CanadianMike

Just saw your post, good timing as I just got back from a trip and also had a 14 hour layover in Istanbul.

New airport is huge. And beautiful.
New TK lounge is nice, but not worth spending more than 2-3 hours.

Definitely enough time to go in and see the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, Grand Bazaar for sure. Maybe some other things if you're efficient.
There's tons of of buses from the new IST downtown which take you right down to Sultanahmet (basically right @ the Blue Mosque).

ThisFunGuy

ALRIGHT YVR - HAN then!

G Rodricks

Sorry but my question is not about the EVA strike which I hope gets resolved quickly. I'm very new at using points and miles so any advice will be much appreciated. Just used up a lifetimes wort of accumulated Aeroplan to book a mini RTW business class trip for wife and myself from Toronto to India and back in March 2020. Got confirmed bookings all sectors except EVA TPE-ORD on BR 56 on 3rd April 202 is Economy. I am monitoring Aeroplan for Business Class availability on EVA but somehow they have not released any BC seats for that period on any of their flights. Any suggestions on how I can monitor and upgrade this one sector when EVA BC seats are available? Even one seat upgrade will be appreciated since it s 15 hour flight and I have already paid the points for BC all the way.

ChrisA330

You can subscribe to Experflyer Alerts for award availability. Otherwise you need to repeatedly check.

www.expertflyer.com

nnanlno

Thanks you all for the input so far. What about the following sequence? Would it be stretching it too thin?

AMM>CAI (22h in CAI)
CAI>IST (12h in IST)
IST>OTP (20h in OTP)
OTP>BUD (LO, 19h in BUD)
BUD>KRK (23h in KRK)
KRK>ZRH (6h in ZRH)
ZRH>EWR (<24h in NYC)
EWR>YYZ

GCMapper shows 6746mi, direct AMM-YYZ is 5846 mi. Any thoughts?

Thanks again!

Jasper2009

That routing would also be valid. However, the more complex th routing is, the higher the odds of something going wrong and the more challenging it is to find an agent to who's willing to book it (even if the routing is perfectly valid).

nnanlno

Many thanks for the confirmation.

I thought this would be considered relatively not too complex, as it does not even have any stopover or open jaw to count, and it isn't those 14 segments actual mini-RTW that i see on here...

I take it just be very nice and patient with the agent, and if the agent is unable, then just hang up and try again?

Jasper2009

Yes, pretty much. Sounds like you know what you're doing.

And it all depends. Some agents will flat out refuse to piece together an itinerary segment by segment, insisting that they can only book whatever option the AE website/system shows when entering the origin and destination. Most agents are more cooperative if you are friendly, but seven (overnight) connections vs. 1-2 connections is still rather "outside the box".

Rykoshet

Come now, seven is not even half the allowed number of segments (16)!

canadiancow

I recently had an agent refuse to manually piece together SIN-BKK-HKG-YVR-SFO. It was the only way to get home, in J, that day.

I still had a stopover left, so I said I wanted to go to YVR instead.

And stop for 3 hours.

Then fly to SFO.

I got what I wanted

rankourabu

Good thing is that agents are still willing to input the segments manually, and it prices out for them automatically.
If that happens, they wont question it.

Aeroplan has some of the best routing rules in the ff world, unlike UA and DL where agents can only book what the computer gives them.
It will be a sad day when Aeroplan can only book what the website spits out.

FrequentFlyer9000

What's the lowest total $ fees people have achieved with a mini rtw (assuming no AC metal)?

FrequentFlyer9000

I found the following individual legs available in economy for next year and only $125pp in fees (combining single leg fees) and 75K miles pp (I think, since Asia 1 is destination). Is there anything that looks off before I call to book? Thanks!

EWR-NRT (UA) stop
NRT-ICN (Ethiopian) destination
ICN-CTS (Asiana) stop
CTS-TPE (EVA) stop
TPE-JFK (EVA) final destination

Both directions are less than 1.6x of direct miles between origin/destination. Anything else I need to think about?

Smiley90

AP's maximum permitted mileage isn't quite that easy (see the other thread on this on how to calculate it), so I'd just double-check that it's below what's allowed.

Also, the furthest point from EWR/JFK in your itinerary is TPE, so that will be your destination. So you need to check if your trip both ways is below what's allowed for EWR-TPE, meaning both:

TPE-JFK (obv will be)
and
EWR-NRT-ICN-CTS-TPE

need to be below permitted mileage.

ChrisA330

You have 1 too many stops. Also TPE is the destination, as that is the furthest stopover from EWR.

Not sure the relevance of 1.6x of direct miles. MPM is the only thing that matters.