What you seem to be missing is that there are sub-types of "D" fares (and "A") that you can't see.

Just showing "D" availability does not tell you if it is available to book on an RTW.

Some airlines (such as AA) have different types of 'A' and 'C' inventory, cash and upgrade, but what has been a topic here in recent years is a fairly new issue of point of commencement/origination and maybe type of fare restrictions. It's the same 'A' or 'D' or 'L' inventory but the amount available can be restricted based on where the first flight in the record originates or (possibly) the type of fare. It's more similar to married segment availability than to upgrade vs revenue inventory. It's true that inside the GDS there isn't just the single-letter inventory that we can see using EF or whatever; and this might be the mechanism that us used for implementation, but that's merely a point of interest.

Is this discrepancy between what EF and AA/JL show as D inventory relatated to 'cheap' RTW fares? I wonder if other lower cost originations, such as Hungary/India/S.Korea, have this issue? And it seems to be primarily on JL rather than the other OW airlines.

It would be interesting to try booking these flights in a non-RTW itinerary originating in OSL and the other origins you mention.

I am running into it with QF as well as JL flights..

I first dabbled with our DONE4 almost 9 months ago as the 350 day booking window opened up. Our departure is about 7 weeks away now and I thought I'd share the DONE4 routing and how the single trip will achieve gold status.

The trip should earn us 21,000 TPs and about 100,000 Avios each. Ticketed by QR and points to BAC club, with nufnuf's expert hand, we managed to code share a fair bit into 50% earners. Fare inc taxes £6,300 each.

I used an Amex companion ticket (Y due to holding only blue BA Amex) to get to/from OSL and that cost 26,000 Avios for two tickets (c £130 each at 1p/Avios).

SECTOR # | DEP-DES | METAL/CODESHARE | TP RATE

01 OSL-LHR BA/BA (FARE BASED)
02 LHR-HND JL/JL (50%)
03 HND-SIN JL/JL (50%)
04 SIN-NRT JL/JL (50%)
05 NRT-MEL JL/JL (50%)
06 MEL-CHC QF/QF (25%)

07 CHC-NAN (SURFACE/OTHERS)

08 NAN-LAX FJ/FJ (25%)
09 LAX-JFK AA/AY (50%)
10 JFK-DFW AA/QR (50%)
11 DFW-LAX AA/AY (50%)
12 LAX-LIR AS/AS (25%)
13 LIR-LAX AS/AS (25%)
14 LAX-LHR BA/AY (50%)
15 LHR-DOH QR/QR (50%)
16 DOH-OSL QR/QR (50%)

[QUOTE=spherehopper;37676941]Ticketed by QR and points to BAC club, with nufnuf's expert hand, we managed to code share a fair bit into 50% earners. Fare inc taxes £6,300 each./QUOTE]
Can you share how hard/easy it was to ticket with QR unless you used a travel agent. These codeshares would give me a headache even to attempt to ask AA RTWs agents to do....

As mentioned, nufnuf (of this parish) is a travel agent specialising in these RTW tickets. He guided me when I bought the initial ticket but also pointed me towards code shared flights. I used Flight Connections.com and Expert Flyer to find routes to maximise miles and code shares to earn tier points by mileage, not fare paid.

He sorted the ticket plating and a lot of advice on routing ideas. Take a look at some of his posts, very interesting and showed me the way to fly round the world for the same price as I paid BA directly for a Singapore return last year that didn't even get me silver status when at the end of this trip I will have only flown on one BA flight number (OSL-LHR) yet achieve gold status until April 2028.

I'm already planning the next DONEx.

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/members/nufnuf77.html

it has to do with ‘point of commencement’ that JAL BA IB apply - basically HND DEL will look different is 10 days earlier you have OSL LHR HND in the pnr. And there is NO WAY to simulate that on EF alas!

I don't understand your answer. basically HND DEL will look different is 10 days earlier you have OSL LHR HND in the pnr. Is there a typo or punctuation error?

Talking about DEL. This is the lowest DONE5 fare now that I can fine to start your travel from, together with BOM, KTI. Lower than TYO, OSL or JNB.

DONE fares applied correctly are ideal for requalifications and exploiting market inefficiencies. Just purchased our third RTW to extend emerald on QR with one ticket that will be used for 2027-2028 member year! BA emerald will carry us through April, after which QR emerald will kick in for a year and then another year thanks to flying around the world in comfort for less than 7K USD. I am surprised that even BA status can be gained without spending an arm and a leg - thanks for sharing.

Yes, the "is 10 days" should be "if 10 days," although as I understand it, it's not about what flight(s) are earlier, it's about the airport from which the first flight departs, i.e., the point of origin/point of commencement. It may or may not also be about the type of fare. The poster was asking if a non-RTW ticket that originated in the same location would have the same reduced availability as an RTW originating there.

DEL or ex-India is only the lower than the others you mentioned on base fare. But India has a very substantial 18% GST on business class tickets that makes it less competitive unless it's a lot cheaper to position there vs. Japan, Norway, or South Africa. Same with ex-Pakistan, tax for business class tickets is even higher than India. .

I don't advise buying through the online tool because it'll usually ticket with QF and you can optimize YQ/YR with a travel agent, but you can run a simulation through the tool with similar itineraries and you'll see that ex-India is a bit more expensive than ex-Japan, ex-Norway, and ex-South Africa (though note ex-South Africa you must have a DONE4 or higher, DONE3 isn't possible)

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.

Does anyone happen to know what ticket price is used for this calculation? Does it only apply if you have an ex-India starting point, and then applies to the whole ticket price? Or just the segment that departs India? And presumably it also applies to any segment that departs India mid-Explorer - can anyone share a guide as to how the overall ticket price is broken down for this? I guess that also applies to TP earnings for BA on any BA, AA or IB segments, or indeed any other reason why an individual price is needed...

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
Fred

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

no, seoul is more than tokyo.

it's a DONE4, and original route--and I wish I knew how to insert my GCM screenshot--was as follows:
OSL-DOH-LAX-ANC-SEA-ICT-DFW-HND-SGN-NRT--SIN-NRT-MEL--AKL-DOH-OSL
I started Aug31, paused in ICT (work), and had originally planned and had confirmed flights for resuming trip on Feb 16. If you plug that in to GCM, take the total mileage, and using LP Calculator just use one of the 3 airlines, status exp, and it will spit out the toral. I'd do it but I'm one finger texting on my phone.
However, I had 280000+ LPs so wanted the LPs I'd earn to credit toward status for 2027. I won't bore you with the many stumbling blocks re availability--there are a lot of posts addressing that. I'm in Singapore, and will make my award flight home, but my TA is still trying to optimize points.
I'd tried to generate a discussion about maximizing points in this thread, but many thought ill of my post, perhaps a misunderstanding--I'm not known for being particularly concise and articulate.

Thanks for sharing. I really appreciate it! I also think it's disappointing that there weren't a lot of people that were interested in the maximization of points and that's something that I would totally be interested in. I'd also be interested in people generally sharing itineraries like this and what their out the door totals were including fuel, surcharges and taxes.

Nice. May I ask how much you paid above base fare for this? And when? I assume airline fuel surcharges are rather higher now be a few weeks ago. May make exTYO more attractive again if I am correct on that limiting such charges

He was talking BA TP earnings (50% of miles flown on QR/AY/JL) and you're talking AA earnings

And that is why IMHO such discussions belong in their own thread (ideally one thread per ff program), not in the booking/pricing experiences thread.

FYI, APD increase for UK.
Ignore the 3rd column "Higher rate".. but charges are going way up nonetheless.
I think we all do our best to avoid UK APD but for those that choose not to...
https://www.gov.uk/government/public...-31-march-2027

With all due, and true, respect to the 5 who disagree (posting legends all), I have been participating in this thread and it's precursors since 2009 when planning my first xONEx. At some point a mod, I think maybe Gardyloo, consolidated several related threads into this one. A wise move, and along with PandaPerhs sub, it has been invaluable to me. It's a sticky most importantly, but the traffic has never been so overwhelming or off base that I couldn't follow along and maybe learn something I didn't know I needed to know. A separate post about each. possible combination of plating airline and crediting FF program would likely disappear pretty quickly. Seriously, I have intended to be helpful with this discussion, and believe I've been at least partially successful. Peace, all.

Honestly, it was a year ago, and I don't recall which CC I used. But I can say I was not shocked as I was with my ex CAI--25% fees and taxes on that one. I booked the ex Cairo through AA's RTW desk, this one with a TA.


update
dutch_122 messaged me and reported that at the time of purchase ticket cost 5701 Euro. Higher now due currency fluctuation.

@skipaway;, may I ask how much your TA charges for handling RTW bookings? (Initially plus ticket reissues, etc.)

Minimising tax and surcharges
 

Finally got my itinerary booked and floored with the taxes! Anyone with ideas on how to reduce taxes on this route:
OSLxLHR(BA)-PER(QF)-MEL(QF)-SYD(QF)-TBU(QF)-SYD(QF)-HKG(QF)-ICN(CX)-DFW(AA)-CUN(AA)-MIA(AA)-ATL-DOH(QR)-JNB(QR)-LHR(BA)-OSL(BA)

Thanks In advance!