(Nearly) Round the world for 240,000 Avios + £340 in Biz. Help make it better?
 

I've spent too many hours optimising an interesting RTW itinerary using BA's multi-carrier reward chart and I'm pretty happy with what I have but wondered if FT's collective wisdom could make this once-in-a-lifetime journey a little bit better! In any case, it seems to be a poorly understood type of booking both on forums and at BA call centres so I hope this is helpful to someone else.

The route is approx 24750 miles (just within the 25,000 mile band) so avios cost is 240,000 with all legs in J. BA fares team has worked out tax to be £340.

IKA-DOH-AMD [QR]
DEL-TYO [JAL]
FUK-HKG [KA]
HKG-CNS [CA]
CNS-MEL [QF]
MEL-SCL [LAN]
GIG-MAD-LON [IB]

I'll buy LON-IKA separately because its not worth paying 40k avios extra for going into next mileage band plus UK APD.

The biggest surcharges are:
YQ 112.2
YR 30.8
WY 28.3
AU 33.8
BR 28.8
IN 20.6

Is there anything obvious that can be added/removed to take a chunk off the surcharges? I have pretty flexible plans and could reroute quite easily. I know its a pretty great deal already but under £300 has a lovely ring to it :p

P.S for anyone hoping to book something similar, please be prepared to be given lots of conflicting information by BA agents, being placed on hold infinitely, spending hours calculating distances and getting very familiar indeed with the oneworld interactive chart! It's worth it in the end

There are some suggestions in this thread: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...ios-trips.html

Do the rules for BAEC's multi-partner awards permit multiple open jaws? Your itinerary has several.

When AA offered its multi-partner "oneworld Explorer" award, only one open jaw was permitted. It's possible that BAEC's rules are more liberal.

I should add that booked separately via BA.com I believe this itinerary is 409,500 avios + £229 so the multi-carrier table gives very good value, although its annoying the tax is so much higher.

I've been told a lot of different things:
- open jaws allows but land distance between airports counted in total distance travelled
- open jaws not allowed
- only flown miles counted.

Also got very conflicting information on mixing cabins.

However, this has fully gone through and is ready to book with a PNR number, I am just waiting for AmEx points to transfer across.

You are complaining about a tax difference of £111 on a ticket that saves 169,400 avios?

If the routing and cost in avios + taxes is correct, I would leave it at that. Anything better value would involve BA paying you avios plus a bit of YQ!!!!

I'd agree - a RTW trip for 240k Avios and £340 seems pretty good value for me. I am not sure that I would be bothering to even try and reduce the taxes!

I know I know! I was going to post the route anyway to highlight how good the multi-partner table is, and I thought I may as well try and squeeze a bit more value out of this if its obvious to someone from looking at the route.

It might get picked up at ticketeing stage due to the following T&C:

15.13. Rewards are based on round trip travel between origin and destination using the most direct route possible. Rewards may be for more than one flight sector. On no more than one occasion per Reward may a flight sector commence at a different point from the end of the preceding flight sector. It is possible to combine flights on British Airways and Service Partner airlines to make a round trip journey of up to a maximum of 8 sectors.

Are you sure these apply to the multi-partner rewards (no BA flights at all)?
I asked for T&Cs and was told they didn't have any on paper for this type of booking, just depends on what the computer allowed!

I dont think this at all applies here? (Or am I missing something?)

We're looking at a RTW fare using Avios - I believe the rules are similar to that of AONE/DONE/LONE-type fares.

This would mean a max of 16 sectors and surface sectors counting towards the total of sectors. Only way to get 'more' than 16 sectors is by booking a flight for two legs on same flight number [I haven't seen this one on BA but I have seen it done on *A award which obviously follows same IATA restriction of 16 segments]

That's what I thought, before mine got caught just before the ticketing stage. It was sent for manual ticketing and then hit this wall. Never got issued in the first place...

I would be devastated if this is true :mad:

I don't think so...

Here is some more information.

If it gets automatically issued, you should be fine. Just avoid making changes I suppose.

To add insult to injury I was never actually told it didn't go through, it sat unticketed for a week or so until I called up (partner availability and all that) and was told the news.