Long time lurker, first time poster. I'm about to fly DONE3 out of Tokyo and I have a quick question — in general which airline is a good choice to have ticket it? Must it be the first airline I fly (likely JL) or can I choose any airline in the itinerary? JL seems competent (if a little hard to reach), but they charge an additional US$50 fee to issue the ticket or do date changes, and it seems like at least AA does not.

Avoid QF ticketing it at all costs if you ever hope to make any changes. Aside from that, the other flights on the itinerary will determine your options and consideration of where you're crediting the miles to. Good to know about JL's $50 ticketing and change fee, one more reason to avoid ticketing with them. Seems CX may be trying to charge for date changes too now according to one report somewhere on FT.

As an example: AA would be the least advantageous to ticket with if you're trying to maximize AAdvantage miles earned. Any AA flights would almost certainly earn based on revenue (which is even more of a slap in the face on a RTW since they're only a small % of total mileage and therefore the % of the ticket price assigned), and AA won't ticket their own metal flights on partner codeshare, so you can't get around the revenue issue by booking AA flights on BA, IB, AY, QR, QF, etc. codes which are much better earners. But if you're crediting to any other program than AAdvantage then that issue doesn't matter nearly as much, if at all. I don't know yet how IB treats RTW tickets on IB flights since they are also revenue based now and presumably BA will go that way soon too, but for now at least BA still credits for miles flown.

Will the online tool or AA RTW desk allow to pay in Argentine pesos (official rate that will be converted to close to the blue rate from Visa) if originating out of EZE?

Note that EF would not even price out in ARS.
It does show base fares in US$. For a DONE$, Base Fare ex-EZE is US$10,229. I am looking at it now.

Same, AA doesn't have an ARS fare at all in EF. BA does so I built a sample itinerary with LHR as the first stopover to see how it would price but it still priced in USD on the OneWorld site. You'd have to talk with a local travel agent in Argentina to see what they come up with. The BA fare on EF is just the USD price converted to the official rate, so you could cut quite a few $$ off of that 'if' a local agent could actually issue the ticket in ARS. However a lot of points of origin with volatile currencies, the fare is actually priced in USD and I suspect Argentina could be the same, I couldn't find anything in the fare rules disallowing ARS but I think you'll need a travel agent to really dig into it.

BTW, even if you could get it priced in ARS and pay at the Visa pseudo-Blue rate you wouldn't have a significant savings over ex-TYO, CAI, and OSL. So while a good idea, the USD base price for ex-EZE is so exorbitant that it eats away at the potential savings.

Hi all rtw experts here,

Did 3 ex-Japan DONE3/4 pre pandemic, all booked via old online tool so I was familiar with its quirks, using it to plan reroutings to make changes easier with CX (my issuing airline each time) whenever I needed.

1) Just started using new online tool which is buggy as hell especially when it comes to flight selection - is there a better system or alternative for a non travel agent to be able to check these RTW tickets down to the available flight level?
2) Since the online tool is buggy - is flight availability accurate? I wanted to fly TYO-DFW as a first segment and was unable to find any direct flights on the online tool, but JAL online had business class availability for quite a few days around my target departure.
3) after a while I did manage to price up a ticket on the tool that directed me to book via JAL reservations desk. Is waittime for JAL very long, particularly to reach someone who can handle RTW in English? I also recall someone post JAL had some rebooking surcharge of 5000 yen - is that on top of another fee for rerouting the ticket? I was used to paying 125usd for CX on reroutings and 0 for changing flight dates.

Reverting to the ex-CAI issue I see that RJ is still offering fares at a reasonable price. I wondered whether people had much experience of RJ's customer service, in particular when there are itinerary changes?

The other reason to be cautious for this Brit is that as a UK Amex/BA card holder I would lose the triple Avios bonus in addition to access to the BA GGL line to deal with the booking.

Thanks.

Might be worth pricing out ex-OSL instead if you want to ticket on BA, since BA has dropped ex-CAI entirely.

Hey all

Hope you don't mind - but just giving this a bump. Really grateful for any thoughts from any FT'ers on these two points (itinerary can be found in original post).

Thank you so much in advance!

It’s a little hard to follow exactly what you are doing but a stopover in DOH is a stopover in your continent of origin. So your stopover in LHR when combined with your stopover in DOH is the sum total of your allowed stopovers in EUR/ME. Your proposed stopovers in CDG and in some Italian destination are not possible.

Informational and questions at bottom. "Gardyloo" has assisted me (I have been a real PITA to him but he has helped me understand greatly) as a virgin/newbee of RTW. I prepared an itinerary which I cannot use due to scheduling. But it is:
OSL-DOH-MLE Feb 6 QR176 (D9) QR676 (D9)
MLE-CMB Feb 11 UL116 (D4)
CMB-CGK Feb 16 UL364 (D4)
CGK-KUL Feb 23 MH710 (D7)
KUL-HKG-PER Feb 28 CX730 (D6) CX171 (D6)
PER-MEL-AKL Mar 7 QF10 (D4) QF155 (D4)
AKL-SYD-HNL Mar 20 QF 148 (D7) QF103 (D7)
HNL-LAX Mar 23 AA162 (D7)

LAX-JFK April 22 AA28 (D7)
JFK-MXP April 23 AA198 (D7)
MXP-DOH-OSL April 29 QR128 (D9) QR175 (D9)

16 Segments 38,282 miles estimated BA tier points 1640

Asked AA RTW for pricing and never received info. However did pull up on site pricing of $8270.05 pp. YQ was $2212.80. Base $5405 balance is little stuff.

Questions:
1. If I replace any/some QF with AA code shares will YQ be reduced?
2. Any other ways someone sees to reduce YQ
3. For 1640 tier pts/38K miles, is it reasonable for this rtw fare?
4. Is this realistic price for the route?
5. Is there a benefit not showing BA FF# or trying to post different FF# on some flights to secure 1500 on BA and balance someplace else- like AS or QF?

Thanks again to Gardyloo and those with some patience to assist me.

[QUOTE=SSY;35387041]Hi all rtw experts here,
1) Just started using new online tool which is buggy as hell especially when it comes to flight selection - is there a better system or alternative for a non travel agent to be able to check these RTW tickets down to the available flight level?
2) Since the online tool is buggy - is flight availability accurate? I wanted to fly TYO-DFW as a first segment and was unable to find any direct flights on the online tool, but JAL online had business class availability for quite a few days around my target departure.]

I'm far from an expert--I have many more questions than answers, but I did manage to book a DONE3 recently with AA RTW desk by using a combination of FlightConnections (paid version) and Expert Flyer (also a subscription). The former shows direct flights between any city pair and you can filter for oneworld. The latter will give you fare availability (L, D, or A depending on desired class of service). It was laborious but I found a route and a flight for each segment, called and just fed flight numbers to the RTW agent. I would happily pay a travel agent to do this if I could be certain they would be available to handle changes, both inflicted and desired.

1. I used the old online tool which seemed to like 80% work, and then to finesse things I used the paid ExpertFlyer subscription, searching in D class ±2 days.
2. Nah it's not particularly accurate. In my case the online tool was lacking some options (codeshares, I think) that I could see in ExpertFlyer and the AA agents confirmed were available.
3. I used JAL to ticket mine pre-pandemic in English and didn't have to wait long at all. However, yes, JAL charges an extra ¥5500 to book or change a ticket, on top of the $0 for date charges or $125 for reroutings. I called AA to ticket it and it was a really great experience — they were fast, professional, and super quick to get ahold of, and there are no extra service charges. (I think I read that AA will issue the ticket only if you have a transoceanic flight with them; I have one from LAX to LHR.) Also note that if you create a JAL itinerary via the online tool, the AA RTW desk can see it but can't ticket it — they need to replicate it and D class may be sold out because you're already holding the seats!

[QUOTE=skipaway;35398651]When you mention JL having business class availability near your target dates, I'm assuming you used ExpertFlyer and confirmed that's actually D availability, correct? It's not uncommon of them to not have any D availability on Long Haul near holiday periods. AA is usually much better and I'm surprised you weren't about to find anything on the AA flights from NRT or HND.

You're correct the online tool is quite buggy but you should be able to at least get pricing (in most cases) and availability. I've personally not ran into any issues with it not showing availability that I've found in EF myself. One thing that might be affecting you is married segments. When you search in EF for D availability you have to search for the entire flight combo (example HND-DFW-MEX), just because HND-DFW and DFW-MEX both have availability separately won't matter, to book it as a connection you have to have married segment availability unless you build in a stopover (over 24 hours in DFW). I've found this to be very problematic with AA, QF, and QR, though I'm sure others do it as well.

[QUOTE=dvs7310;35400226]I didnt use EF then, just the website so did not see if it was D availability. But online tool was so buggy to allow me to see and select some AA direct flights that wouldnt show up initially only after changing dates but then that also stopped working so I gave up and booked via AA RTW desk. First time using them, great to know this option now with mostly competent humans without much wait. Ended up booking DONE3 TYO-DFW-LAX-SEA-NYC-CLT-MUC-MAD-CPH-DOH-HKG-SIN-TYO, with NYC-CLT-MUC and CPH-DOH-HKG booked separately but could easily be booked as transit but I just don't have that many more travel ideas to squeeze more legs at the moment so am open to any ideas. I think I can squeeze another leg in US and Europe, each?