Hello all,

Mr kkv and I are about to book our rtw trip with Trailfinders this week. After weeks of discussion our final (we hope) itinerary is as follows;

LHR - MIA - BDA - JFK - YVR - DFW - LAX - HNL - SYD - AKL - MEL - BNE - PER - NRT - HKG - SIN - LHR

We are planning to travel for around 6 months from next August.

I have been reading the boards for weeks now, so I am trying to pick up as much info as possible, but I wonder if anyone can see any problems with the above route? The Oneworld planner/booking tool seems happy with it!

Any other comments/hints would be very welcome, e.g best carrier to use for certain legs.

Finally, as we both no longer fly on business we have no current membership of any frequent flyer programme, so any suggestions on which one to join? We will mainly be taking city breaks and single destination holidays after this trip if that is relevant, and are UK based.

Hope someone can help, and thanks for reading.

Karen

Hello~

Is this a DONE or a LONE? With a DONE you probably want to avoid the CX if you would like to sit together especially with their new herringbone config~ That's what we'll be doing!

Just with routing, you might want to do NRT-SIN-HKG, isntead of NRT-HKG-SIN, to make it 41241 instead of 40530 miles

You might want to put down a list of the destinations you actually want to visit, so people can adjust your itinerary to give you more miles!

Hmm, thread title says DONE4.

First, welcome to FT!

A couple of comments...

If you're beginning in August and going first to Miami/Bermuda, you're flying straight into the hurricane belt at the peak season. You don't indicate the amount of time you'll spend in various areas (six months overall, but no subtotals) so it's hard to say if re-arranging your N. America segments would be of benefit, but it's a consideration. If it were me I'd start on the west coast and move east if possible, e.g. LHR-YVR or LHR-LAX/SFO, in order to give the weather time to sort itself out over the Atlantic/Caribbean.

Second, AA has changed all its west coast < > Hawaii flights to use 757 aircraft. Most people find these planes to be fairly uncomfortable for long flights, even in first class (which your "D" ticket would earn.) On the other hand, AA flies 767s from Dallas and (re-starting soon) Chicago to Honolulu, so if you start juggling N. America, you might bear that in mind.

Third, Qantas' service from HNL to SYD is in rather dated aircraft (as of now - who knows what the case will be in a year?) and - again, just personal observation - I'd be inclined to skip over Hawaii and plan on a side trip somewhere "tropical" in Oz/NZ or Asia. Lord Howe Island? Northland (Bay of Islands etc.) on N. Island in NZ? Or while in California take a quick hop down to Baja California or Puerto Vallarta as a side trip outside the RTW. Anyway, just a thought.

As for a frequent flyer plan, BA is your obvious choice. You ought easily to achieve Silver status with this trip, which can be very beneficial in subsequent travel. There's a BA board on FT that you should visit anon.

Happy planning!

Thanks to those who have replied so far.

We are planning to leave for Miami at the end of August, and leave the USA towards the end of November. We are visiting family in Australia over December and January then wending our way home via NRT/HKG/SIN where we hope to get some beach time before returning to the UK.

Gardyloo; thanks for the welcome! You make a good point about the weather in Miami/Bermuda; we had considered it but we are planning on leaving the USA during November so as I understand it the risk is there throughout that time. We want to drive down the keys but other than that we are planning to spend some time in Georgia and South Carolina. We have lots of side trips planned from our destinations.

As to the Hawaii visit, we don't think we will ever go there if we don't go on this trip so thought we may as well take the opportunity IYSWIM. Your comments however are very useful.

We will have a look at starting the USA section from the west coast and see how that works (including the Chicago/Dallas flight info for the Hawaii leg) then make a final decision tomorrow.

I will hop over to the BA board and make a start on that!

Welcome to FT, kkv!

Here is another suggestion:

LHR-SEA-DFW-JFK-BDA-MIA-ORD-HNL-SYD-AKL-MEL-PER-NRT-DEL-HKG-SIN-LHR

You can do BNE as a side trip from SYD for very little money, not worth using a segment for this.

I would recommend to join QF for this tour. This itinerary will give you QF Platinum, the equivalent of BA Gold. So you get first class lounge access during the last legs of your tour. And also when you are using those points later when flying from LHR.

Also, you need to be very quick. The 10% discount is only valid until Monday.

Thanks DUF!

I have had a look at your suggestion but can't make the USA part work; the ORD-HNL flight goes via LAX or DFW and consequently gives me one too many flights in that continent.

I take on board your suggestion of not using a segment on BNE so we will have another look at that.

As to the QF FFP; will this be of use to me back in the UK when I probably won't be flying Qantas again?

Yes you are right about being quick; we want to take advantage of the discount so will be booking this weekend, but mainly I will just be glad to have the route sorted out so that we can start planning the fun part! (Which for me is not the flying.....)

AA73 goes 5 times per week (not Tu/Th) non-stop ORD-HNL from early April 2010, at least as far as 20 September.

If you use your one transcontinental flight between YVR and JFK instead of SEA-DFW-JFK you can free up a segment later, such as... LHR-YVR-JFK-BDA-MIA-SJO-DFW-HNL-SYD-AKL-MEL-PER-NRT-DEL-HKG-SIN-LHR, adding San Jose Costa Rica. Or, you could restore your BNE flight.

If you want to see more of the west coast, you can take the train affordably from Vancouver to Seattle, or there are umpteen reasonably-priced flights on Alaska Airlines and/or Virgin America between Seattle and LA/SF (or better, hire a car and drive down the coast through the Redwoods etc. to SF.)

The YVR-JFK flight is a redeye, but so is the westbound JFK-YVR, which has the disadvantage of arriving in Vancouver in the dead middle of the night.

Just some thoughts.

Thanks christep that is very useful; it did not show up with the dummy dates I put in. Having so much choice is proving very difficult, especially as we are flexible as to where we go in North America!

OK, how about this; we can do the USA west coast from Vancouver (drive down to Seattle, maybe shuttle to SF and drive to the wineries) Canada east coast and Niagra from New York (also visiting Boston/Washinton etc). Then Bermuda and on to Miami about end of October (still not sure if this improves the weather issue) and drive down the Keys, visit Georgia/S.Carolina etc.

Over to Phoenix, drive about from there, up to Chicago and on to Hawaii via the direct AA73. Then Australia etc. as before, coming home on the Airbus A380 from Singapore.

LHR - YVR - JFK - BDA - MIA - PHX- ORD - HNL - SYD - AKL - MEL - BNE - PER - NRT - HKG - SIN - LHR

Any further comments welcome, thanks to all who have replied, you are being very helpful!

Sounds like an excellent plan, and October ought to be fine in the Southeast and BDA.

Thank you! Going to try and make the decision this evening and book tomorrow so if anyone else has any thoughts bring them on!

My routing was semi optimized for Qantas Status purposes. You should never fly YVR-JFK on a DONEx when crediting to QF.

And yes, QFF might still make sense when you are back in the UK. You just use the status you have, use up the points you have and then switch back to BA etc.

Does not matter too much. You can QF use miles to get award flights on BA, AA and other Oneworld Ailines (but pay $ for taxes & surcharges). However you can only upgrade a QF flight with QF points on a QF aircraft (same in general:- AA flight upgrade only with AA miles, BA flight upgrade only with BA miles etc)