RTW help needed please
 

Dear oneworld experts,

I am looking to do a RTW as my concert trip is taking me from Europe to Asia on to Australia and the US. When in Europe, I am based in Germany, thus I have LH Gold and too little experience with the oneworld alliance.

My trip is:

FRA or STR or ZRH as departure points (or somewhere else in Europe if the price would be lower) to

Tokyo

Beijing

Melbourne (with a stopover where?)

Hobart, Tasmania (the local flights in Australia can be on or off the RTW)

Sydney

SFO

NYC

ORD

Aspen

Frankfurt or another airport in Germany that doesn't close the RTW, if there are still more segments I could tack on to it.

and then possibly a few short-haul flights in Europe that I can flexibly plan, if the fare would still allow it.

My question is whether this is worth doing on a oneworld fare in Business?
What is the approximate price variation is depending on the country of origin and which fare I should go for?
What airline should I book it with?
Direct with the airline or do you recommend an rtw guru agent?
and would this trip be enough to earn me a status on either AA or BA - those are the two I am registered with. Or should I register with another one?

Many thanks in advance for any advice.

Piano Flyer.

Hi, Piano flyer, and welcome.

You could certainly hit your key points with a Oneworld Explorer RTW ticket. You'd need one for four continents (no mileage limit). In business class this would be a "DONE4" ticket.

At present all the Euro-zone countries have the same base price assigned to this product €6684, plus applicable taxes and fees. Obviously there will be some variations depending on your itinerary - airport taxes, fuel surcharges applied in some cases, not in others, etc.

There are some variations within Western/Central Europe. For example, a DONE4 purchased and started in Denmark is around €540 cheaper, and in Hungary about the same. DONE4s starting in Egypt (which is regarded as Europe for the purposes of this product) are priced at €4530, over two thousand Euros cheaper than in France, Germany, Italy, et al. (Switzerland is more expensive than the Euro countries; the UK is roughly the same.) So if you're prepared to travel to someplace like Egypt, you could save significantly; on the other hand of course you need to pay to get there and back. But maybe you have some Lufthansa or other *A miles that you could use for "positioning."

Oneworld offers an online booking tool for Oneworld Explorers, located here - http://www.oneworld.com/flights/plan-book-online/ You could put together a selection of itineraries and the tool will give you pricing as well as tax and fee information.

Here's one (imaginary) itinerary that might work for you: CPH-HEL-NRT-PEK-HKG-MEL-HBA-SYD-DFW-SFO-JFK-ORD-DEN-DFW-FRA-LHR-CPH. There are ways this could be optimized; for example you could remove Aspen from the RTW ticket and assign the unused segments to some other European segment. Note of course there are plenty of rules for these products, including just two stopovers (>24h) being allowed in the continent of origin.

For FF status, the route above comprises around 35,000 flown miles. In business class this would earn you AA Platinum status (Oneworld Sapphire, the middle tier) which would gain you lounge access on any Oneworld flight outside the continental US, additional baggage allowances, etc. I suspect you could also probably achieve BA Silver (also Sapphire) but that would depend on counting BA "tier points" which I haven't done. There should be plenty of information on the BA board or at BA's website.

Hope this helps, and again, welcome!

The route would easily gain BA Silver (600 Tier Points), and with a few tweaks it may be possible to get BA Gold status (1500 Tier Points). My quick calc on Gardyloo's route is about 1100 TP's.