Thanks to advice received here over the past month, I’m in the final stages of booking my RTW tickets. The core is a AONE3 ex-CAI that goes on to Africa, Australia, No.Amer. then Europe, stretched out over a whole year (I will finish the booking when Mrs Sobhi returns on Sep. 5).

Within the Australia part is a Star1 that takes me back home (to YVR) via Asia & Europe then, after a month at home, on to necessary visits in No. America before returning to Australia via the South Pacific and NZ (the latter visits, along with cheap Y class, is a main reason for using Star1 rather than LONE4).

Within both of them will be another trip back to LAX/YVR from CHC if a cheap return ticket is available next March, otherwise I will probably nest a third RTW ex-NZ. It seems hard to justify paying $2000 for a Y return ticket when a RTW can be had for under $3000.

I would have preferred to have arranged a DONE3 ex-BKK but could not find a cost effective way to get from SYD to BKK (i.e., why pay $1200 for a Y ticket on a 12 hour flight to BKK and back, rather than just a Y class ticket RTW for under $3000 from AU). I want to work toward both AA and BA credits and find that it is quite an elaborate process to figure out which flights to credit toward AA and BA to get BA Silver and AA-EXP.

At one point I considered four nested RTW (e.g. another one to get from YVR to CAI to start the ex-CAI part and the others for trips back home) but decided that the point made earlier about having to complete them all within the year they started would be too restrictive. Given future uncertainties, I opted to buy cheap tickets to CAI assuming that if I decide to buy a new AONE a year from now, then not much is lost by throwing away the return portion of the ticket to CAI.

I still don’t know the answers to the following questions and would appreciate help on any of them- or comments on any misperceptions above.

1) Do the Comair flights (BA flight numbers) in Africa count toward the 4 required BA segments?
2) I had to recently rearrange my AU segments given the new PER-MEL rule. I assume that the speculation that surface segments count (or at least at certain ticketing offices) can be overcome—otherwise I’m at 22 segments.
3) I’ve noticed above, and on other threads, comments about segments that are hard to book—is there any general summary about segments (especially critical long ones) that are particularly difficult to book?
4) Although I decided against trying it this time, for future trips I would like to know if there are any problems with unflown segments. I assume it is OK within continents but can one not fly (but still build into the itinerary) segments across the Atlantic or Pacific (ordinarily this would not make sense but seems to be relevant with multiple nested trips)?
Thanks.