Originally Posted by Hoc
With maybe one or two exceptions in a year, I, too, am a leisure only flyer. So, if you knew that you were going from LAX to, say, Vienna once, St. Lucia once, New York once, New Orleans once, Honolulu two or three times and Sydney once in a year, with some flexibility for other spots during the year, how would you go about deciding how to route your AONE?
Ah, a challenge!
First off, one area where XONE tickets are problematic is Hawaii. You are only allowed to fly once
either to or from Hawaii and the mainland (using a North American segment). Once in Hawaii, you are forced to fly onward to Australia as it is the only Oneworld service from Hawaii to anywhere other than North America. I am pretty sure that you could arrange a surface segement to get back from Hawaii (meaning a non-flying segement - this does not count toward the 20 segment max and you are free to fly home from Hawaii using a separate ticket). Why not fly from Hawaii to Australia? No reason if you are on a DONE ticket, but, as Qantas (the airline in question) does not offer First Class on this route, you would be crossing the Pacific (one of the longest flights on the ticket) in Business Class -- not good value for money, IMO. This is a long way of saying that you can only do Hawaii once on a XONE ticket and it is imperfect at best.
Now, you are LAX based and want to include Vienna, New York, St. Lucia, New Orleans and Sydney. I am assuming you do not want to buy in the USA, as it is expensive. Let's say you buy in Egypt, which is around $6900 pre tax (add about another $250 for taxes). Getting to Cairo is on your own. From New York JFK, I used Egyptair in First Class for $1500, which was fine, but nothing special (as you might expect for $1500). JohnAx has also used Egyptair F to get to CAI for starting a OWE.
Let's say Vienna is your first destination. There are no Oneworld flights direct from Cairo to Vienna, so you will have to change. British Airways operates the only Oneworld three-class flight ex-CAI, so you would route CAI-LHR-VIE (2197 miles plus 795 miles).
http://gc.kls2.com/cgi-bin/gc?PATH=C...OR=&MAP-STYLE=
After your stay in Vienna, I would send you back to the USA. While you could easily go direct to New York from Vienna via London, I would reccomend that you go to LAX as it is much longer and more miles (plus, it is home for you). As such, I would route you VIE-LHR-LAX on British Airways and American (if AA is your FFP of choice, you cannot earn AA miles on BA transatlantic flights, so you must fly AA on this route -- if you want BA across the Pond, we have to route you through Canada, Mexico or the Carribbean), which is another 795 miles plus 5456 miles.
http://gc.kls2.com/cgi-bin/gc?PATH=C...avy&MAP-STYLE=
Now, you are in North America and must do all your North American flying before leaving the continent. You have six North American segments, one of which can be a transcon. I would send you non-stop from LAX to JFK on American (2475 miles). St. Lucia is tough because the only flights on AA are from San Juan on an ATR. I would reccomend you either pick a Carribbean destination with non-stop service from JFK (Barbados or Aruba come to mind) or just route to SJU and buy a separate ticket to St. Lucia. Let's stick with routing to SJU, which is 1598 miles from JFK. I would do this as a round trip, routing LAX-JFK-SJU-JFK, using three of your six North American segments. Once back in JFK, I would route you back to LAX via DFW (JFK-DFW-LAX). If you want to go to New Orleans, you can book this as a separate ticket ex-DFW or LAX, whichever is convenient. This leaves you with one North American segment to use to get to Hawaii (I'll assume HNL, but could work for any non-stop flight to Hawaii from LAX).
http://gc.kls2.com/cgi-bin/gc?PATH=C...avy&MAP-STYLE=
As I mentioned, you can continue to SYD from HNL, but only in Business Class. If you are on an AONE ticket, I would reccomend routing back to LAX at your expense and flying onward to Asia from there. I would route you on Cathay Pacific to HKG (7260 miles) and then from HKG to NRT and back (for miles or to stay if you wish), which is 1842 miles each way.
http://gc.kls2.com/cgi-bin/gc?PATH=C...avy&MAP-STYLE=
At this point, you will have used 13 of your 20 segments and flown 31,000 miles (remember, if you are already Platinum or higher on AA, you will be earning 2.5 miles per mile flown). From here, you still have two extra Asia segments you cna use before heading to Australia. If you do not want to visit somewhere esle in Asia, you could do another mileage run on CX. India is part of Asia, and although only Business Class, offers a nice amount of miles (Bali or Jakarta or other options, Jakarta may evne offer F class). Let's say you decide to do Bali as a mileage run (2136 miles and can be done as a day trip).
http://gc.kls2.com/cgi-bin/gc?PATH=C...avy&MAP-STYLE=
Now, you are back in HKG and have used 15 segments. Off to Sydney on either Cathay or Qantas, which is 4580 miles from HKG. Since you need two segments to get back to Cairo (one to fly to Europe and one to get to Cairo), you have two segments to use in Australia. As with North America, you can only do one transcon, so Perth is out. Fortunately, you can do a round trip to Auckland, which is 1345 miles from Sydney.
http://gc.kls2.com/cgi-bin/gc?PATH=C...avy&MAP-STYLE=
Back in Sydney, you can fly back to London on British Airways or Qantas, which is one segment, although it stops in SIN or BKK on the way (you cannot stopover and must continue on to LHR). This is a 10,573 mile flight.
http://gc.kls2.com/cgi-bin/gc?PATH=C...avy&MAP-STYLE=
Finally, you need to have a segment back to Cairo or elsewhere in the Middle East (per the rules, you can route to another Middle Eastern city and end there). Let's say you want to go to Dubai, a popular turn-around place for FTers using XONE tickets, which is 3420 miles from LHR.
http://gc.kls2.com/cgi-bin/gc?PATH=C...avy&MAP-STYLE=
As you can see, total mileage on this routing is 56,573. Total elite qualifying points would be 84,860. Total earned mileage would be 141,433. You would need to pay your own way to CAI, back from DXB from SJU to St. Lucia and from DFW to MSY, or use miles (FWIW, I am using miles to get back from DXB when my AONE5 ends there in January 2005).
I am sure others can tweak this, but it is a good start.
I hope it helps.