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

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:

AlanT's tentative RTW itinerary

Happy Planning!

Off topic
Who won?

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