Thanks for the update. I really did not need to use AA for what I wanted but this makes it easy.

Did AA issue your ticket? If so, one might have better luck with a ticket issued by another OW carrier.

No. It was ticketed by UL (Sri Lankan)

I wanted AA to ticket it, but they refused - see post #935

Can anyone advise current DONE4 base price ex OSL (or tell me how to find in EF ?)

5970.47

in EF select Fare Information
In Fare Information enter OSL (Oslo) as both the origin and destination, select a Oneworld airline and NOK (Norwegian Krones) as the currency
The base fare for a DONE4 will be listed, amongst all the OW round world fares for Oslo as origin

The DONE4 base fare is 57959NOK (which at today's rate, converts to about 5970USD)

I was just looking at this on ExpertFlyer, and compared to HKG (Where I live) or BKK they are approx 40-50% cheaper for a DONEx (in fact the AONEx is about the same price as a BKK DONEx).... However I believe that actually using these would be very difficult right now, so I guess the idea would be to book and hope for the best in terms of either: 1) A connecting flight, or 2) COVID restrictions reduce. Sadly it appears impossible to guess whether Japan will open up of course.

The problem I can see is lets say I decide to start this in December (I was looking for a Christmas holiday) if I need to move the date due to COVID it reprices. Anyone else being taking a risk and booking these? Are there people who have managed to connect on separate tickets, with bags?

Thanks to all for the quick replies ...

From Post#942
OK, here’s a report on how I went getting Sri Lankan to make changes to my ticket.

Long story short:

Once a manager got involved then everything was completed in under 24hrs. New tickets issued, the USD125 change fee waived and no mention made of increased +++. So all in all, not a bad outcome, but I was getting stressed that it might not be completed in time for my next flight on this coming Monday.

Long story long:

What I wanted:

All I wanted to do was change the date of my next flight.

I knew that the final three flights on the itinerary had carrier-imposed schedule changes (one of which would involve a re-route because CX had stopped flying HKG-CMB; the re-route would have higher +++ than the original routing). But I hadn’t decided what I wanted to do in that regard. All I wanted right now was the date change on the next flight

How it went:

I emailed [email protected] on Friday Aug 7th – never got a response. So last Tuesday I telephoned.

The agent said there would be a USD125 change fee, I disputed that because I was not seeking to change ticketed points, but he was adamant. Also, he said I had to decide on the final three flights otherwise he would not be able to ticket the changed itinerary. I said a new ticket wasn’t needed, just an endorsement of the existing ticket for my date change. But he was adamant, so I thanked him and hung up.

Before calling back I decided what I wanted for the final three flights, this included a voluntary change to ticketed points, so I would for sure be up for the USD125 change fee. The agent noted all the changes I wanted and said she would pass it to the fares team for pricing, and I should expect an email response within 24hrs. After a few hours I checked on srilankan.com, and all the new flights were in there, plus all the old ones, but of course a new ticket had not been issued.

After 24hrs I phoned again. Same story, but with an assurance that she would press the fares team to do the pricing. I made this call at 8:00am Friday Sri Lankan time (and my next flight is on Monday, so not much time for them to do the pricing, tell me how much I had to pay, clear the payment, and issue a new ticket)

Still not done by the end of the (Friday) workday. So I phoned and asked for a manager. Explained the urgency to her, and she undertook to see it through to completion. 12hrs later I received an email with the new ticket numbers, and no mention of the change fee and payment of increased +++

I live in HKG; I am planning on using the low prices in Japan to support 2 primary holidays: Christmas in Australia, and a combined America/UK trip back home at Easter

Each city is a stopover for at least a few days except for Doha where it is a transit, and the SFO-LAX is a surface segment
HND-SYD-OOL-MEL-HKG // HKG-SFO/LAX-JFK-LHR-MAN-xDOH-HKG // HKG-HND
Currently this is an 4DONE with 11 segments and about 30k miles. As I've got a young kid (~2yrs) have to try to limit pointless stopovers

Would welcome any optimisations or route improvements... I've considered, and discounted a fair number already:
> Add more American cities, but decided I'd rather just get a car and drive around SFO-LAS-LAX (death valley, highway one etc.) . This way I can try the Transcon AA flight too, which I haven't done before.
> If there is some way to get that extra HKG- Somewhere - HKG leg, but I think I have all my stopovers in Asia now (2 in HK)?
> By the time we get to the UK I will have taken enough time off work, so likely I can't throw in a random LHR-TLV-LHR flight
> If I try and do something like starting in Australia, I lose my Japan exchange rate benefit
> I could do HND-xMEL-SYD (trying JAL rather than Qantas), but seems fairly pointless to add one more domestic flight
> Considered a Australian trip to Perth, however I can't get the online tool to ticket PER-HKG, and there is currently only one flight a week (It does show D9 on Expert Flyer), and as MEL-PER is less than 2000 miles, I don't get any extra tier points really

Thoughts welcomed!

My only suggestion would be to reduce your Australian stops by at least one. Sydney, the Gold Coast and Melbourne are all very close to each other and I think you're wasting sectors that would otherwise be better used on longer flights.

Thanks danger, it is a fair comment (the same could be said of LHR-MAN), however as I'm already 4 segments short of the maximum of 16, and I believe that the Australian flights count by themselves as a separate continent, these short trips only cost me the taxes... I suppose the ideal scenario would be to do HND-SYD, SYD-OOL, OOL-MEL, MEL-PER, PER-HKG ... then I'd have to call Qantas to book rather than use the tool due to that PER-HKG refusing to show availability on the oneworld tool (I think this is within the rules right as still only 4 flights in Australia)?
(There is a reason to do SYD before MEL that involves seeing certain friends on Christmas day)

Note: In the time between posting I've realised I can do a LAX-JFK, LGA-ORD-LHR add-on trip to Chicago that may maximise it (pointless land segment, but LGA is going to be far easier to get to than JFK I guess.. I could do JFK-ORD as well), and I'd rather have a 10 hour flight than a 6 hour one.... though again the tool is misbehaving and not showing me the AA day flight that has D7 availability, only the overnight BA ones.

Edit: If ringing up, you think I could persuade the Qantas agent to book me onto the BA codeshares rather than the direct AA flights btw for all these American ones? Would help me maintain my 4 segment status for gold with BA! In fact... where would I ideally book, will anyone let me book and pay in HKD to avoid the currency surcharge of 2% on my credit card... I guess it is a choice between Qantas (first flight), British Airways (to get my codeshares) or Cathay Pacific (for HKD charging... but at the moment their call centre is shockingly slow)?

If it were me, I'd add another Australia stop in Perth or Adelaide, and book PER/ADL to SYD to HKG as a connection rather than try for PER-HKG as a non-stop. Longer flight, access to SYD international lounge. Again, if it was me, I'd also change LAX-JFK-LHR to LAX-DFW-JFK-LAX-LHR. LAX-LHR is a nice long flight, much more enjoyable than JFK-LHR.

I don't have any experience booking with QF, so I can't say if they will book the AA flights as BA codes, but if not, you could book with a travel agent, or call BA and see if they'd do it. I've used American Express travel for a few trips. (With AmEx travel, if you get a good agent you can just feed them flights and they'll book how you want; if you get a poor agent they'll insist on booking everything by searching origin-dest so in that case I just politely end the call and call back.)

Oh, by the way, you have 12 segments now, not 11, because the surface segment SFO-LAX still counts against the 16 segment limit.

Minor correction:
The surface segment does not count against the per-continent limit
The wording in the rule is(And the bolding of the word flight is by Oneworld not me)

Just a technical point - I believe what you wanted was a revalidation, not an endorsement, although I know in the end they re-issued the ticket. You want an endorsement when you are ticketed to travel on airline A, but you want to travel on airline B, without re-issuing the ticket. In another word, you want airline B to accept a flight coupon originally intended for airline A.

Can anyone help with done3 from oslo?

Thanks

What kind of help do you want? Where do you want to go? When?

BTW, you might want to look at prices ex-BUD before settling on OSL.

Thank you, that's an important distinction.

oops, price for both please.

Base Fares (source ExpertFlyer)
ex-OSL DONE3 NOK52,398 (~USD5,223)
ex-BUD DONE3 HUF2,030,399) (~USD5,117)

Japan is sub-US$5K at present.

A contact of mine is trying to book a DONE3 ex-Oslo and tried to get AA's RTW desk to help put the trip together. Sadly (but consistently with what I've read here) they had great difficulty in making the agent at the RTW desk understand why they wanted to start in Norway when their home is in Chicagoland. Then a period of 40 minutes of hold ensued, then the line went dead. Sound familiar?

Anyway, on a hunch, I just phoned Alaska Airlines' 800 number and asked a representative if there's anybody at AS who knows anything about the RTW or CPAC products, and she immediately said that their international/partners desk has been trained up and is capable of making bookings on the phone. I didn't pursue it right away, but if it's true, what great news! If anybody is in the process of putting a trip together, and has the courage to see if AS can do the booking, please leave a note on this thread. Thanks.

I had booked ex-OSL DONEx twice via AA RTW desk. They did not ask me that question. But if they did, I'd answer, "Well I am in Europe and want to book something to get me home". But quietly, I'd say, "None of your business"!
Seriously, my second ex-OSL DONEx did get me home after I completed the first RTW, by flying OSL-xDOH-LAX (on DONEx ticket), then separate ticket LAX-SFO on AA award.

Good to know. I can't seem to find the phone # for International/Partners Desk!

You have to go through the regular reservations line.

Least Expensive Location from which to Start a Business Class RTW
 

Is anyone keeping on the least expensive locations from which to start an RTW?

Japan

Pakistan is about the same as Japan

Norway is a little more than either Japan or Pakistan

Business RTW fares ex-Japan are about USD5,000 cheaper than ex-USA, about USD3,000 cheaper than ex-UK

In USD a DONE3 ex-Tokyo is $405 cheaper than one originating in Hungary and $597 cheaper than one originating in Norway. A DONE4 is $10 more expensive in Hungary than from Japan.

Note this changes all the time with currency fluctuations and remember these are BASE fares, before taxes, surcharges and fees.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...4d3715cebd.jpg

Ah, I had forgotten about Hungary
It's a good example of currency fluctuations (in its case devaluation, not appreciation)
The Florint has fallen ~33% against the USD over the last year, thus making ex-Hungary fares more competitive

AS doesn't have trans-Pacific on its own metal for sure, but it has the code-shares with QF.

Old favorite JNB comes in close to OSL
DONE3 5311
DONE4 5825
DONE5 6624
DONE6 7823

To give some idea of the total cost I have booked the following in the past three months (both are 16 segment DONE4s in USD):

Ex-TYO $5,798 + $1,197 = $6,995
Ex-KEF $6,207 + $501 = $6,708

The base fare for TYO is now quite a bit lower. I don't have the full breakdown, but I assume that the taxes and fees are much higher on the ex-TYO routing because there are more BA segments. (BTW, you can get in and out of KEF on AY).

How did you book these?

I did an ex-ARN DONE4 before COVID that surprised me by how low the taxes and fees were, because it had no BA segments. But I usually book with AA, which charges its own and BA's surcharges for sure. I wonder if there are airlines that don't, or that charge less?

Both booked with AA. Ex-KEF surcharges are surprisingly low. Using IB across the pond.

Thanks for the intel/info. ex-Japan had always been kind of high in taxes & airline surcharges. I used CX as first segment in both of my ex-tyo DONE3s. I recall only 1 BA segments in each of those itins. I think QR surcharges are high too (don't know for fact). I usually had many QR segments.

Never thought of ex-KEF. AY is your first segment carrier? Is it seasonal?

KEF-HEL is year round, but only 4 days/week in winter

Can you give your routing ？ Thanks

KEF-HEL-SIN-SYD-AKL-DFW-BOS-ORD-SEA-JNU-SEA-BOS-MAD-MUC, PRG-HEL-KEF

I am Boston based, so really three trips here. Lots of trouble finding D class availability between Europe and SYD. Originally had to start KEF-LHR-BLR-SYD, but HEL-SIN opened up before I ticketed.

Looks like you have 1 ground segment (MUC // PRG).

If you could back track to MUC somehow, you can add MUC-DOH. That way you can try out SkyTrax #1 airlines' QR on B788 & Al Mourjan lounge.