Originally Posted by longreach
One of the issues I seem to have is getting to Rio. My options seem to be:
1. Fly BA to Sao Paulo and then onto Rio OR...
2. Fly from UK to Madrid and get Iberia direct to Rio. So....
.
Fly BA straight through to GIG, on BA247, granted it stops in Sao Paulo first but it's still a direct service and will only count as 1 segment.
As far as the business/economy choice goes, if you can afford it then definitely go business, aside from the comfort it brings, the number of Air Miles & points (depending on which FF plan you attach it to) can easily cover the cost of your ticket and, if you find a city which offers a significant discount in comparison to LON then the miles could easily exceed the cost of the ticket.
For exmaple, Last year I purchased a DONE5 ex-CAI for £3800, plus £180 to get there to begin with so £4000 all-in. I credit the miles to BA, i'm currently 10 flights in and have earnt just over 100,000 miles (albeit 30,000 were earnt thanks to a promotion i wasn't even aware of), by the time i complete my trip it'll be closer to 175,000 miles which would see enough for a First Class return from LHR - LAX... which, even at the cheapest of times is unlikely to be less than £3800. A bargin IMO.
Plus, as MOA999 mentioned if you are planning on returning to the UK for whatever reason with 12 months from taking your first flight then you could end in Europe, and fly back in Business Class on an award ticket.
In terms of the routing, i believe it would need to be a 5 continent ticket? EUR - S. America - N. America - S.W. Pacific - (Asia/Africa) - EUR. Even if you took a direct flight from SYD-LHR without changing along the way you would have to include asia as a segment.
If you are adamant you dont want to visit asia, why not consider routing back to Europe via Africa? Qantas fly to South Africa, and BA then fly onto LHR via either CPT, JNB or MRU - At least these are destinations that are (or in the case of MRU soon-to-be) connected via Comair.
Something else to note are the AMEX 2-4-1 tickets, The BA board has all the details for the BA Amex card in the Ultimate Guide sticky. I believe Amex have recently partnered up with QF but am unsure as to whether they offer the opportunity to obtain 2-4-1 tickets. The 2-4-1 tickets earnt via the BA Amex require a minimum spend of £10,000 (for the premium plus card) and will give you 2-4-1 on award tickets!