Sorry. Mistake. Too many flights this year and one RTW blurred into the other!

The post should have read: HND-BKK-DOH.....and ending with LAX-KIX-xBKK-HND. KIX is transit.

Have been in Yellowstone Nat Park with very limited phone & internet so didn't see this post until now

Thanks for clarifying. Hope you enjoyed Yellowstone. :tu:

I'm still surprised that you were allowed the transit through KIX. It contravenes this rule:
I only recall one other instance of a pax being allowed to transit the country of origin. And that was early in the global shutdown due to the pandemic with so many flights cancelled it was the only way the pax could get home.

AA RTW desk ticketed it so perhaps they are interpreting the rule to mean transit isn't an actual arrival or departure in the country. Since you don't go through immigration in most countries, AA maybe views that as not being in the country? US and a few others unfortunately don't fit that classification. Perhaps others can further test this if booking through AA.

Yellowstone was great, but even in Sep some areas were crowded. Also spent 2 days in Grand Tetons. Used this RTW to fly MCO-DFW-JAC-DFW-MCO in AA first. It's an expensive flight. The DFW-JAC flight has only 8 seats up front. Great views of the Teton mountains when flying into Jackson Hole. This RTW checked off 2 more bucket list trips (Iguazu Falls and Yellowstone).

Seeking Advice on My First Oneworld Explorer Ticket (ex-TYO DONE4)
 

Hi, newbie here. I’ve been reading the RTW related posts for the past few weeks and I'm excited to book my very first xONEx ticket :D It’s going to be an ex-TYO DONE4 and I plan to book it with the AA RTW desk. I’m based in SFO and will likely credit the miles to AS. The tentative itinerary is:

• JL NRT-TPE
• CX TPE-xHKG-MAD
• QR MAD-DOH-LHR
• BA+QR LHR-xDXB-xDOH-SFO
• AA SFO-xDFW-GIG-xDFW-SFO
• AS SFO-CUN-SFO
• AA SFO-JFK
• JL JFK-HND (considering AA codeshare in case intercontinental flights between North America and South America don’t meet AA’s ticketing requirements)

Questions:

1. I think the short haul DXB-DOH in A class should grant me access to the first class lounge in DOH. Can I use Al Safwa even with a next-day connection for DOH-SFO? It's going to be a 15+ hour transit.
   
2. For TPE-xHKG-MAD on CX I prefer longer transit times, and there are many TPE-HKG flights daily with D class available when searched individually. However, when searching TPE-MAD on EF it only shows flight combinations with short connection time in HKG. The longer connection options are not D0; they just don’t show up in the search results. But when I search TPE-MAD on ITA matrix, the longer connection combinations do show up as available. Are these married segments, and should I be concerned about transit flight availability in this case? The same issue happens to xDXB-xDOH-SFO on QR.
   
3. These flights should be more than enough to qualify me for AS MVP Gold. Since I value AA miles more than AS miles, I would like to credit the exceeding segments (definitely not those AA flights) to AA. Can I change the FFP for certain segments by putting the desired FFP at check-in for those flights?
   
4. Any tips or suggestions on reducing the fees? I know I should avoid a stopover in the UK, but I need to stay in London for a while and don’t have any remaining segments to make it an open jaw, so the UK APD is likely unavoidable. Regarding carrier-imposed surcharges, I read on this thread that ex-Japan xONEx tickets don’t have YQ, only YR. So I should be fine flying BA (plus a lot of QR’s), and should use BA codeshare as much as possible given that I don’t need to worry about the high fees associated with BA and BA has the best earning rate on AS. Am I correct?

Thanks in advance and any feedback or comments on my itinerary is appreciated!

Purchased DONE4 out of HND ticketed by AA a few weeks ago. About $1350 add to base split @ 50 / 50 between taxes and carrier imposed fees. Used all 16 segments

Would you mind sharing the routing?

I'm not sure which thread is best for trying to get your head round how booking/routing impacts surcharges? Some info I pulled from https://rtw.oneworld.com/rtw

* NRT-xHKG-JNB-xDOH-LHR-HEL-JFK-NRT is ~$500 in taxes and surcharges if flying AA on the last segment (taxes are ~40% of it)
* Ending JFK-NRT on JL instead of AA adds ~$245
* Dropping HEL (so going LHR-JFK) adds $180 if flying AA or $360 if flying BA
* JNB-xDOH-LHR is $315 less than JNB-LHR (on BA) [possibly only if already flying QR on other segments]
* Adding DOH-CDG-DOH adds $200 [possibly only if already flying QR on other segments] of which ~$80 seems taxes

Just adding a data point for people as I ticketed a DONE4 ex Oslo yesterday, booked through the AA RTW desk.

Total price per person was €6,092 made up of €4,966 base fare and €1,126 taxes and charges. Airline surcharges were €557 and the balance was taxes.

Routing and carrier was as follows:

OSL-xDOH-JNB on Qatar
JNB-DOH on Qatar
DOH-ICN on Qatar
Surface segment ICN to HKG
HKG-CTS on Cathay
CTS-HKG on Cathay
HKG-DPS on Cathay
DPS-xHKG-YYZ on Cathay
YYZ-SEA on Alaska
SEA-CUN on Alaska
CUN-JFK on American
JFK-LAS on American
LAS-xLHR-OSL on American codeshare (BA metal)

Good datapoint showing AA is happy to ticket even if there's no AA metal - just a codeshare flight number.

Lots of backtracking on this routing - I assume it's also aiming to maximize mileage/status earned?

Originally when I was booking, the agent insisted that my JFK to LHR flight be on American metal. Then I made a couple of tweaks and added on Las Vegas, and the person making the changes didn't question it being AA metal - codeshare was good enough.

Yeah, bit of backtracking - combination of maximising tier points for status, but also this is part of long term travel so these are all places we wanted to go anyway. So I just routed them to suit the time of year we are going to each place, and also maximise status earned - worked out pretty well for us.

Have several data points where AA marketed BA metal was fine for AA.

For those people who are maximizing AA marketed flights, I even found a routing from Asia to Europe on AA numbers.
Not via US obviously.

As do I for AA marketed QR metal.

Hi,

From the RTW tool, I found the price ex-OSLO on Economy seems cheaper compare to other
3 Continents: NOK17,243.00 = 1641 USD
4 Continents: NOK20,430.00
5 Continents: NOK23,699.00
6 Continents: NOK26,967.00

While for Business class, it's about same with ex-Tokyo or ex-Columbo

I am trying to build a LONE3 ex-OSLO to see what's the final price the tool would quote.
Unfortunately, I always got stuck at the first segment, regardless of what city i change, it always said cant find flight, anyone has similar experience?

My trial and error route, making it as simple as possible
OSL - MAD/LHR/HEL/CDG (tried all these)
MAD/LHR/HEL/CDG - DOH
DOH - Tokyo
Tokyo - KUL
KUL - HKG
HKG - JFK
JFK - LAX
LAX - OSL
anything I did wrong?

The online tool is known for errors and bugs.
There's no reason to believe what it's telling you.

Also, given all the complaints you've had with QF agents, I can't imagine why you are using the tool again.

If it prices then nothing I've seen suggests you can't trust that *price*. So it's a useful way to get input on likely taxes & surcharges for a given routing. This info likely takes days to get otherwise and is then still awkward to get for multiple similar routings which is what you need to get a sense of what changes hit taxes and surcharges non trivially.

I suspect the ticketing carrier matters on occasion too but there seems no easy way to find info on this. Maybe this recent sharing trend will lead to that. I very much welcome people sharing pricing info so we get a better sense of *ticketed* costs in various situations. Plus it may spark routing ideas. Please don't anyone be discouraged!

It would be nice to have more of it one currency mind, usd seems the obvious one. And yes, I would also strongly encourage people to consider the aa rtw desk to be their default for actual ticketing unless they really know what they are doing. The ease difference is generally enormous.