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Old Jun 5, 2025, 12:53 am
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Oneworld booking and pricing experiences

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Old Mar 31, 2026 | 8:27 am
  #3496  
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Originally Posted by headinclouds
I thought the Indian GST was 12% for premium tickets and 5% for economy tickets.
Do other countries impose a GST tax on air tickets? If so, then the fare difference may not be as large as shown.
Normal GST is applied at the point of sale.
Given that DONEx tickets can be sold "almost anywhere" is the GST applicable for an ex-DEL ticket sold in Colombo?
Might be important information needed for decisions related to wandering
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Old Mar 31, 2026 | 10:02 am
  #3497  
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Originally Posted by headinclouds
I thought the Indian GST was 12% for premium tickets and 5% for economy tickets.
Do other countries impose a GST tax on air tickets? If so, then the fare difference may not be as large as shown.
Apparently the Indian GST for premium tickets went from 12% to 18% fairly recently. But I was pricing out ex-DEL RTWs last year around November and it wasn't price competitive.

This again assumes similar positioning costs. I live in Tokyo so my ex-TYO positioning is zero. But ex-DEL gave me the luxury of 2x TYO stopovers which I can't have on ex-TYO. ex-KTM is cheaper than ex-India or Pakistan once the luxury taxes are figured in, that one makes more sense if you don't mind MH, UL, or CX coded flights in and out of KTM, but you can't get a JL, QR, etc. codeshare if crediting to AA, so miles left on the table that could end up making the slightly higher price of ex-India or ex-Japan for AA crediting. I was looking at this right after the attacks in Nepal from protesters, but I think that has normalized again now. For those needing TYO stopovers on an Asia origin RTW, ex-CMB also isn't terrible, but IIRC it is still a bit higher in the final price than ex-India, but again if you can get cheap positioning then can still be considered.

Within Asia there are several good starting points, but the strengths and weaknesses will depend on where you are crediting and your positioning costs. Crediting to programs that are more uniform in D class earnings become more neutral, but crediting to AA, AY, or QR, the differences are far more apparent and might be worth a few extra $$ to start in one vs. the other.

If you can get to JNB / CPT / DUR cheaply, it's also a great starting point that can be optimized for many OW programs. OSL is quite good too, and flexible even for AA, QR, AY earners, but you have to watch the YQ/YR effects more than the others. Choosing optimal codeshares seems to be fairly important there, plus some of the best better intra-continental routes are within the 'Europe' zone (DOH-CMN, DOH-LIS, DOH-DUB, etc.) and you eat up 2x of your allowed 4x segments getting to / from OSL, so it's not my preferred starting point.
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Old Mar 31, 2026 | 10:31 am
  #3498  
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Originally Posted by dvs7310
Within Asia there are several good starting points, but the strengths and weaknesses will depend on where you are crediting and your positioning costs. Crediting to programs that are more uniform in D class earnings become more neutral, but crediting to AA, AY, or QR, the differences are far more apparent and might be worth a few extra $$ to start in one vs. the other.
Can you help me understand why the airline that you're crediting to you would make a difference when picking a point of origination? I'm not really following your logic, but I think that there's something critical that I'm missing.
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Old Mar 31, 2026 | 11:01 am
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Point of origination for xONEx matters because you have the relatively least amount of flexibility in the origin continent.
This is a complex question with many different branches of answers, depending on the program of choice.. so I would suggest starting a different thread or side conversation... it is not super relevant to booking/pricing experiences.

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Old Mar 31, 2026 | 11:17 am
  #3500  
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Originally Posted by donotblink
Can you help me understand why the airline that you're crediting to you would make a difference when picking a point of origination? I'm not really following your logic, but I think that there's something critical that I'm missing.
Crediting to some programs can earn widely different amounts depending on the marketing carrier. For example, when crediting to AA, AA, BA, and IB flight numbers earn by fare (prorated by flight distance), which on an RTW is typically miniscule. An MH or QF flight number earns barely more than the flight distance, while an AY or JL flight number earns a nice multiplier of flight distance. Different starting points may enable different codeshare flights.
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Old Mar 31, 2026 | 11:58 am
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Originally Posted by anabolism
Crediting to some programs can earn widely different amounts depending on the marketing carrier. For example, when crediting to AA, AA, BA, and IB flight numbers earn by fare (prorated by flight distance), which on an RTW is typically miniscule. An MH or QF flight number earns barely more than the flight distance, while an AY or JL flight number earns a nice multiplier of flight distance. Different starting points may enable different codeshare flights.
I definitely understood the first part of what you were articulating and already knew that. The idea of the different starting points may enable different codeshare flights is where I'm getting lost. I'm not sure that I understand how those are connected.
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Old Mar 31, 2026 | 12:25 pm
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Originally Posted by donotblink
The idea of the different starting points may enable different codeshare flights is where I'm getting lost. I'm not sure that I understand how those are connected.
Others might be aware of more complexity, but at minimum, not all oneworld flights are codeshared by other oneworld carriers, and of those that are, higher-earning codes might not be among them. For example, flights from LHR tend to be available with lots of codeshares. Flights from OSL less so, flights from KTM much less so. In addition, in my experience airlines tend to be very restrictive in allowing codeshares, while TAs tend to be more open. So, an airline might allow booking an AY code on a BA flight LAX-LHR, but not a QF flight SIN-BNE.
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Old Apr 1, 2026 | 1:34 am
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Originally Posted by anabolism
Crediting to some programs can earn widely different amounts depending on the marketing carrier. For example, when crediting to AA, AA, BA, and IB flight numbers earn by fare (prorated by flight distance), which on an RTW is typically miniscule. An MH or QF flight number earns barely more than the flight distance, while an AY or JL flight number earns a nice multiplier of flight distance. Different starting points may enable different codeshare flights.
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Old Apr 2, 2026 | 1:34 am
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Originally Posted by anabolism
Crediting to some programs can earn widely different amounts depending on the marketing carrier. For example, when crediting to AA, AA, BA, and IB flight numbers earn by fare (prorated by flight distance), which on an RTW is typically miniscule. An MH or QF flight number earns barely more than the flight distance, while an AY or JL flight number earns a nice multiplier of flight distance. Different starting points may enable different codeshare flights.
Add QR to JL and AY. With codeshares and the help of my trusty TA we were able to book even most US domestic flights on these 3 to make a trip that would have yielded close to 100 K LPs. (The snag is being ready to transit DOH twice. I'm in Singapore, and just happy to get to Oslo at this point.)
It's amazing that the whole scenario changes depending on which airline you're crediting to. AA didn't get my money this time, but they make up for it by being one of the high value airlines in someone else's program.
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Old Apr 2, 2026 | 2:18 am
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Originally Posted by skipaway
Add QR to JL and AY. With codeshares and the help of my trusty TA we were able to book even most US domestic flights on these 3 to make a trip that would have yielded close to 100 K LPs. (The snag is being ready to transit DOH twice. I'm in Singapore, and just happy to get to Oslo at this point.)
It's amazing that the whole scenario changes depending on which airline you're crediting to. AA didn't get my money this time, but they make up for it by being one of the high value airlines in someone else's program.
Would you potentially be interested in sharing the itinerary that you picked that got you about 100,000 LPs? Is that a DONE3?
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Old Apr 2, 2026 | 3:15 am
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As mentioned in another post, nufnuf was able to codeshare all my AA flights - LAX-JFK to AY, JFK-DFW to QR, DFW-LAX to AY and the BA flight LAX-LHR codeshared to AY so they'll all earn 50% of miles instead of the microscopic share of fare paid on the DONE4.

100,000 Avios and 21,000 TPs to BAC on a DONE4. Full routing in my other post.
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Old Apr 2, 2026 | 7:55 am
  #3507  
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The one anomaly in Asia is S.Korea, but for an DONE3 only. Only $200 more than OSL and $300 more than India.
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Old Apr 2, 2026 | 8:04 am
  #3508  
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Originally Posted by headinclouds
The one anomaly in Asia is S.Korea, but for an DONE3 only. Only $200 more than OSL and $300 more than India.
Wait, is Seoul less than Tokyo? I always thought Tokyo was the least expensive ex-Asia.
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Old Apr 2, 2026 | 8:37 am
  #3509  
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Originally Posted by spherehopper
As mentioned in another post, nufnuf was able to codeshare all my AA flights - LAX-JFK to AY, JFK-DFW to QR, DFW-LAX to AY and the BA flight LAX-LHR codeshared to AY so they'll all earn 50% of miles instead of the microscopic share of fare paid on the DONE4.
Presumably you mean 250%-370% of miles (depending on your AA status)? When crediting to AA, an AY, JL, or QR flight number in 'D' earns 100% of miles as base, 150% of base as the cabin bonus, and a variable elite status bonus that is 120% of base for EP/CK.
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Last edited by anabolism; Apr 2, 2026 at 9:23 am Reason: fix typo ("of" rather than "for")
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Old Apr 2, 2026 | 8:47 am
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Originally Posted by donotblink
Wait, is Seoul less than Tokyo? I always thought Tokyo was the least expensive ex-Asia.
no, seoul is more than tokyo.
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