borisp

Hi,

I have collected >230k M&M miles and I am considering taking their RTW award trip.
Economy RTW is 180k miles + fees (which I was told should be somewhere around 1000 EUR). Included are 7 stops with max 10 flight segments.

What worries me the most is that one has to specify all flight dates in advance! It is hard for me to plan a full year ahead. Also it would be nice to avoid the fees and/or to have more stops available.

Is there some other way to use 230k miles for a RTW trip? Like booking directly with some specific airline or transferring the miles to some other FF program?

Any hint will be greatly appreciated

mmff

Bad value for your miles.

Bad value for your miles.

You always have to book with M&M. In addition, you will need to call them if you want to book with partner airlines other than LH/LX/SN/OS/LO.

Not possible.


In short, it will most likely be better for you to piece an itinerary together with multiple awards. In addition, you will get the most out of your miles if you fly in premium cabins because of the high YQ on M&M.

NA-Flyer

+1 agree with above @:-)

Concerto

Totally right, you can't go wrong with the advice you receive here. Generally, in most FFPs, round the world trips (as miles redemptions) work out to be a bad deal, a poor use of the value of your miles, if any. You can book one ways now, so you might be able to cobble together quite a good itinerary by making some separate tickets (but bear in mind you can't make a stopover longer than 24h on a one way ticket). Within the regions you might be able to buy cheap connecting flights from local carriers (eg Air Asia in Asia, or Virgin Australia/Jetstar in Australia).

borisp

Thank you very much for your replies.
I am not sure if I can afford business class with the amount of miles I have. Also 180k for RTW economy doesn't sound that much considering individual one-way tickets between regions are usually 40k-60k?
If I want to start in Europe and do Dubai-SE Asia-Sydney-South America-South Africa-Europe, how do you suggest I proceed with planning my main ticket? Also where can I check how many miles I need with partners like United?

borisp

Thank you for your replies.
Unfortunatelly I can only afford economy because I just don't have enough miles.
I thought 180k for economy is a good RTW deal because most flights between regions are 40k-60k miles and I would have to pay YQ anyways?
How do you suggest I proceed with planning and booking this ticket? Let's say I want do to Europe-Dubai-SE Asia-Sydney-South America-South Africa-Europe, what would be a good place to start? Also how do I see the number of miles required for United and other partners, something that I can't see on M&M website?

malmostoso

Strictly speaking the issue you have is not that your ticket will have fixed dates, but you can only fly on those days and routes where award availability exists.

So yes, planning a year in advance might be challenging, but it's the only way to make sure you can actually complete your RTW. Basically you have to accept that if you need to change at a later stage you will have to pay a change fee, which is relatively small anyway.

So what you have to do is to figure out where you want to go and when, and use the available tools (M&M website and *A partners such as AC) to check the availability of award space. Once you have all this you can call M&M and get an idea of the YQ involved.

If you decide to book you know your RTW is there, and if changes are necessary (dates or flights) you can pay the change fee.

Yes you can. You are buying the award ticket from M&M, so all you need is this chart.

EDIT: By the way, welcome to FT!

Lack

With a bit of research (which you'll need to do anyway for award availability) you can find RTW trips for just the amount you'd pay in fees with M&M. They may not have the same amount of stop or routings, but you'd have your miles to fill in the missing links.

petercek

If you want to travel RTW just for fun and use the miles, I'd advise you spend them for a First Class award ticket to somewhere distant. I did this myself and don't regret at all. I will never be able to buy an F ticket with cash :-)
But I think I'd be able to buy a RTW Y ticket - it's not that much expensive if you plan good.

Unterwegs

What my recommendation would be: Use the Miles for long haul flights in Business Class. With your miles you could do 3 (possibly even 4) of these.
Also check if you can find paid tickets for longhaul at low prices. Google flights is very helpful there. Enter your starting airport and look at the map what destination is cheapest.
Then add the short segments as paid flights on some low cost airlines in the area. The fees M+M charges are about the same as you can find flights on LCCs for.
That way you are not limited to Star Alliance for the short flights, don't need to book everything in advance.

Because of the high fees on the M+M programs tickets in economy are not really worth it. Also keep in mind that you cannot change the routing of your ticket. That in combination with the bad availability on some sectors makes the ticket very inflexible.
If you book some long flights seperately you could then still return these tickets for a relatively small fees if you need to change something mid trip.

borisp

Hi everyone,
Thank you again for your advice.
I am back to update the thread and hopefully help other members.
As many of you have suggested, it really doesn't make sense to use M&M miles for a RTW trip. I have just returned from my 7 months long trip and the total cost for all 20 flights was just slightly over 2000 EUR.
I have bought all the tickets in cash with the exception of AKL-EZE flight crossing the Pacific which I have paid 67k miles + 22 EUR for, and it was a business class ticket :-)

These were the flights I took:


Route Airline Price Currency Price in EUR
ZAG-DOH-KUL Qatar Airways 3.863,00 SEK 406,04
KUL-DPS AirAsia 40,58 GBP 52,77
DPS-CGK Lion Air 718.000,00 IDR 49,38
CGK-KUL-SGN AirAsia 1.396.000,00 IDR 96,24
SGN-CXR VietJetAir 628.900,00 VND 25,33
CXR-HAN JetStar pacific 1.094.000,00 VND 43,00
HAN-SGN VietJetAir 1.211.899,00 VND 48,00
SGN-SIN VietJetAir 1.485.000,00 VND 59,00
SIN-KUL Malindo Airways 59,00 SGD 38,00
KUL-CMB AirAsia 255,00 MYR 55,00
CMB-KUL-HKT AirAsia 17.075,27 LKR 106,81
HKT-KUL-SYD AirAsia 7.875,00 THB 205,37
SYD-AKL China Airlines 192,00 AUD 141,00
WLG-AKL Jetstar Airways 30,00 NZD 19,64
AKL-EZE Air New Zealand 22,37 EUR 22,37
AEP-MVD-POA Aerolineas Argentinas and Azul Linhas Aereas Brasileiras 129,87 GBP 152,53
POA-GIG Avianca Brasil 236,68 BRL 66,09
GIG-SSA Avianca Brasil 272,82 BRL 76,25
SSA-LIS-MAD TAP Portugal 278,20 USD 252,43
LIS-MUC-ZAG TAP Portugal 101,86 USD 93,66


I think I did pretty well! Let me know if you have any questions

Concerto

Really interesting itinerary and list of destinations. So these are all cash tickets for economy travel, most on low cost carriers within Asia? How were they? Someone over at the British blog headforpoints wrote about a RTW trip in miles, constructing it segment by segment, and he had a pretty good time!

borisp

Correct, these were economy tickets. Had flawless experience flying around Asia. Good service, mostly on A320s. The exception was VietJetAir which tends to cancel or even merge the flights if they feel like it.
I think with M&M it is much harder because outside of Europe seats for miles are just not available. For the cross-pacific flight, I only found this one seat and had to book it almost two months ahead. And to cross the Atlantic (from Brazil to Europe) I just couldn't find anything available. And YQ fees are very high if not flying United or New Zealand. Maybe I am wrong though.