Originally Posted by
dvs7310
Sadly yes, Africa is a major hole in the network at the moment since the franchise of BA in South Africa went bust. Hopefully in the coming years Rwandair and / or Airlink will join.
But lots of options to add something inside of Africa with a surface segment. Seychelles are beautiful but like many island paradises, very expensive on the ground. WB (Rwandair) is a partner of QR and you can use Avios for them at a very reasonable rate, they are bookable on the QR app or website. Rwanda itself is a very nice country to visit, and they reduced the price of the Gorilla permit at the beginning of this year to be in line with Uganda's price, sadly QR gave up their KGL service and let's WB fly the DOH route now with a QR codeshare (not eligible for OW Explorer). Entebbe in Uganda is also nice along Lake Victoria, QR has a daily service to EBB. You could consider Victoria Falls, but to catch QR down there you'd need to make your own way to HRE or LUN, neither are particularly close but definitely do-able.
For booking, it depends on where you credit your miles to. If not AAdvantage, then definitely just use AA to book. If you do credit to AAdvantage though you likely don't want the required AA coded inter-continental segment, so that's where a travel agent would be better. I don't know this firsthand but have heard that finding a travel agent who can ticket on QR stock via Sabre can cut a lot of fuel surcharges out. There are some travel agents who lurk on this board but not sure any of them can ticket that way, none that have raised their hand anyway.
Ok super helpful, thanks so much! Changing to something like OSL-DOH-MEL//(Avios for internal QR flights) SYD-AKL-JFK. Might fit in some side trips here within North America. Then -DOH-NBO//LUN-DOH-MAD-TOS (for the Northern Lights)
That gives 4 segments for side trips in NA to be planned (can skip SYD to AKL and do that Avios if another is another segment needed). Hopefully when FJ joins OW I'll add in NAN, although it does mean 2 segments extra with the DFW stop.
I'll credit to BAEC, so I probably will do AA RTW booking
I used ITA Matrix, set the country of sale and currency to Norway and NOK, but can't see many fees for even the QF3 AKL-JFK flight which I would imagine has huge YQ/YR fees. Currently looking at QR, QF, CX (FJ hopefully!). Are there any tricks for dumping and checking the YQ/YR fees for these?
If any travel agents frequent this forum, feel free to DM me to see if you can help me out here with ticketing on QR or any stock that cuts these fees, I would be interested!