ANA Round the World award
 

Hello,

My father will retire in 2 or 3 years and I was thinking of making my parents a RTW award present. I got almost 100k ANA miles as my first year with them (and now I am Platinum, which means I will even get more miles) and by the time they retire I expect to have between 300k and 400k. (I do around 4 or 5 biz trips to the US on ANA metal in premium econ or business, full fare).

I would like to use this thread to ask if any of you have done it successfully before, if you have any special tips or things to consider.

My idea would be something like Spain (VLC or MAD) to Istanbul, Tokyo, Honolulu, NYC and then Spain in J class. This would be the very basic, then I would listed if they have some extra request (maybe Egypt, Thailand, Australia...).

Thank you

Just remembered that of you don't make Diamond, your miles will expire after 36 months with no option to extend. So you have a limited time period to accumulate miles in.

Well I didn't know this... Thank you! I have now a reason to work on my Diamond status...

Where would the trip originate/end?

I arranged my recently retired parents' RTW trip with ANA miles, C class, 105k+$500 per person.
ICN-SFO // EWR-FCO-ATH-CAI-IST-DEL-ICN.
They stay at all points, 3 to 6 nights in each city, US domestic on a separate ticket (SFO-NM & NM-EWR due to only Y being available)
Key is, as you would aware already, avoid hefty fuel surcharged airlines for long hauls (such as LH and its family) and be flexible.
UA website (and ANA website, too) was useful in searching award availability.
Put your itinerary on the star alliance website RTW pricing tool and you'll get an estimated fuel surcharge as well as the total distance that ANA sees. By the way, ANA can't see Air India award seat.

You could transfer your ANA miles to American Express Membership Rewards and then back to ANA when you need to use them. However, there could be some devaluation as Miles & Points only depreciate over time...

Spain.

I want it to start in VLC and end in MAD. Is this possible?

Interesting, thank you.

So I should avoid LH. Which other airlines have high/stupid fuel surcharges?

Thats for people in the US right? I am not American and based in Tokyo so I think that doesn't apply to me unfortunately...

How does one transfer ANA miles to Amex? I thought it was only Amex > ANA?

That you need to figure out at the star alliance website. There's a round the world tab that you can input your possible itinerary. It will tell you total tax from which you'll see which airlines to avoid. From my experience, that total tax is very close what ANA charges for an award.

That's right, my bad. ANA doesn't allow two-way transfers.

Sodaisei - You'll need to achieve Diamond once every three years at the minimum to ensure your miles don't expire (or achieve 1 Million Miler status).

Thank you!

Thank you. My miles wont expire until the beginning of 2020, by that time I will probably have enough miles for the RTW flight, and hopefully my that will retire also that year. Anyway, I will try getting Diamond (hard though, flying ANA outside of Japan is so expensive...)

You're correct. You cannot transfer from ANA to AmEx; only the other way around.
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I just booked 4 J Class RTW ANA awards on BR, SQ, SA, ET & AV. The SA segment hit me with $242 & BR with another $33 in YQ surcharges, while the other origin/destination taxes/fees worked out to ~$250. If you're flying from Africa to South America on one of *A's African partners, it's impossible to avoid YQ, unless you opt for a longer route on a European partner.
GCMap dot com is a good tool to figure out total miles for any given routing. ITA matrix helps estimate YQ/YR surcharges and fees for each segment.
Good luck and have fun exploring the possibilities.

Thank you!

Could you share your routing? and it was about $520 usd per person? and how many ANA miles? thanks!

UA, AC, and Air NZ do not collect any yq. LOT is very low ($60 for long haul). I flew Air NZ from LAX-LHR in J and it was great. Would be nice to have an official list of who does not collect YQ on ANA awards, and those that are low like BR.