Your second arrival and departure IS for travel between the Southwest Pacific and Europe/Middle East - AKL-KUL and DEL-DOH
So, it looks OK to me

Oh ok, so it doesn't matter that there are long stopovers in Asia, as long as I'm ultimately arriving from Southwest Pacific and leaving to Europe/Middle East (with regards to the 2nd entry/exit)?

That's great, one less thing to wonder about! Thanks for the clarification!

Just an update - I finally got ticketed this morning.

I gave up on BA and called AA RTW desk who were incredibly helpful and unpicked the mess BA had made. They instantly spotted that it was the US continental legs that were making it an invalid booking as pandaperth said and sorted me out with a London to Sydney flight via DOH.

Base price of the ticket from Oslo came to £5,565 and with taxes etc it came to £7,353

Thank you so much for all of your help - I literally couldn't have done it without this thread!

That base price seems a bit high. Are you sure that's not USD pricing as the numbers are closer to the current USD pricing of $5,489 based on NOK base pricing of 57,959 NOK. Based on the NOK rate, current GBP base pricing should be around £4,589.

That was my initial thought. Base price seems very high.

That was my initial thought. Base price seems very high.

A few weeks ago, wasn't a DONE5 ex-CAI circa USD5500? It's now USD4700 and USD4570 for a DONE4.

This is intriguing
Interest in ex-CAI RTW fares was rekindled in early Feb - [MENTION=873896]PO48RA[/MENTION] posted that the base fare for a DONE4 was USD4664 (see Post #1113)
Other posts at that time indicated that the base fares were in EGP (e.g. post #1119 told us the DONE5 base fares was EGP145,000)
But then early this month the fares were being quoted in USD, and were higher (DONE4 for USD5220 for example; I actually made a note of these fares on March 8th, but didn't note which OW airline's fares I was looking at)
And now the fares have reverted to being quote in EGP and are the same as they were before the change to USD

Note: I used experflyer to look up the current fares. It displays the fares in the currency you choose, but if you click on the routing rules (!) for a fare, you can see what currency has been filed for the fare

BUT the bottom line is - these fares are a bargain!

I believe QR is filing the fare in USD, BA and AT are not filing one, while all other oneworld carriers are filing the fare in EGP.

The EGP has continued to trend lower against the US dollar over the last month and the fare when converted to dollars is lower also.

Interesting. On ExpertFlyer, a DONE5 with QR is USD5370. With QF it's USD4700.

This has been the case the last few weeks I have been checking prices.

You're absolutely right: for clarity, this is what I was charged:Base Fare
£4,606.00Taxes
£2,469.99Carrier-imposed fees
£277.00Total (all passengers)
£7,353.89

”Taxes” more than 50% of the fare?? Something isn’t right.

That is what I'm finding for all my international flights lately. Biz class tix price is $1500 and carrier imposed fees $1700 to Madrid and for and for another flight to Berlin carrier imposed fees also $1700 but that base fare is $5200. The fees are totally insane especially when they are HIGHER than the actual ticket cost.

I'm playing around with a DONEx ex CAI, and running into something that I can't understand. If I'm reading the rules correctly, Europe and Middle East are considered one continent. So my first stop from Cairo was going to be DOH. EF is showing several daily flights on QR between CAI and DOH, although it looks like these only offer first class and economy, not business. There's plenty of L availability. The rules say I can travel in a lower class of service if I purchase business and it is not offered or not available.

The OWE booking tool says: For the date you selected, we were unable to find any availability, please select an alternate day.

Am I missing something here, or is this a weird tool bug?

My understanding is that you can book into first class "A" inventory on these flights, just as used to be the case back when AA used first class inventory codes on domestic two-class flights.

AA's rule says:

QR's rule says:

The tool is buggy,

Thanks for this. The tool seems to just not see any of the QR non-stop flights CAI-DOH. It lets me get to "choose flights" if I pick first class, but even then only shows me connecting options.

Is there a different online booking tool where I can play with pricing? I know the base price ex CAI but I'm just trying to figure out ballpark cost with all the fees and taxes tacked on, as I know that can add a few thousand dollars to the cost.

The tool is quite terrible as you've seen, if you know your routing is valid (even if you can find the flights you want selecting economy etc.) then you can use ITA Matrix to find the exact flights you want and get the tax values there then sum them in a spreadsheet.

Painful process but works okay - that said I did the same thing and AA RTW desk came back with a lower price than I calculated

And which carrier tickets it can make a big difference as well.

You can try playing with Matrix to price various flights in simple combinations that matrix will price, then ignore the fare and look at the YQ/YR carrier surcharges, then add those together. You can also try posting here and asking [MENTION=77686]ernestnywang[/MENTION] to check prices, see post 1102.

As far as the Tool is concerned, it always used to be the case that the first flight on an xONEx could not be on QR. Has that changed?

I think the tool still dislikes the first flight being on QR, to be successful in pricing. What I did for my last 2 DONEx with ex-OSL (first flight OSL-DOH) RTW, I verified that my itineraries were correct (or close to it), then called AA RTW Desk. AA did not have any problem getting them priced and ticketed. Subsequently, whenever I wanted to make changes, I called AA again. Not a problem whatsoever.

Hi all.

looking for a little guidance or confirmation as I will be making my first, and likely only, OneWorld RTW ticket purchase later this year for trip in Oct/Nov 24.

It’s a special trip (retirement or partial anyway) in Business and we intend it to be a bit of a TP run as well to retain our Gold BAEC status.

It will be about a month give or take few days.

It appears starting in Oslo will give best value so outline routing (after playing on the tool) is:

OSL>LAX>NYC(JFK/EWR)>HNL(via LAX or other)>HND/NRT>SIN>HOB>AKL/WLG>JNB>OSL(via DOH?)

Hopefully that will maximise the TPs.

1. What do you recommend the best way to book this is?

2. Do BA holidays have access to these fares so potentially I could book it as a holiday package?

3. When is the optimum time to book it, I guess 11 months out?

4. Anything else a newbie might wish to know?

TIA.

G'Day AlanT

and congratulations on reaching retirement, and for planning a RTW to celebrate!. I retired 8 years ago and also celebrated with a RTW (ex-CPT) :). I am now on my 5th post-retirement RTW, so I warn you - they are addictive.

To address your 4th question - I suggest you read the wiki to the User Guide
Feel free to keep asking us questions, we're a friendly bunch :D

Happy planning!

ps I would write more now, but I'm off to a pub here in Cyprus - to watch the Man U vs Everton Game. "Come on you blues!!"

You might consider a trial subscription to Expert Flyer. I find it invaluable in RTW planning. I use it to look up routes between any two places, and each potential flight. When I plan an RTW, I want to maximize the enjoyment of the flights as well as the places to visit. For a business class RTW, I want nice, long flights in a better-quality business class. Just for example, rather than LAX-HNL, I'd do LAX-DFW-HNL, because DFW-HNL is a widebody with much nicer seats. I also want flights at convenient times (no short overnight flights, no early-morning flights unless it's a connection where I won't leave the airport). I often build in overnight connections of around 18-28 hours between very long flights, so I can sleep in a hotel, but that adds time so I don't always do it. When connecting in LHR (or anywhere in the U.K.), keep each connection under 24 hours to avoid incurring the UK APD.

An RTW can have 16 flights; I recommend choosing each flight or set of flights carefully. For example, there is no OneWorld nonstop flight from OSL to LAX. The most common routing would be OSL-LHR-LAX, with LHR-LAX on BA or AA. Instead, I'd recommend OSL-DOH-LAX for longer flights, with DOH-LAX in Qsuite, and to avoid BA, which has high surcharges.

When crediting to AA, which airline's flight number is on a flight makes a big difference in earnings. If BA is the same, you might consider booking some flights as codeshares. Expert Flyer will show you the possibilities. When searching for flights, set the airline control to "OneWorld". Also use the Flight Timetable query, or the Flight Availability query with the day control set to "+/1 3 days" because some flights may only operate certain days of the week, and you don't want to not know about them.

The easiest booking option would likely be the AA RTW desk, but you might also consider JAL. I used them for my current RTW and found them a bit lower on surcharges than AA.

A lot of destinations for only a month. What places will you actually stop at?
Many of those airports do not have a non stop OW flight. Much work needed to establish who fly's where.
Expert flyer is good. The wikipedia entry for a airport can give airlines & routes. But not always up to date or list routes announced, but not yet flown. Is a starting point for more research.
A map from the Great Circle Mapper - Great Circle Mapper

HOB = Hobart, TAS, Australia- IATA code HBA.
No OW non stop flights SIN-HBA. Will need to be via BNE/SYD/MEL/PER.
From HBA to AKL the only non stop flight is by Air New Zealand, so not eligible. Nothing HBA-WLG. So need to fly QF HBA to AKL/WLG via BNE/SYD/MEL.
From SYD/MEL to HBA can be cheap to buy (short distance) so may be poor value using the limited 16 flights allowed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobart_Airport

AKL/WLG to JNB will need to be via SYD on QF.

You have 12 months to complete. With careful selection you can do the last few flights a the end. I did a RTW and had a "9 month stopover" at home. Effectively got to another expensive destination for the cost of a separate cheap cash one way domestic flight (rules on trip starting / ending).

At times getting the D (business) flights can be hard, as airlines limit the availability of these fare booking classes.
All the best for your research

Hi again AlanT

I’ve been playing around with your proposed itinerary, and here are some thoughts for you (to do with as you please:)).

Firstly I agree with everything [MENTION=40177]anabolism[/MENTION] said – especially about maximising the good-quality business long-haul experience; QR has been rated best of breed for the last couple of years so you should aim to have a few flights with them. I place CX and JL on the second rank, then long-haul BA and AA then the rest.

Starting Point: In addition to Norway, Hungary and Egypt are also good starting points in Europe/Middle East (both their currencies have fallen against hard currencies – i.e. USD/GBP/EUR). An advantage of starting in Egypt is that you can end anywhere in the Middle East, no need to return to Egypt if you don’t want to.

Transit/Stopover points.
Some of your segments do not have direct Oneworld flights between the origin and destination, so you will need to transit or stopover somewhere:

OSL-LAX – anabolism’s suggestion of OSL-DOH-LAX is excellent imho
NYC-HNL – you are allowed only one transcontinental flight in North America, which you have already used (LAX-NYC) so you cannot fly directly back to the west coast. NYC-DFW-HNL is the obvious choice.
SIN-HBA (Hobart) – something like SIN-MEL-HBA on Qantas
HBA-AKL – something like HBA-SYD-AKL
AKL-JNB – the obvious choice is AKL-SYD-JNB with Qantas, BUT you could instead do AKL-DOH-JNB with Qatar! Qatar flies to quite a few African destinations, any of which could be substituted for JNB.
JNB-OSL – either JNB-DOH-OSL, or JNB-LHR-OSL with BA.

Duration: One month seems too short imho. One possibility is to defer the African portion. Assuming you are UK-based, you could return from AKL to LHR, stopover for a time and then go to Africa. Something like:

AKL-DOH-LHR…..LHR-JNB-DOH-OSL, or
AKL-HKG-LHR….LHR-CPT-DOH-OSL

The ‘Ticket Tricks” section of the User Guide I referred in my earlier post has some suggestions for splitting a RTW trip into multiple holidays

Here’s a map where I put it all together:
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...5910b38fdb.gif
AlanT's tentative RTW itinerary

Happy Planning!

Off topic
Who won?:)

Sadly, the mighty blues went down 2-0 to the red devils :mad:
(if you don't know - that means Man U beat Everton)

QR also flys to CPT & DUR in South Africa. As a former resident of JNB (for ~2 years) any thing is better than Jo'burg.
The QR AKL flight currently flys AKL-(ADL)-DOH. They used to fly AKL-DOH non stop..

To maximise ff earnings going from the extreme of 1 continent to extreme/middle of the next is better than taking the shortest flight between continents. Example for North America to Oceania (AU/NZ) on QF JFK-(AKL)-SYD is better earning than HNL-SYD but the same 1 segment. (JFK-AKL-SYD earns as JFK-SYD as is 1 flight number)
A map from the Great Circle Mapper - Great Circle Mapper

My BOLD.
Agree, great suggestion. I had completed 2 ex-OSL DONE4. Once I used OSL-DOH-SFO, to get home to my home part.
Next time, I did OSL-DOH-LAX (also went home to SFO, but on a separate award tic).

EF is an excellent tools for planning a xONEx.
I use it also to get an estimate of what taxes, YQ/YR etc....

I do a lot of RTWs where I stop in each place for only three days. If it's our first time, it's enough to get a feel for the place and if we want to go back, and if we've been before then we know where we want to go. But that's based on doing an RTW each year.

Expert Flyer has a timetable query that's very helpful for this, although if you have a date range in mind, then the flight availability query works fine. For advance planning (more than 331-360 days ahead), I'll pick dates in the same month a year earlier, to get an idea if flights might be seasonal. The timetable query includes the start and end dates of a flight (although these may be extended). When using the flight availability query, as mentioned the "alliance" drop-down allows limiting to OneWorld flights. When using the timetable query, use the filter in the results window to deselect all airlines, then select the OneWorld ones. Be aware that in some cases, a flight may be available as a OneWorld airline code but operated by a non-OneWorld airline. Such cases might not earn anything, check the details of the frequent flyer program you will credit to.

I always go home at least once on an RTW, often twice, on occasion three times.

I agree, although I place BA pretty far down, because of the risk of getting their old Club World, which are dreadful seats.

This is a great option, although as i mentioned, stopping anywhere in the U.K. for 24 hours or longer will incur the UK APD, which is expensive. You might consider stopping just outside the U.K. (e.g., DUB) and taking a side flight or even surface transportation, although I personally never want to waste a segment, so what I usually do is to pick a place I'm stopping anyway, and get positioning flights from there to my home and back. E.g., on my current RTW, I originally planned to stop in DOH for six months, with positioning award flights from there to my home and back, but QR has dramatically reduced business class award availability, so instead I moved the six-month stop to LIS, and purchased a business class round trip from there to the U.S. and back. (It cost about half of what the same trip from the U.S. to LIS costs.)

This is an excellent point. One thing to be aware of is that QF offers direct flights between LHR and SYD (they make a stop in SIN but it's only one segment).

How do you use EF to estimate taxes and carrier surcharges? I know some people use matrix.itasoftware.com for that, although that shows what the operating carrier charges, not what an RTW ticketing airline charges.

Hi all.

Wow! Thanks for all the info and suggestions. I need a bit of time to go through it all and will reply in a bit more detail when I’ve done it.

But that’s really helpful and it looks like I have lots more homework ahead of me!:)

Just wanted to add regarding YQ/taxes. one of the things thats allowed on RTW is to book any codeshare even if not connecting. booking things on JAL/CX etc significantly reduces YQ. OWE tool defaults usually to ticketing on first segment airline (and QR/BA/AA/QF all have high YQ), BUT You can get it JAL ticketed for much lower YQ.

It seems to me also a lot of places to visit in a short period. It only takes one bad overnight flight, one misrouted bag, or one missed connection to ruin a day, and make your wish you were back in your own bed at home. If you are a road warrior -- you know the game: enjoy it, take those inevitable knocks on the chin. But make sure your travel partner is on board with this plan!

I don't think RTW fares deliver best £/TP. I'd be looking to make everything as comfy as possible, and if I needed more TPs, I'd just have to book another trip later in the year. :-)

I wouldn't sweat it about UK APD. Yes it's £191, but avoiding it by breaking your journey in Dublin or Paris can incur its own costs (extra hotel night, transfers to/from hotel, meals, drinks, separate flights to LHR -- doesn't leave you with a lot of change from £191). So maybe it makes sense to avoid the APD, maybe it doesn't, but don't assume you've saved £191 by doing so.

I'll also add, internal QF flights are very cheap for Avios redemptions. So you may find it more logical to do SIN-SYD-AKL, and book a separate SYD-HBA-SYD ticket on QF using your BAEC points.

Codeshares and which airline tickets are separate, although both may affect carrier surcharges (YQ/YR). I've been able to book any codeshare for international flights, but not for domestic flights (which makes sense because of regulatory constraints).

Yup - they are separate, but both affect pricing. eg those collection BA/Avios can find loads of BA codeshares but the YQ seem to grow significantly

Wow, that is good to know. Thanks for sharing.