I am planning my first OWE RTW trip, departing from South Africa. I plan to travel from June 1 - November 1, and I will pick up my ticket from the AA GSA when I am in CPT in March. I could start my trip from either JNB or CPT, but I've picked JNB for the routing presented below.

Most likely, finances will dictate that I do it as a LONE5, so I am looking to maximize AA flights or codeshares whenever possible. Any advice on options where that currently does not exist in my planned routing would be appreciated.

The itinerary I've mapped out follows below. Any advice or comments on it would be helpful--starting with, is it valid? I could adjust a segment here or there for more miles or better routings.

When going through LHR, can I avoid the awful airport taxes for under 24-hour stopover? or, are the tax rules even more limited in hours than the stopover rules?

I hope to call the AA RTW desk next week to get the ball rolling on this. Thanks for any help and feedback! Here it is:

JNB-MAD-ARN-xLHR-MCT-AMM-xORD-EZE-CCS-SCL-IPC-SCL-LAX-SJU-DFW-ANC-DFW-JFK-HKG-xLHR-DAR