk away. It would sort of be a waste of points but if you got $20,000 a ticket of retail value in the first several months maybe its easier to just not show up and use that last leg because you are having fun and are not ready to come home yet.
For departure cities in Europe just stay away from major ones like Paris, London and Frankfort. It will save you a cash on departure. See the chart here...
https://www.pointswithacrew.com/comp...rt-taxes-fees/ and see the "COST FROM" column
Good luck and let us all know what you end up booking so we can be jealous of your year of traveling.
John