Rudi,

I think the Star-Alliance RTW fare is great and quite fun to plan.

I had just a couple of problems with mine.

1. I wanted to reroute it twice and was happy to pay the USD75. But it took so long to do it each time. The second time, I was standing at the UA ticket office for over 2 hours talking to the staff both over the counter and on the phone. But - eventually it was done! But... over 2 hours!

2. I had to do battle with UA who issued my ticket even though I bought it in Stockholm. I don't know why it was a UA issue, but it was the early days of the Alliance and maybe SAS couldn't do it at that time. I started my trip in Stockholm and went via Germany and Asia to Australia then to the USA, Canada and eventually back to Stockholm. I had some miles left and so I decided to go to Turku, Finland then to Nice. When I bought the ticket UA told me the rules which included the rule that only one stop could be made in any city but unlimited transits (less than 24 hours) were allowed. Now the only S-A flight to Turku is an SK flight from Stockholm. So I had to go Stockholm-Turku-Stockholm-Nice-Stockholm which meant I had to transit my starting city twice. At first this was no problem, as long as my stops in Stockholm were less than 24 hours. But when doing my second reroute, which concerned North America only, UA objected to the Stockholm-Tuku part, saying that I was not allowed to fly over the starting city. I pointed out that they had already ticketed that part but they claimed it had been a mistake. I then said that in order to ever go to places like Turku (and there are several other cities that are only served by one S-A airline from a single other city) that there is no choice but to fly back to my originating city. They then claimed that, yes, I could fly Stockholm-Turku-Stockholm but only before any transatlantic or transpacific flight was done. They steadfastly refused to allow me to get to Turku. So I had the rerouted ticket printed with a Stockholm-Karlstad-Stockholm-Nice-Stockholm routing instead (Karlstad is a city a little west of Stockholm) and that was OK. The next day I asked SAS to help me and they claimed that I was right and UA was wrong. Back to UA and they then agreed to my request. But then they wanted to charge another USD75 for doing the reroute! Another call got that fee canceled. So what I guess this all means is that different S-A members had different views on the rules of the RWSTAR2 ticket. It all ended well for me.

As for transiting Canada, from one US city to another US city, I didn't realise that there's two sets of customs/migration to go through. But they were quite fast and efficient and it didn't take all that long. But having to collect the bag and take it though yourself it a bit annoying, but not worth changing from AC.



[This message has been edited by Austman (edited 03-23-99).]