Hot Pocket

Hoping I can tap the creativeness of this forum. My business travel is showing no hope of coming back. I was going to fly CLT-MUC to pick up a new BMW, but they have cancelled all European delivery (still buying the car...)

I appear to be too late to the game for the true RTW experience. However, if I was willing to depart from any US gateway in late 2021, and had 4 SWUs at my disposal, would anyone be willing to suggest a fun RTW itinerary that *might* have the requisite C space?

I would welcome any speculation as we know frequencies are way down and no one can predict the state of travel a year from now. Thanks!

OpenSky

This isn't possible because the SWU's are valid only on AA flights, and AA does not fly around the world. The best you could do is get to Asia somewhere and from there get to Banglore back to Seattle.

FlyingEgghead

Having a bunch of SWUs (more than two) doesn't particularly help.

Every AA-operated flight starts or ends in the US (no fifth-freedom routes), so a RTW would involve only two SWU-eligible international flights. AA's deepest TATL destination will be TLV and its deepest TPAC destination will be BLR. So at least that 3,000-mile gap has to be bridged with another airline where AA SWUs cannot be used.

You could even try to get two AA international flights on one SWU, which requires them to be on the same one-way trip (and also allows upgrading a domestic flight in between, for a total of three segments). But this doesn't seem to work if you're starting and ending your RTW in the US.

b74l

Definitely consider SEA-BLR and BLR - SEA. The actual route of flight will go northeast fm SEA over/near the N Pole then over Russia into India. The return BLR-SEA route if flight may very well continue on a generally easterly heading, quite psbly heading north over Delhi then northeast bound over eastern Russia over Alaska into SEA.

While not touted as a ‘round the world ‘ flight, you may very end up going ‘around the world’. United’s DEL-SFO flight does route on the similar easterly heading on occasion. In the end , it’s all dependent on enroute winds aloft and how many country overfly permits are obtained.

DFW-HKG/HKG-DFW would be the other top consideration.

shd9

IIRC I believe one SWU can be used to as far as the fare-break point (in other words, all of the flights need to be on one fare component for it to only take 1 SWU, so as long as your one fare component permits stopovers, you can use 1 SWU to upgrade HKG-oDFW-EZE), so if you really wanted it to be fun:

SWU1: US - Europe
SWU2: EU -xDFW/MIA/JFK - GRU/SCL/EZE (I believe AA files fare from EU to South America)
SWU3: GRU/SCL/EZE - DFW/MIA/LAX-TYO/HKG
SWU4: TYO/HKG - US

Usually Tokyo to USA flights regularly have some C spaces, EU-USA leisure routes also have C spaces, the toughest might be NA-SA trips since many of the flights are now 20J 788s

Also many AA fares could be combined on a half round-trip basis to form circle trips / open-jaws, so you **might** have some luck booking all (or most) of those segments on a single ticket.

FlyingEgghead

That might be a fun trip but is not a RTW as OP requested. It goes "back and forth", not "all the way around". In particular, it does not cross the 60-90E longitude area (central Asia/Indian Ocean), and it crosses the international date line an even number of times (two). Because it does not make a complete circuit, the total sunrises seen will match the calendar dates and not be "off by one" as in a true RTW that crosses the international date line an odd number of times.

Hot Pocket

Really good ideas above, really appreciate it. Either SEA-BLR or DFW-HKG look like great options. Now, the C space search begins. Thanks all.