help with rtw ...
 

Does anyone have the patience to help me with this? I've tried self help on the BA and oneworld websites but to no avail. I confess I haven't tried calling them yet, but hoping to get some guidance from some gracious flyertalker ...

This is the framework of an itinerary I need to arrange for Oct/Nov this year, in business:

origin/return from WAS (don't mind IAD, DCA or BWI)

first stop LON for a few days

second stop SIN for a few days

then, in no particular order at the moment, I need to make stops in SGN, BKK, PNH, KUL, PEK and maybe POM.

penultimate stop CGK before returning to WAS

What's the best way to do this? I tried the general RTW, but I see these various regional or limited continent options which look more applicable, but when I try a sample itinerary it kicks me out or says too many stops. Any input much appreciated, and bearing in mind I am a neophyte, any easy (non jargon) explanation of the system is really welcome.

None of the oneworld rtw products allows more than 4 flights in a continent outside North America (where the maximum is 6), so you won't be able to do all that Asia stuff simply within a RTW ticket. However, several of those Asian cities are connected by low cost carriers (I include MH in this definition these days on the grounds that it's cheap, even though it's still a full service carrier) which you could just do as side trips to the RTW ticket. SIN, KUL and BKK are all good hubs for the other Asian places (as is HKG).

All of the alliance-based RTW products (Oneworld, Star and Skyteam) are very rules-intensive, particularly with respect to routing conventions. In the case of Oneworld (which most of us feel is the best product line) the two RTW products - the Oneworld Explorer (continent-based) and the Global Explorer (mileage-based) limit the number of flights you can take in any one continent - four for all except six for North America. Your Asia plans would involve five or six flights (or more) and thus would be ineligible.

As christep says, you could easily break away from the RTW in some city like Singapore, Bangkok or KL and use LCC or separately bought flights to bounce around the region, then resume the RTW and use the remaining RTW segments as you choose. That of course would add to the cost of the overall trip.

Now the Star Alliance RTW products don't have as many restrictions on the number of flights you can take in a given region (although all alliance RTWs are limited to 16 flights total.) So your SE Asia plans could probably work using various Star members (Star is much more well represented in Asia than Oneworld.) However, Star's RTW products are mileage-limited, and are generally considerably more expensive than Oneworld's.

And here another very important aspect of RTW travel comes into play. RTW tickets are priced differently depending on where the trip starts and ends. For example, a three-continent business class Oneworld Explorer (which is what you'd need - North America, Europe and Asia) starting and ending in the USA costs $9699 before taxes and airline fees. The same ticket starting in Canada costs $7830, in Dublin $7168 and in Oslo $6213. Can you get from Washington to Oslo and back for $3300? (All in USD by the way.)

Star Alliance RTWs cost more from most countries. A 29,000 mile business class *A ticket starting in the US comes in at $10,360, from Canada $8280 and $7672 from Ireland or most of the Euro countries.

So in either scenario you'd save a lot of money buying and starting the ticket in Canada instead of the US. While the Canadian Star trip would allow you to hit most of your Asia targets, the $450 difference in base price might get washed by fares you could find with LCCs using the Oneworld ticket. And with a maximum of 29,000 miles (the cheapest tier) you'd pretty well use up all your eligible miles by the time you got back to the origin point.

But by limiting the number of Asia flights with the Oneworld ticket (due to the rules) you'd end up with many more flights available in the overall ticket. These could be used within North America following the end of the Asian part of the trip. Oneworld limits you to two stopovers within the continent of origin, so if you wanted to optimize the possibilities for using the ticket within NA, you'd have to buy it somewhere else.

But that might be worth it. Say you bought a ticket originating in Norway, then flew a route like this - OSL-LHR-SIN-KUL-CGK-HKG-PEK-DFW-IAD and then took a break. Then, up to months later, used the ticket for some domestic travel, then ended up back in Norway within 12 months of the first flight, something like this - IAD-MIA-IAD-DFW-LAX-IAD-LHR-OSL. That would give you significant domestic travel on the one ticket, which would probably more than offset the cost differential of the additional tickets in Asia and/or the additional cost of flying with Star Alliance instead.

Lots of information here, maybe confusing, but there's good value in these products once you get the hang of it, and relate RTW tickets to a broader travel plan than just one trip.

Wow! I'm blown away by the thoughtful and detailed responses. It's looking pretty tough and confusing, though, to try to do this the way I want. I may be better off taking a roundtrip WAS-SIN ticket with a stop offer in London en route (or, if feasible an open jaw to return from CGK) and then deal with all the Asian travel on separate tickets, as suggested. I'm going to be doing a lot of travel in a new job going forward, so another combination of stops may make the RTW make more sense.

I had thought, however, that I had read somewhere that if you buy a transpacific roundtrip, there are some tour around Asia deals you can add on - does that sound familiar to anyone?

See:
https://www.oneworld.com/flights/single-continent-fares
https://www.oneworld.com/flights/mul...h-west-pacific

sounds promising - thank you so much ... again!