my first RTW ticket (DONE5 from JNB)
 

I've been avidly reading these forums to figure out how to get the most bang for my buck on a trip around the world. Thanks to the insights here I've splurged just a bit extra in order to get a business class ticket, by cutting its price massively from what it would've cost straight out of Japan, where I live.

A few things that saved me a lot of money:
- starting in Johannesburg (this one was massive)
- ending in Dakar instead of Joburg
- skipping Asia completely
- avoiding London (huge airport taxes)
- trying different codeshares for same flight

Oddly I found that a lot of LAN flights stop existing after April 3.

I'm still tweaking it but would be great to get any input anybody might have. So far I have:
JNB-SYD-AKL-SCL-LIM-EZE-GRU-MIA-MEX-surface-CUN-DFW-YVR-JFK-HEL-MXP-MAD-DKR

I have no particular need to go to DFW or MIA but there were no direct flights so thought I'd check them out.

Again, thanks for the amazing advice.

I'm counting 17 segments (you must include the surface segment) so you need to drop one. Maybe there's a cheap MEX-CUN return trip that you can do outside the RTW, or a Milan-Madrid return ticket that would be cheap.

Lan doesn't seem to have fully populated its schedule past April. Unfortunately you can't book flights if they're not on the current timetable, but you can re-issue the ticket (US$125) once they appear.

Oh and welcome to FT!

Hi Gardyloo, thanks for the quick reply. I think there are 16 segments (not counting the word "surface") and the online tool goes all the way to the payment stage with it.

Doing Milan as a separate ticket is an excellent idea! I had put the CUN hop in there just to use up the 1 dangling segment I had, but if I exclude Milan and CUN I'd have 2 segments. Might let me add California which I was intending to do as a side trip from Vancouver - will look into that right now. Thanks!

Oh and on a bit of a tangent from the note about the LAN flights, I suppose the same holds true for the ending dates? The online tool only lets me search flights up til early Nov 2013 but my ticket doesn't start til early Jan and I want to use the full year. I guess I need to reticket that later as well?

Yes, but there is no fee if you are just changing date, time or carrier.

Happy Travels.

Yep, sorry, my miscount.

There's no Oneworld service north/south on the west coast between YVR/SEA and California, so you'd have to do something like MEX-(ORD/DFW)-(LAX/SFO)-DFW-YVR...

Welcome to FT TakeTwoWhat do you mean by "most bang for my buck"?
Knowing this will help us advise you better;)

London:
- usually entails flying BA and paying its extortionate fuel surcharges
- usually entails paying the extortionate British APD (Air Passenger Duty)
but both can be avoided - don't fly BA; fly from London to somewhere nearby (low APD) or just transit London (<24hrs = no APD)

Skipping Asia
- saves you a continent - if you do want to go to SWP (Australia and NZ)
- but you could fly JNB-HKG...Nth America, skipping SWP
- and this would allow you to break the RTW into two
- first part JNB-stops in Asia-Tokyo
- second part Tokyo-Nth America-Sth America-Europe-Africa

I presume you're ending in DKR to avoid flying BA on the last segment, but you'll need to weigh the positioning costs against the BA fuel surcharge
- is Japan-J'burg return cheaper than Japan-J'burg + Dakar-Japan

I suggest ...SCL-IPC-LIM instead of SCL-LIM - more miles and you get to see Easter Island:)

Thank you all for the replies.
By bang for the buck I guess I mean flying business class without paying an arm and a leg, and hitting as many places as I can. I'll be doing numerous side trips, the main ones being Rio, California, Turkey, and the rest of Scandinavia/Europe - but most of those are short/cheap flights away from stops on the RTW, or I might just drive.

Having lived in Japan for a long time for work I've already seen Asia many times over, so other than starting here and coming back at the end (maybe), skipping Asia is actually preferable - I'd rather spend my time on the rest of the world, most of which I haven't yet seen. I had mentioned skipping Asia because in my earlier attempts at the online tool I'd not yet figured out what order to do the continents and how to avoid it (e.g. the JNB-SYD direct flight). Figuring that out saved me the 1 continent.

I'm not sure why, but ending in Dakar saves about $400 a head compared to Joburg. And that's without a stopover in LHR, just transit. I plan on discarding the last segment anyway, so it doesn't really matter where it ends - only goal there is to reduce cost. Of all the African cities with direct flights, Dakar seems to be the cheapest to end in. Tokyo-JNB + Anywhere in EU - Tokyo (each one-way) is roughly the same as Tokyo-JNB roundtrip.

I will check out the Easter Island option :) Thanks!

Thanks, I'd also arrived at the same conclusion... I might just do it as a sidetrip, there are some cheap discount flights from YVR/BLI/SEA and also DFW.

Thanks! I'd read somewhere on FT that some airlines don't charge, but that Qantas charges $80 a pop.. Of course I can't find that thread anymore, although some googling gave me http://www.qantas.com.au/travel/airl...-of-fees/au/en which would appear to support that.

There is no fee for changing carrier/date/time. It says so in the fare rules.

The airline is free to charge a service fee if they desire. Over the years of using oneworld tickets, I've made carrier/date/time changes with QF, JL, CX, AA and BA, I've never been charged for it. But then, the times I've made changes via a carrier reported to be charging service fees, I was changing either due to a situation with travel alerts and waivers out, or via the travel agent and I've told them when making the change that "this change is free as per fare rules".

Last month, I made changes to a DONE3 with CX in LHR and JL in SIN and a DAS13 with QF via travel agent. No fee.

Thanks Himeno, I will cross my fingers as I'm pretty certain that I'll be needing to change dates at least once on a year long ticket. And I'll try the line you quoted.

Btw, are you ever not flying? ;)

me? yes. All my travel is personal with around 90% of my flights each year happening in the same 4-6 week period - when I can get leave from work.


Just remember that if you make a time or date change which then causes something 'booked' as a transit (under 24 hours between flights) to become considered a stop over, it is a routing change (eg, changing DXB-xLHR-SIN to DXB-oLHR-SIN) and the $125USD fee + any fare/tax increases have to be paid.

I was happy enough with my flights, and it was getting close enough to the date that I decided to book... and lo and behold, the online site couldn't process my credit card.

So I called up the local (Tokyo) Qantas office and for the first 10 minutes she gave me the roundabout saying there was nothing they could do for online ticket payment, if anything I'd have to go to the Joburg office in person (!!!), but with some prodding (it was a 40 minute call) she managed to a. give me a booking number, and b. send a message to her Joburg counterparts asking them to process my card manually. Mentioning it was a business class ticket for 3 seemed to help get her into action - by the end she was downright friendly. 90 minutes after the call I received a very satisfying automatic email with payment receipt and confirmation that the flights were booked. So it looks like I'll be traveling for a while!

Thanks again for all the help!

PS Himeno, that sounds like a very busy 4-6 weeks a year! Here I am worried that I'm trying to pack too many places in, and I've got a whole year ;)

... wait... Did you just get QF to issue an offline ex-JNB ticket while knowing that you were in Tokyo? Where you charged in ZAR or JPY (and if in JPY, at the South African price converted to Yen or at the Japan price)?

:) My last trip had a BOS-SEA via JFK and MIA.
A couple of years ago, I did HEL-xLHR-xDXB-xLHR-xHKG-xNRT-xSIN-xPER-MEL - non stop over 3 days. Sleeping on the plane for the most part. That last night in SIN I slept in the CX Skyview lounge.