zeer0

It's a crapshoot unless you book a year-out. Easiest way to search is to use the United website and any date that prices out at 121k is going to be ANA F. Keep in mind only 777s have F (and A380 to HNL), so search all routes that use them, and ignore routes like Seattle or San Jose that use the 787.

liw5215

I have a round trip to Japan on the combination of AC, BR and NH, but AC moved its flight 6 hours earlier on the outbound flight, resulting a 10 hours wait on YYZ. I called ANA to request an outbound rerouting, and keep the inbound intact. They said no, only way to do it is to cancel whole trip, and do a re-booking, however, there is no availability on the inbound flights. if cancelled and rebook, will the seats be released and can be booked immediately? any DP? TIA.

CPH-Flyer

There is no guarantee, there could be elite members on waitlist where a release might be assigned, or just not be returned to award inventory.

Adam Hoffmann

Hello All!
I am about 10 months away from retiring from the Army and am hoping to use my points on a well-deserved "victory lap" with my wife using the ANA RTW ticket. While we would love to do first class, for availability reasons I plan on not even trying that and will "settle" for business class.
I have 2 questions I was hoping for help with:
1. I'm wondering about the best tools to use to find availability. I originally used flightconnections and StarAlliance RTW planner to try and find the most likely hubs to use. We plan on using these 5 or 6 hubs as spokes to explore with cash or other award flights.. But as for finding availability, obviously I could use ANA's portal, BUT...I'm wondering if anyone thinks paying for point.me or expertflyer would be worth the money to save time and improve my ability to dial in a good trip without having to work out all the changes with a phone agent.
2. Timing...We hope to squeeze this between our youngest's HS graduation (early June '23) and her starting College (early-Sep '23). If Phileas Fogg could do it in 80, we should be able to do it in 90... If our last flight (probably a long haul over an ocean) takes off on 1 SEP 23, then am I correct in saying we can't try to book anything until 22AUG, when ANA's availability open up? And even so, that might not work if our last flight is on United or another partner that opens late?

Finally, not a question, BUT we hope to hit all 6 inhabited continents. We'd like to include Kenya (friend stationed there), Portugal (hoping to be expats there), and SE Asia. So any advice on throwing those into an itinerary would be appreciated and possibly lead me to buy you a drink if you can track me down in my nomadic life...

I truly appreciate everyone's time and any help, advice, or humor you can share!

Adam

dustygator

Our itinerary from earlier in the thread for reference: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/34174746-post364.html

1. I used :

• the free version of FlightConnections (plus a list of *A partner airlines) to sketch out possible routes
• ExpertFlyer to gauge rough availability at release & how quickly it generally was snatched up (I didn't pay, using the free 5-day trial twice was enough)
• A combo of the ANA RT booking (which has +/-3 day view) and multi-city search to plan everything out in detail the last week before booking. When I dialed in to the phone agent, I didn't have to do anything more than feed dates & flight numbers (every leg I planned out the night before was available when I called first thing in the morning)

2. This post from Reddit is the most detailed I've seen regarding exact schedule release/ticket availability
I booked at 355 days out, with the last leg being ANA trans-pacific (NRT-SFO) and accepted that I would have to find my own way home from SFO-ATL. It's up to you whether you want to risk the availability of your other legs disappearing in the time it takes United to put up their flights. When I was looking, United didn't appear to make domestic first/business available at 330 for partners so if I would likely to be riding economy for that leg anyway, I'd rather lock in the RTW and pay separately to get home.

Our itinerary touches down in Portugal, Tanzania and Bali.

• US-Portugal is easy as TAP often release 6 J seats on transatlantic flights (EWR/IAD are probably easiest starting points but they fly from MIA as well)
• Your options getting to Kenya from Europe are:
  • LH (very high fees for premium cabin)
  • ET (their schedule releases at ~329 days so can be hard to fit into shorter itineraries like ours)
  • MS (no one every has anything good to say about their product)
  • TK (medium-ish fees, but usually long connections. ultimately what we chose)
• Then getting from Africa to Asia is the most difficult part.
  • SQ doesn't release long haul J/F to partners
  • AI has terrible reputation
  • TG is only an option with a connection in Jeddah (which likely requires ET connecting flights)
  • TK requires backtracking that will balloon the distance/miles cost
  • Ultimately, we chose to book that part of our trip separately (JRO-DOH-DPS on QR via AA)

Ted S

Managed to book my first RTW back in May, thanks to advice here and a ton of route exploring all over the ANA website. 125,000 points + $588 in taxes & fees*

UA: EWR -> KEF (Y)
SK & LH: KEF -> OSL -> FRA
* Rail & My Own Flights
TK: ATH -> IST
TK: IST -> TLV
ET: TLK -> ADD -> BKK
* BKK -> HKT ($120)
* SQ: HKT -> AKL (62,000 miles + $107)
* AZ: AKL -> SYD ($246)
NH: SYD -> HND -> SFO

Notes:

• This is a long-planned (pre-COVID), long trip, lots of local stops which threw off easier routings but also let me mess around with more ground connects / flexibility.
• Flights were all ~6-10 months out so had to push some dates around several weeks to find a lucky, single-seat. Booking Y would have been a relative breeze.
• There was no J availability to KEF from anywhere in the US I could find, but moving down to Y saved me ~$600 in taxes. Coughed up $200 for a UA E+ upgrade to offset.
• Could not find anything from SE Asia to NZ/Australia, so used Chase points to grab an SQ flight in J. That saved me 40,000 ANA points. Guess I have to RTW again?
• The ANA agents were so so friendly along the process, and amazingly, called me back a few times to wrap things up with taxes, and an excess segment in Europe they had missed.
• I did have to wait about a day for them to actually book the ticket which was completely nerve-wracking, hoping no one snagged the near impossible to find J route back from SYD to SFO.
• Using the UA and RTW websites was not all that useful for me. Mostly had to just keep trying the ANA site, clicking their COVID popups about 12,749 times.

rariya

Just wanted to pop in here and share what just happened to me as I had no idea this was a policy. I have an ANA RTW ticket booked in July in J but have a NRT>ORD leg in X. I've been checking religiously to see if a J seat opens up and today spotted a Premium Economy seat so I figured that's better than nothing and waited on hold for 1.5 hours only to find that apparently Premium Economy is reserved for roundtrip award travel only and cannot be applied to a RTW ticket. I was not aware of this (obviously) and since theres no wiki I'm sure even if that info is somewhere in this thread, it's likely been buried so I hope this saves someone a future headache.

Explorer789

Yeah, the call wait times are terrible and it's even more unfortunate there is no way to book these RTW online. I had planned out an entire RTW itinerary and by the time I spoke with the agent, she said that there was only 1 seat remaining for J class instead of 2 for the US to Tokyo leg. Like what are the odds that an award seat disappeared in a matter of hours.

kmgalli

UPDATE: Called back and talked to another agent. Decided to route instead through ADD to hopefully lower YQ. Waiting for the call back tomorrow with updated fees.

Original post:
After a few hours on the phone with ANA today, I feel more confused than when I started. Wondering if anyone has any insight, or if I just need to try another agent. Essentially YQ did not match at all what I had assumed via ITA but also didn't really make sense based on segments.

The itinerary I first priced was a mix of business and economy. I will * the business routes
ORD-LIS*
LIS-FCO*
FCO-CAI
CAI-BOM*
BOM-BKK
BKK-DPS
PPT-SFO
Total fees came to $2,010. She couldn't give me each airline to see which had the highest fuel surcharges. I guessed EgyptAir based on what I saw on ANA's website during my searches and ITA.

I asked for the fees if I dropped both segments to/from Cairo. She went back to ticketing for an estimate and said $610 total now.

Then I asked if I also dropped the BOM-BKK and she said fees went *up* to $1500. I asked her how that could be and she went back to ticketing to confirm, came back on the line with me and insisted that it was true.

Then I asked for:
ORD-LIS*
LIS-FCO*
FCO-IST*
IST-DAC*
DAC-BKK
BKK-DPS
PPT-SFO
And she told me $1870. I then asked if I dropped the TK segments to economy if that changes it. She went back to ticketing and said if *any* of the itinerary is booked in business class, I have to pay all fuel surcharges as if every segment is booked in business class. That's what made me suspicious that she was maybe...new (?) since that doesn't match any of the experience I've seen.

Even when I had her price all in economy ORD-LIS-FCO, ZRH-BKK (on TG), BKK-DPS, PPT-SFO she still said it is $850 fees.

We were trying to avoid SIN because my daughter is autistic and I'm not sure she can abide by their mask policies on a long haul.

kmgalli

UPDATE: Called back and talked to another agent. Decided to route instead through ADD to hopefully lower YQ. Waiting for the call back tomorrow with updated fees.

Update again: I am stumped and appreciate any input or advice.

I am got $1600-$2000 quotes per ticket and this does not match what I see on ANA when I look for each segment (even round trip for each segment) and definitely does not match ITA.

My most recent segments are
ORD-LIS
LIS-FCO
Those are on TAP
ATH-ADD
ADD-BKK
On Ethiopian
BKK-DPS on Thai
PPT-SFO on United

We are just barely under 18k total putting us into 105k per ticket. It is mixed economy and biz.

The last agent went back to ticketing when she called to confirm the seats and said they think the most of the charges (close to $1000 per person) is coming from the United PPt-SFO

But again, when I price a round trip on PPT-SFO it is $240 total with ANA in fees.

Any advice welcome. Is ANA adding their own surcharge on somehow?

Original post:
After a few hours on the phone with ANA today, I feel more confused than when I started. Wondering if anyone has any insight, or if I just need to try another agent. Essentially YQ did not match at all what I had assumed via ITA but also didn't really make sense based on segments.

The itinerary I first priced was a mix of business and economy. I will * the business routes
ORD-LIS*
LIS-FCO*
FCO-CAI
CAI-BOM*
BOM-BKK
BKK-DPS
PPT-SFO
Total fees came to $2,010. She couldn't give me each airline to see which had the highest fuel surcharges. I guessed EgyptAir based on what I saw on ANA's website during my searches and ITA.

I asked for the fees if I dropped both segments to/from Cairo. She went back to ticketing for an estimate and said $610 total now.

Then I asked if I also dropped the BOM-BKK and she said fees went *up* to $1500. I asked her how that could be and she went back to ticketing to confirm, came back on the line with me and insisted that it was true.

Then I asked for:
ORD-LIS*
LIS-FCO*
FCO-IST*
IST-DAC*
DAC-BKK
BKK-DPS
PPT-SFO
And she told me $1870. I then asked if I dropped the TK segments to economy if that changes it. She went back to ticketing and said if *any* of the itinerary is booked in business class, I have to pay all fuel surcharges as if every segment is booked in business class. That's what made me suspicious that she was maybe...new (?) since that doesn't match any of the experience I've seen.

Even when I had her price all in economy ORD-LIS-FCO, ZRH-BKK (on TG), BKK-DPS, PPT-SFO she still said it is $850 fees.

Ted S

Not sure if you still solved this in your updated booking and I am not an ANA / flight expert but I am fairly certain I paid the Y / coach class fuel surcharge for my EWR -> KEF flight on my RTW itinerary (a few posts back) that is otherwise in J / biz.

I say that as my total taxes / fees were less than just the J class ones I saw looking up flights in the ITA tool (ANA did not have any J class avail for that flight anyways). That's how I priced things... find the flights on ANA website, look them up on Google ITA, book.

I did have issues trying to get a UA flight home from SYD to SFO, even when they had a space show, and eventually found one on ANA to workaround that.

BasedChe

Has anyone used an award booking service for their RTW trip? I took a look at the thread for award booking services and did not find reviews about RTW bookings.

kmgalli

I finalized my booking yesterday -- here is what we ended up with:
ORD-LIS
MXP-SIN
DPS-SIN
SIN-BNE
SYD-WLG
PPT-SFO

Great Circle Mapper had shown a total of 21,883 including one more SIN-DPS segment but the ANA calculation was slightly different so we dropped that over the phone. We are traveling as a family of 4 and opted to book in economy for 85,000 miles each.

Fees came to $618 for adults and $543 for the kids. Total YQ for our routing was $280.

We originally had planned to go ORD-LHR on UA but that added $400 of additional fees compared to the TAP flight (total of $1010). The YQ on TAP (According to ITA Matrix) is actually $7 higher than the ORD-LHR flight so I don't know how that extra $400 was calculated. I also asked them to recalculate total fees if we also dropped the DPS-SIN leg but somehow they came back and told me the fees would be $800+ for dropping that leg. I asked how that could be and she went back to ticketing to double check and they said they were wrong it would be $720. That was still $100 more than what they had quoted me if I included that DPS-SIN leg so we opted to keep that leg in.

We will piece together budget airlines for Europe, SE Asia, and within Australia. I also booked AKL-PPT for 15k AA miles each.

Happy to be done and ticketed! Looking forward to our 3 month trip!

john c wisconsin

That is such a great trip and to get Australia and New Zealand in there is wonderful. I hope you all have a great trip.

steveholt

FYI, if you have BA miles (or something that transfers to BA), you can fly QF within Australia for very reasonable rates with tons of availability. AA has access to this too, but it's usually more expensive.