Gardyloo told me about Oneworld Explorer in another sub-forum and I'm excited to plan a DONE3 because that will save me helluva lot of money than I otherwise would have to pay.

I spent the last few days reading in here but I still have some questions.

1. Booking: There are mentions of booking via airlines and travel agents but it seems you can also book via https://rtw.oneworld.com/rtw website? Are there any advantages to booking with airline or travel agent? Website seems much easier, so I must be missing something.

2. Ticketing Airline: There seems to be some significance attached to the ticketing airline, but I'm not quite sure why it matters. How does it come into play?

3. Availability: These are revenue tickets but there seems to be some concerns about availability at the associated fare classes. When playing on https://rtw.oneworld.com/rtw everything I selected appeared to have available flights. Or is that wrong assumption? Does OneWorld online tool not take availability into account but only when you buy it you learn about it?

4. Stretching trip out to full 12 months: Since you can only book 12 months in advance for any flight, you can only do stretch this out to full 12 months (or 11 to be more reasonable) if the origin flights are close to booking date, right? If I'm starting a trip in June, would I have any trouble (or availability issues) if I wait till April to book it? How early should I book?

5. Cheapest Origin: Current cheapest origins for DONE3 appears to be CAI or NRT. Or JNB for a DONE4. Are there others that I missed?

6. Origin stopover limits: I'm starting in NRT for best pricing and looks like I'm limited to 2 stopovers in Asia. Are there any tricks to get around that?

Since I seem to be your enabler I'll give a go to your questions; others will no doubt chime in.

1. Yes, you can use the online tool, many do so. You will see a number of alternative approaches mentioned here because of long-standing and, sadly, unresolved "bugs" in the online tool that actually have their own thread here. In some cases, the online tool balks at itineraries where the first carrier is more recent, e.g. Qatar, or in some cases where the first carrier has authorized a different airline to do the issuing on their behalf, e.g. AA on behalf of RJ. Yet in other cases, the "bugs" result in mis-pricing, for example when one tries to use the rule that allows ending in a different African country than the origin, the tool prices the ticket as if the last country's price is the controlling one, not the first. Some airlines (e.g. QR again) don't reliably turn up as having availability when using the tool. And so on. Repeated attempts (by me and a number of others) to communicate with Oneworld to have them work on bugs in the tool have been met with silence. It's ironic - IMO the Oneworld Explorer is by far the superior product to anything Star Alliance offers, but Star's online RTW and related products' booking tool is vastly superior.

Try the tool to see; if it validates your route and gets you to the pricing screens (you can still bail) you're good to go. If not, since you're located in the US, you can contact the AA RTW desk at (800) 247-3247 and have them queue the fare to an issuing agency, e.g. AA in Japan, or Emeco in Cairo, or Mindpearl in Cape Town, etc.

2. Generally the ticketing airline is the first airline used, but there are some exceptions. Often you'll see people trying to avoid using BA as the issuing carrier because of BA's habit of adding huge fuel/"carrier-imposed" surcharges on other airlines' flights. Personally I always try to have AA as the issuing airline because their RTW desk (above) is very efficient at ticket changes, problem resolution etc., once you're underway.

3. If you're buying a DONEx availability isn't often an issue; airlines don't discriminate between one D-class ticket (a high-bucket business fare) as part of an RTW ticket v. a D-class ticket bought over the counter. I would not be concerned about availability in general. But see below regarding changes and re-issues.

4. Date changes are free; more substantial changes (e.g. change of route, change from transit to stopover) require the ticket to be re-issued ($125 plus any difference in taxes/fees.) So if you're planning to hold the ticket longer than the current booking window is valid (11/12 months etc.) you just put in "dummy" dates for the segments that aren't available yet, then change them once the "real" date opens.

5. Those are the current cheapest base prices. A couple of other origins, e.g. Jordan, Israel, Namibia, are not too much more, and one must always be mindful not only of the "positioning" costs entailed to getting to and from the origin points before and after, but also if a given origin point locks you into a "first carrier" that will impose excessive fees to the ticket. For example, originating in South Africa and heading to London as your first destination will stick you with BA as the issuing carrier, which will bring along BA's fees. The best thing to do is use the online tool to do some comparison shopping to see the bottom line inclusive of fees and taxes, add in your positioning costs, and go from there.

6. No, two stopovers in the continent of origin is the rule. In the case of Asia, look at opportunities for cheap "add on" tickets outside the RTW, e.g. a stopover in Bangkok will put you in a good place for cheap tickets to other SE Asian cities using local carriers at not much cost. Or put another way, use the RTW ticket for expensive segments, use the train or another mode for short hops where one of your 16 RTW flights would be overkill.

Download and study a copy of the rules from Oneworld here.

Hope this helps.

Ha ha.. thanks again for enabling me ^. All of that makes sense. Great to hear that date changes are free. This is actually going to be 3 trips for me. Asia in June. HKG for Xmas, followed by IST and LIS for New Year's Eve, then some domestic travel to see friends and end up w/ a trip to NRT to close this and also serving as a new trip to Japan/Korea the following year.

I priced this route for about $6800.
http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=NRT-HKG...T&MS=wls&DU=mi (LHR and DFW are just transit points).

Went as far as booking step on amadeus for AA. So that means the online booking will work for me

If the online booking tool gets to the payment screen with the flights you wanted, then it will work.

The tool only shows flights which have availability in the applicable fare classes (for the most part, L, D and A with I, J, W, Y, Z, H, T, R and E for selected routes/situations) at the time you look up the flight. It will then check that fare class is still available when you reload a saved plan or move through the payment and booking screens. eg, if I'm looking at a DONE3 for LHR-DXB. It will look up the 5 oneworld flights on that route (3 BA, 2 QF) and the codeshares (AA, IB, MH on the BA flights) and only show those flight numbers with D availability. It will then list anything with L, but no D followed by available connections (eg, LHR-DOH/AMM-DXB).

Prices can be annoying to find as it now requires access to a GDS look up tool (such as expertflyer) to get current base fares. Taxes can also make a ticket that looks cheap become much more expensive (eg, India/Sri Lanka base fares look good, until you add the Indian luxury taxes on D and AONEx's)

Yes, these are revenue tickets. However some agents don't seem to understand that. I had an issue on my last DONE3 where I was trying to change a AA coded, US operated flight. Between CX (ticket issuer), AA and US, they kept pushing me off to another airline until I spoke to some agents in person. AA staff at LAX, JFK and SFO were happy to make changes, could see availability, but couldn't make the actual change because it was sitting on the US system which they didn't have access to. When I spoke to US agents at LAS, they called their pricing and ticketing office who swore it was an award ticket. I finally managed to get CX UK to make the change when CX US refused to touch it ("we don't operate that flight, not our problem").

Since I started doing DONE3's, I've been starting in ICN or TYO. I'm based in CBR, so I've been using DAS13's (Circle Asia) to get from Australia to Tokyo/Korea and back. I've included some extra stops in Asia on that other ticket.
Depending on the route and exchange rates, I've been able to get a DONE3+DAS13 for less then an ex-AU DONE4.

I've had issues with the per continent flight limit in North American and Europe, so I've been getting flights to the nearest hub, then getting short haul 1ish hour flights on different tickets. Such as flying to ORD, then getting an extra return flight to STL, or into LAX with extra LAX-SFO-LAS-LAX flights. (tip: never to cross ticket connections with IB. It's just asking for baggage issues)

People try to avoid certain airlines due to high fees. Mainly BA who tends to charge their own fuel surcharges for other airlines flights. Ticket with BA and have BA put their surcharge on a MH coded, MH operated KUL-ICN...
One trip, I was able to save almost $1000 by using IB and MH codes on BA flights.

Sounds like changing the ticket (dates) is not always easy. I think I will wait till early March to book this as then I will have access to picking the flights in next Jan/Feb.

Too bad that Circle Pacific requires South Pacific, otherwise I'd be able to use that for positioning like you.

I have a lot of BA segments and I suspect some of them might be IB code shares (LHR-LIS-LHR) and I'll try to find the IB coded flights for those. I don't think I have a single AA segment, I wonder whether that's bad because AA RTW Desk might not want to help me at all if I have to change anything.

Just curious what is DONE3 ex-USA priced at?

Ex-USA DONE3 for more or less same route came out to 10,956.88 USD w/ taxes. $4k more... wow.

I have never had difficulty changing dates, and just FYI (and using nothing more than pure recollection - not very pure, alas) there's been a trend for xONEx prices to be bumped in February in past years, so take that into consideration. Also, the dollar could weaken against the relevant currencies too, so you might want to factor those possibilities into your decision.

Yeah, I understand. I'm actually waiting on approval for vacation before I book this trip. Because depending on what time of the year I get to take off I'll be starting in NRT or CAI.

I agree; this has been my experience as well.

Yes, although in my experience there are some routes that can be problematic, e.g., LHR-TLV on BA sometimes has no D space even many months out. Strange.

Are you sure about changing between connection and stop? My recollection is that I often do this without needing to pay the $125 fee. More to the point, the $125 fee is not for a ticket re-issue, but for a change in routing, meaning that the list of airports changes (adding, deleting, or reordering). AA does not charge to re-issue the ticket, but reports here are that some airlines do.

BA's fees are obnoxious. Note that you can fly to/from JNB on other airlines, such as CX and QF.

Excellent advice. Also, keep in mind that you can use the time between your positioning flight and the first RTW flight as a stop.

I've never had a problem doing this on AA, aside from sometimes not seeing D space on BA flights to/from TLV. Also, keep in mind that the date of the first flight can't change without causing the whole ticket to get re-priced (no big deal if the price is the same, but nasty if there was a price increase).

The change from connection to stopover can trigger different taxes (departure, security) that will result in the ticket needing to be repriced, hence the re-issue.

Edited to add and off-topic a little: North American Circle Pacific and RTW shoppers should look at ex-Canada fares given the current USD:CAD exchange rates.

Yes, new tax calculation, but as I understand it, not a reprice. E.g., if there was a fare increase, you'd pay the new tax difference (or get a refund) but not the fare increase. Also no $125 fee.

Not my experience; YMMV.

[QUOTE=Gardyloo;24235987] there's been a trend for xONEx prices to be bumped in February in past years, so take that into consideration. /QUOTE]

Now that we're into February, is there any indication that these potential increases have taken place?

[In particular, for the origins mentioned in the OP: ex-JNB, ex-NRT, ex-CAI]

Interesting. You made only date/time/carrier changes which had the effect of converting a connection into a stop or vice-versa, and as a result the ticket was repriced with then-current base fare plus tax changes, and were also charged the $125 re-toute fee? Which airline ticketed it? Which airline made the changes?

No, not with any change to the base fare, just to the taxes/fees and the $125. Plus, when I had to do it in Oz using Qantas offices (a couple of times,) I had to pay their %#@! "service fees" too.