Hello,

I've been interested in doing a RTW trip for quite a while and I am finally in the process of planning one. I would like any feedback I can get on my tentative itinerary.

WAW-LHR-MAD-JNB-Overland to ACC-xLHR-FRU-Overland to DEL-HKG-TPE-NRT-HNL-ORD-ANC-SFO-xLHR-WAW

I have never done one of these trips so I am open to any advice or suggestions that you may have.

I plan on beginning this trip at the end of May next year and ending it in August. I will already be in Europe in May visiting my girlfriend in Berlin, so the trip should start from Europe. The main purpose of this trip is to go to the World Cup in South Africa as well as to visit friends in London, Madrid, Accra, Bishkek, Hong Kong, and Taipei.

Also, will I be able to book the RTW ticket via the AA RTW desk in the US and still get the price leaving from Poland. Is there a way to communicate with the RTW Desk via e-mail in order to give them my itinerary and to plan things. I will soon be working offshore with very limited phone access and internet would be a much easier way to communicate.

Welcome to FT!

Unfortunately your route is invalid for a Oneworld Explorer. FRU is no longer served by any eligible Oneworld airline (used to be, but now only "code shared" on BMI since British Airways sold its central Asian routes to BMI.)

Second, there's no service from ANC to SFO. That route is operated by Alaska Airlines, which is an eligible carrier for the Global Explorer RTW product, but not the Oneworld Explorer. Only ORD and DFW are eligible gateways to Alaska using the OWE.

It strikes me that you might want to look at the various Star Alliance RTW products (which are mileage-based) since your route might be easier to construct using their carriers rather than all the doubling-back you'd have to do (and missed destinations) with Oneworld. For instance, Turkish Airlines flies from Istanbul to Bishkek, and South African flies from Accra to Joburg, etc. You might be able to put together a more efficient routing using their planning tool, and costs would probably end up being fairly comparable.

Keep at it and happy planning!

Welcome to Flyer Talk JesseKHall

If you want to use a OW RTW fare you'll need to modify quite a bit to meet the rules. Some flights are codeshares which are invalid for the fares.

A perhaps bigger problem will be getting availability to JNB around the time of the World Cup. The OW RTW fares book into a fairly cheap booking class which means there may well be zero available near world cup dates.

For what it is worth, other than ANC the trip could be done on Star Alliance RTW although would need adjusting to meet their rules (eg max 39k miles).

I did research the Star Alliance option more, however I think that One World is the best choice for me. I am a recently graduated college student so I don't have a great deal of money, and the other RTW options were significantly more expensive than the One World Explorer.

I have altered my route to this:

WAW-MAD-LHR-MRU-JNB-HKG-DEL-xHKG-TPE-NRT-HNL-ORD-ANC-DFW-SFO-xLHR-WAW

I can get a roundtrip flight on Kyrgyzstan Air from Delhi to Bishkek to visit my friend there, and I can buy my own flight from S. Africa to Ghana if I need to.

I have been able to put all of this into the online planner and it works out, except for if i go to try to book it online. It doesn't have the flight SFO-xLHR-WAW. The only option it has are to go SFO-xORD-xLHR-WAW, which puts me over the limit of segments allowed. Is this something that could be resolved by actually talking to somebody at the AA RTW desk? Would they be able to possibly get me a spot on the direct flight SFO-LHR?

I welcome any advice or suggestions on how to improve or optimize my routing.

Thank You for all of your help.

Try MM written & maintained by FT'ers. Routes are not 100% correct in MM, so you need to check the OW timetable for eligible xONEx flights, but its a reasonable starting point

If you selected Warsaw as next place after San Francisco in the online tool, try putting in London. The tool has internal rules around good transfers and so may not be finding other valid and available connections. Of course it could be that the flight you need is unavailable.