Hello everybody,

I am not new at this forum, but till now I was only "reader" This is my first entry :-) It will be little long, but I have to explain a lot before I ask ...

For about a half year, I am trying to get myself the round-the-world award ticket in business class. Besides very strange way of communicating with FB about this topic - you have to send fax or regular mail (hey, we have 21st century here) - I went through very stressful experience. The final plan is to go PRG-HAN-NRT-SYD-HNL-UIO-MAD-PRG. I am very flexible with dates, also quite flexible with durations of each stay.

I faxed the itinerary (which was originally a little different) as a request to FB as rules ask for it. And here comes the story. Flying blue confirmed the itinerary is possible and is according all the rules. But I am not able to get the booking at all. Once they sent me booking, which completely ignored the durations of stays I asked for. Instead of 12 days in Australia, they gave me 3. Instead of 4 days in Madrid, they gave me 1! And they add 2 more stops on the way, both in Houston. First for 2 days, second for 6 days! And actually all the flights from HNL to UIO (routing was HNL-LAX-HOU, HOU-UIO, UIO-HOU) were economy instead of business class. I asked for couple of corrections and they told me it is not possible and I need to do new request. So I did. Slightly changed the destinations and times.

Today I had a very bad experience with FB help line, when lady there told me that booking is only partly possible and SYD-HNL-QUI-MAD cannot be done now, as award seats have not yet been released (I wanted to fly in October/November) for this part of the world. On the other hand, she confirmed that other segments are full even now, 10 months before the trip. When I asked if they can keep partial booking for a while till the other seats will be released for award, she answer that it is not possible. And she kept on saying "You should call us regularly and check the availability". What is regularly or when the award seats will be released she was not able to answer. Finally after of long discussing going nowhere I asked "It seems it is impossible to book the round-the-world-ticket" and she confirmed that. And what shocked me most, she recommend to buy the ticket instead of doing it on miles.

I have to add, I am from Prague, Czech Republic and fortunately calling the Flying Blue here is 800 number, so it is free. I promised her to call every day and ask the same questions until I will get some answer. .... :-(

So this is the story. And now to my questions. Is there anybody who recently succeeded with award round-the-world ticket with Flying Blue? I just want to know if it is possible, or if it is just AF-KLM marketing to keep people collecting miles and believe they can do it. And is there anybody, who can tell me what would be the best and working procedure to get such a award ticket? Seems like FB is not able to answer this question, as I asked many times, got different answers and nothing works. :-(((

Thanks you guys to read all this and I hope I can get some info here.