d00little

I'm looking to book my first mini-RTW. What airlines can I reasonably expect some availability (at least 1 or 2 flights a week) in J for trans-Pacific (N.America -> Asia) and trans-Atlantic (Europe -> N.America) flights.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've heard OZ and UA for trans-Pacific, TK and LX for trans-Atlantic.

lowside67

You have sporadic availability on many airlines, but right now there is exceptional availability on LOT's YYZ-WAW route on the 787 and lots of Eva availability to TPE where you can branch off from there.

If you want to take Swiss, the YUL-ZRH route actually has great availability if you are able to book 11 months out, BOS-ZRH also has good availability with dates posted around 10 months out.

Mark

SKYEG

So I just taalked to the AE agent, and they said that any route over MPM is only honoured if it is available as a booking on Aeroplan.com, not on one of the programs we use or not on another website(united.com, ana.com etc).

Is this the truth? I thought it was ANY published routing, bookable directly on Aeroplan.com or not, as we all know that Aeroplan.com only displays the scamcharge flights and only up to 9 it seems per search(programs we use can pull 60,100 etc).

hastuk

I don't know for sure, but it doesn't seem right. Perhaps call in again and rather than asking a question that is too complicated for an agent to answer , ask them for specific routes that you know are published on another site but not on aeroplan. I have had agents say no, then go away and talk to someone else and come back with possibilities. Some agents like the challenge of a complicated itinerary. The aeroplan site is very limited in what it will offer.

Pseudo Nim

Nope, that's definitely wrong. I very much doubt LAX-NRT-SIN-SYD comes up as a bookable routing without agent help.

Bonus point: the Aeroplan website often shows LH F availability, but when you call, the agents specifically say "oh oh not everything on the website is bookable!". You'll have to find a better agent

Btw apologies for the slow PM reply, I'll get back to you today!!

bestsell

Hi there,
I'm newbie on this and I went through most posts on this thread, just wonder can I use 60K-70K for a cross Europe trip without paying big scamcharge? Countries I'm interested to visit are Swiss, Germany, France, England, Italy, Spain. Can anyone give me an advise on a doable itinerary? thanks in advance

lowside67

You need to start by reading this thread:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-c...-mini-rtw.html

The short answer is you can certainly get to Europe without paying big scamcharges, but you will end up taking more legs and maybe less convenient of a route to do so depending on where you are travelling from.

You can have a maximum of three stopovers or one open jaw and one stopover. Open jaw is useful for Europe - fly into one end, take the train across the continent, fly home from the other side.

Mark

bestsell

Thanks for quick reply, I've read the rules and just want to get some advise from experienced people first.

I will start from YYZ. To cover those European countries which route is better? Any suggestions please?

briantoronto

Given you want to go to Switzerland, Swiss is your choice. Decent availability out of YUL and BOS if you look far enough ahead (good suggestions not too far up thread)

You may want to look at separate tickets (rail or air) to a few of the destinations given. Depending on your schedule, you may want to look at flying into Switzerland, and say leaving Italy (connecting via ZRH), and making your own way the rest of the trip.

In looking for tickets, focus on the YUL/BOS ZRH bit—that is the hard nut to crack. The rest should be easy to fill in (just stick with LX in Europe)

Brian

yqtyyz

I'm getting some crazy 33 hour connections in my searches. In the European countries, would I be correct in thinking that I can leave the airport freely, as long as it's in the middle of the connection? It's the final Schengen country that gives that exit stamp?

I am basing it on my situation where I was stamped in FRA, didn't have to do anything in CDG, then got my CDG stamp when I departed for PVG.

e.g., IST-VIE (15 hour connection) -WAW (6 hour connection)-YYZ

My idea is to do a hop-on-off bus thing and just enjoy a non airport environment for a few hours and then trundle back to the terminal.

Another example is Frankfurt (anywhere from 6-15 hours).

briantoronto

Yup. No problem at all. Some of us plan our miniRTWs around this

Pseudo Nim

it's great to do this in Europe because in most cases the airports are not too far from the core, and there are usually hourly flights at least somewhere, so you can easily do either 23 hour connections or, instead, ultra-early morning flights connecting to last flight of the day connecting to a 23 hour connection, easily getting 2 city visits.

yqtyyz

Yeah, I totally want that rock star 1 day, 2-3 countries type of thing.

Yukonprince

Oh, yes - if it is Tuesday it must be Belgium ...

BA Humbug

Somewhat inconclusive update (I was too sick and tired of hearing the "wait-time" music + advertisements after the seventh call):

- Spoke to 7 agents at the call centre.
- received 9 different answers (the extra two come from agents escalating to a manager/suupervisor-type situation)

1. There are no published routes between MFM and HNL (<---whiskey..tango...foxtrot!)
2. You can't do that routing. You just can't, i can't tell you why.
3. (Supervisor of #2): A published route must take you from your departure to your destination (again, I don't think this is true?)
4. (by far the nicest): Why don't I route you through Singapore to give you more mileage to work with? You don't actually have to stop there, just transiting should be enough. What do you think of this route between MFM and HNL? MFM-BKK-SIN-MNL-GUM-HNL?
5. Sorry, there are no routes that would allow you to stop over in HNL on your way back to YYZ from MFM.
6. (on trying the Singapore method by #4): Sorry, you can't do that, it goes over the max.
7. (supervisor of #6): Sorry, #4 gave you bad information. Your point of turnaround is what your MPM is based on.
8. (after typing away for nearly 30 mins) Sorry, there are no routes that can allow you to stop in Hawaii without going over the miles limit. Basically, if you go over the MPM for any part of the segment, you need to try it on the Aeroplan web site to see if the onwards options are greyed out. If they are, you cannot proceed.
9. Theoretically, if you used a published route for MFM-HNL, you need the most direct routing to finish your journey. However, I can't find any dates for November or December that would work. (<--I believe this is the answer you're looking for? Although when I pressed her for what "direct routing" meant, she was quite cagey about it.)

See why I said inconclusive?