Planning first RTW, how does it look?
 

Hi all,

I'm planning a RTW for myself and my partner for ~6 months next year. I'm new to FlyerTalk and this type of ticket (previously only flown point-to-point L class), but have been devouring all the info on here and elsewhere to try to get up to speed... still learning all the lingo so call me out on anything wrong :D

Currently looking at an ex-OSL LONE4 looking like this (using 's' for surface segment?):
OSL-xHEL-BKK-sHAN-NRT-HAN-sKUL-MNL-SYD-sBNE-xSYD-AKL-LAX-sLAS-MIA-xLHR-OSL
Total 16 segments

Purpose of the trip is to allow for overland travel around South-East Asia, Australasia and California with a short hop to Japan. We are based in London.

So if any of you more experienced flyers have some thoughts on these, am all ears :)

1. Oneworld Explorer seems to fit best. I've briefly looked at StarAlliance and buying individual tickets too. Anything else worth considering?
2. After playing with the https://rtw.oneworld.com/rtw/ tool, positioning to OSL to start is coming up top (presuming that is what 'ex'-OSL refers to :)). Above route is coming up ~£5200, avoiding BA as first flight to reduce the YQ (fuel charges?). Does this route look good, or any glaring problems?
3. I have a few (negligible, ~3.5k) avios with BAEC. I've never really collected miles before, but starting with this trip would like to do so (as will actually be earning some...!). Have read quite a lot on merits of AAdvantage vs BAEC. Wondering whether it makes sense to put the miles in AA instead (future use will be mostly short-haul inter Europe and later another RTW at some point)
4. Related to above, briefly looked at flying same route but in D class, ex-CAI. Would bump the cost to ~£8600 plus positioning. I'm not too swayed by the perks of physically flying business (but haven't tasted it yet so who knows! :p) but trying to figure out if it makes sense from a mile-earning point-of-view to have miles in the bank for future trips. If anyone can shed some light on the mile earning potential of a LONE4 vs a DONE4 that would be awesome. ie. Does it ever make sense to travel D for mile earning potential, to later use on more L flights, versus L all round?

Thank you all, you guys have been a wealth of information already :)

Welcome to FT!

Your route looks okay; you obviously realize that with the surface segments you're leaving several flights that you've paid for on the table. I might be inclined in your position to look at alternatives using cheap local flights to close the "open jaws" such as HAN-BKK or LAS-LAX; this would let you conserve segments that might be more useful elsewhere - look at the Caribbean or Central America for example. But of course it's your call.

Regarding the economy v. business class and its impact on miles/points collection, that too is a judgement call. With a DONE4 you'd have a pretty good chance of achieving elite status in your chosen frequent flyer program; this will be very difficult in flying economy.

Elite status and miles/points really takes me to a point I make to people contemplating long trips like RTWs, using just three words: Make a plan.

By this I mean, consider working up a medium term - say 3 to 5 year - travel plan. Call it a mini-bucket list, or a "blue sky" plan, whatever, and then relate it to your short term travel plans and budgets.

A well crafted business class RTW can result in elite status that makes everyday flying more pleasant - more luggage allowance, lounge access, whatever - but can also result in accumulating enough miles/points that some of your travel can be at very low cost.

An example: although AA's program has recently changed (much for the worse IMO) a few years ago my wife and I instituted a rolling three-year plan that was - for us - a very effective way to travel very comfortably at remarkably low cost. We would buy a DONE4 or DONE5 (usually starting in South Africa) in year one and use it to travel for that calendar year, visiting places on our own priority lists - Africa, Australia, South America, family in Israel, New York and Alaska... all of it in business or first class.

Over that year we'd each earn upwards of 120,000 AA frequent flyer miles (counting elite and class of service bonuses) that we'd then spend in the following year with a limited travel plan - maybe just a return trip to Europe in business class, or a couple of domestic first class trips within the US.

Then in the third year we'd repeat the process. Pay for an RTW for year 3, fly on awards in year 4, and so on. We did several iterations of this.

The result was, counting the 16 segments in the RTW and, say, 4-6 segments using the miles, that we were getting upwards of 20 business- or first class flights over two years at an average cost of something like US$250 or $300 per flight. That's pretty good for Seattle to Chicago, but hard to beat for London to Sydney or New York to Hong Kong.

But each person has to develop his/her own benefit/cost metric. Maybe that works for us but wouldn't for you. The point being, what can it hurt to work up a list of places you'd like to see and then use RTW tickets (and award tickets, and tickets bought on Ryanair or easyJet and...) as one of the tools in your kit to bring it about. Easter Island? Patagonia? Siberia? Easy on an RTW, hard using conventional methods. Dream big.

Again, welcome!

I'm impressed (but not surprised), Gardy. A very rational and well thought out approach. I try to approach my use of the OWE product similarly; but the two monkey wrenches I have to deal with in my planning are that 1) I'm not always in control of my travel schedule, and 2) QR keeps throwing these absurdly low-priced sale fares at me that really would be silly to ignore. Like USD $1,500 BKK-BOS (my commute) RT in J.

OSL-HEL-BKK,HAN-NRT-HAN,KUL-MNL-SYD,BNE-SYD-AKL-LAX,LAS-MIA-LHR-OSL in GC Mapper (may not have go this correct)
And in Mileage Monkey (click ignore errors - MM is not up to date) http://www.slfft.org/mm/award.htm?ow...R-OSL&cabins=y

For max mileage instead LAX,LAS-MIA-LHR people here would go LAX-MIA-LAS-LHR. That is go the long way and not the short most direct way
Similarly SYD,BNE-SYD-AKL-LAX could be re jigged for more miles
From SYD you can get 1 flight number to JFK or DFW (more miles)

That won't fly on an OWE ticket (and neither will you on that route :D). Violates the single transcon rule.

Welcome to FT timbouk

OSL-xHEL-BKK-sHAN-NRT-HAN-sKUL-MNL-SYD-sBNE-xSYD-AKL-LAX-sLAS-MIA-xLHR-OSL

Your itinerary is valid, but could perhaps be improved

Lingo Lesson: not -sXXX rather ,XXX for a surface segment:)

OSL-xHEL-BKK
AY has a daily flight HEL-BKK which is an overnight flight
Maybe instead OSL-xDOH-BKK flying QR. It has a daylight 787 flight OSL-DOH and a number of daily flights DOH-BKK
This would however mean you cannot use the online tool to book (it doesn't handle QR as the first carrier)

S.E. Asia
You are being very wasteful here
Using 5 segments BKK,HAN-NRT-HAN,KUL-MNL
Better would be 3 segments
BKK,KUL-NRT-MNL

Australasia
Why BNE-xSYD-AKL
why not BNE-AKL

North America
Depending on the time you have for your road trip LAX-LAS, maybe return to LAX (we did such a road trip 4 years ago - drove from LA to Las Vegas, and on to the Grand Canyon, then up the central valley to San Francisco and down the magnificent coast road back to LA)

Europe
MIA-xLHR-OSL
You are London-based, so why not stopover there and some time later (up to 12 months after the first flight) finish off by returning to OSL
You are allowed two stopovers in your continent of origin
If you have a spare segment then you could fly LHR-XXX-OSL

For GCMap that's how the system works, but in general ticketing lingo surface segment (or open-jaw) is usually denoted as either // or /-, so your first open-jaw would be BKK//HAN or BKK/-HAN.

There really isn't any reason to use LAX-LAS on a xONE product. Southwest flies there for $39 or you can drive it in 4 hours, which is about how long flying takes when you account for security and the taxi line at LAS.

Do the drive in the evening so you can see the light of Luxor when you make the final turn.

But ... when someone posts a tentative itinerary here and asks for help, what is the first thing most of us do? Paste it into the GCM! Now, it seems to me that people asking for help should make it as easy as possible for the helpers. That's why I would advise against both sHAN and xSYD. Instead, simply use UPPERCASE for stops and lowercase for transits, and if there happen to be any surface segments just mention them. Thus, the OP here could say:

"Hi guys! I'm thinking about OSL-hel-BKK-HAN-NRT-HAN-KUL-MNL-SYD-BNE-syd-AKL-LAX-LAS-MIA-lhr-OSL, with BKK-HAN, HAN-KUL, SYD-BNE and LAX-LAS as surface segments."

Then ... click click ... the GCM tells us with no fiddling about that he's using all 16 segments, totalling 33 728 miles (although the mileage bit isn't as important here as it would be for an xGLOBxx ticket). It also shows us a map to help us visualise where the routing could be tweaked.

Of course, we know -- and a beginner will soon recognise -- that having any surface segments at all (not to mention four !) is foolishly wasteful. Luckily, most people asking for help here -- just as, I presume, most people taking xONEx trips -- don't have any. (Still, it's too bad that something such as ...-AAA//BBB-... doesn't work in the GCM.)

Wow, thanks for the welcome and all the helpful comments! :)

Ah so if I'm understanding correctly (after looking up what an 'open jaw' is :)), you mean to take a flight straight back again on a cheap internal carrier after a surface segment, to then continue on the RTW (effectively removing the surface segment)? Interesting and hadn't thought about it before. I can see it makes total sense from a miles point of view to add extra segments to other places... but don't think we would have enough time to actually explore them! The primary goal is backpacking, mile collection added bonus (but the more I look into it, I don't want to be wasteful either... :P)

I'll look more into this, your strategy for a year-on year-off is very nice! This trip will be the first foray into travelling vs short holidays for us so it is uncharted territory. But even planning it is super exciting so can imagine wanting to do another RTW/long trip in following years.

Dreaming... :)

Haven't seen these tools before, thanks will play around! Long back and forth is interesting, really is maximising miles and flight time (guess the forum is called FlyerTalk :D). We will be hiring a car and driving all around California from LAX to end up in LAS and not flying, so long way doesn't really fit this time but will keep it in mind for future trips (although think I would be knackered from all the extra flying if it was in L class :D)

Cool, good to know :)

Ah great, I'll check out that AY flight. Hadn't seen a direct one there so that would be nice. What is the advantage of the routing via DOH over the OSL-BKK direct?

This is true :) The plan is to land in BKK and then travel (overland) clockwise through Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and back to Thailand. The reason for the jump out to NRT and back is to run the marathon in Tokyo, then pick up where left off on the clockwise path. Was looking at doing NRT and back on a separate ticket, but cost seems fairly high so willing to sacrifice a couple of segments instead :)

BNE-AKL would be great, but didn't see it as an option using the explorer tool...will look again!


Yeah its not a bad shout, might do that and would save on one-way car rental fees as well. The route you drove is pretty much what we're thinking ;)

Had not thought of that, nice idea. Can start planning next trip before even taking this one :D

Cool, again good to know thanks

Yeah that's what we're planning (surface seg), hopefully in a nice convertible of sorts. And yeah, like the idea of arriving evening that would be cool :)

Haha, yeah four is quite a bit isn't it...25% of the ticket :P I am definitely a beginner to all this...but learning fast :) The time between each of the flights (and surface segs) will be several weeks as we'll be travelling bus/train/boat/foot. But will look at rejigging a bit and possibly flying backtrack a little with an internal carrier to remove some of the surface segs.

Again thanks for all the detailed replies. Can see that you lot are points maximising machines :D Have only looked at it from a points angle in the last couple of days, before was just tweaking to bring the cost down (avoiding charges,positioning etc) so more money to spend during travels. But upgrading to D is interesting now too...:eek: Going to spend a while tweaking now... :)

You're only adding a few hours by doing this. See below for a discussion on how to manage start/end points.

Regarding start/end points and timing: Unlike other air ticket products, one of the major features of RTW tickets is that they're valid for a year, and - compared to other types of tickets - can be changed at relatively low cost. This can give you great flexibility in time management and timing.

For example, say you pull the trigger and do a business class RTW beginning in Egypt. Head east and do your walkabout in Asia, Australia/NZ, and North America, then fly home to the UK with, say, six months left on the 12-month clock. You'd still have two stopovers and three flights left available in Europe/Middle East (assuming your first "Europe" segment is something like CAI-xDOH-XXX in order to get to Asia.)

So that's your first Europe stopover. Go back to work or school, whatever, then a few months later, spend a weekend or a week in, say, Italy or Spain or Finland... anywhere in Europe (second stopover) then fly to anywhere in the Middle East - doesn't have to be Egypt, could be Dubai or Israel - to end the trip.

You'll have gotten one "big" trip and a couple of short ones, separated by months, out of the one ticket.

Especially since you're talking about hiring convertibles etc., a big cost-saving consideration is that rental/hire car companies in the US charge enormous one-way or "drop" fees for cars rented in one city and left in another. For the (sorry) stereotypical Brit-in-a-Mustang trip in California/Nevada, this can add hundreds of dollars to the car hire price, a surcharge that can be avoided by returning the car to where you got it.

I was a (stereotypical?) Aussie in a Caddy:D

Your stereotypical behavio(u)r needs some work, but thanks for playing. ;)

Don't forget the inevitable sunburned head. :D

A lot of rental car companies offer specials for one-ways between SoCal and Las Vegas or within California. OP, just do some searches and try different promo codes and you should be OK.

Thanks, I'm going to look into doing something like this this for sure.

Cool, yeah I've seen some of the one way fees. What I might do is drive into Vegas and then back again to LA to save the segment, and use that for the 'second trip' after the long stayover in the UK :)