Hey guys,

I'm looking to book a DONE4 in the next few months and i am just looking for a bit more information regarding open tickets and the 'service fees'

I'm looking to do something like; MEL-SIN-LHR-PSA-LHR-FRA-LHR-JFK-LAS-LAX-MEL

Now to keep this an open ticket, what are the extra costs accociated with doing this and then changing the dates?

Where can i find these costs?

Also what is the country of the month to start this trip off to be a little cheaper?

A few comments. Keeping something an open segment will trigger issuing as a paper ticket. This can cause problems later as you physically need to get the ticked changed later and this can attract fees. So it is much better to ticket with dummy dates in and then change the dates.

The fees you need to pay are a mixture of oneworld fees ($125 for re-routing etc.) and service fees by the airline. The later fees all depend on which airline is making those changes and often are higher for paper tickets. So if ticketed through AA, then usually there aren't any fees.

Typical starting points at the moment are Indonesia and South Africa. Even NZ is cheaper than Australia (which I think is the most expensive country on the planet for a DONEx). Just play with the website.

Also, your routing doesn't really doesn't maximise a DONE4 at all. You can easily get double the amount of points/SC out of a DONE4. In fact, it might be cheaper to buy some individual tickets for this but then this might not be on OW.

Thanks for that, say i started in indonesia, and QF was the ticket issuer, to change dates on flights (with out re-routing) what would the cost be for that?

Also for the trip above it was just a brief example, was looking to do more connections in the US on the A fares. And for the european legs it was just something brief when i was playing around..

May check out flights originating out of other areas!

I don't know the QF fee schedule as I never ticket through them. But why would you use QF anyway? It will be almost $1000 more expensive.

Out NZ how can you not use QF, as it obviously gives you AA codeshares etc, but can't do them (has to be operating carrier).. May do a cheap JQ fare to DPS and then DPS/CGK onwards with CX as the ticket issuer.

The ticket issuer doesn't have to be the first airline on the itinerary (although that is how the online tool works with some notable exceptions). Furthermore OW codeshares certainly are allowed.

So ex-NZ you could ticket with LA (1st flight to SYD or SCL) or AA (1st flight an AA codeshare) to save considerable "taxes".

As Kiwi said, any carrier can issue the ticket. I never have AA as the first. AA only wants that you have some flights on their metal in the booking. Maybe they insist on you having one over the water flight. But I had trips without any AA flight other than some DFW-JFKs.

Hi Gilby,

You might have seen this already but Sagy has a *ONE* tool for working out the cheapest places to start a RTW.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/onewo...readsheet.html

It's rather good although bear in mind it doesn't include taxes.

And to agree with the above comments, suggest you ticket with AA if you can to avoid significant fuel surcharges on the ticket.