I finally have my first OneWorld Award ticket lined up. It only took three months to get everything lined up. I knew I was going to have to start early, but what an ordeal.

After calling several times and getting people who didn't know anything about these tickets I finally found a wonderful lady to help me out. We just kept on scheduling times for her to call me since I couldn't call AA and get her. If somehow we crossed paths she would either call back until we connected again or we would dset a new time by voicemail.

I was even told that this itinerary was now being used as a training example for new people to the international ticketing.

The challenges we ran into were some of the limits on the award, they are: 50,000 mile limit, max of one open jaw, max of twice through any one city. One of the big deals was that the only way to get to Papeete, Tahiti was to go to Santiago, Chile. I finally had to give up Tahiti. Darn.

So what is this crazy itinerary? SEA-DFW-MIA-LHR-NBO-overland-CPT-JNB-MAD-BCN-
CAI-LHR-BOM-BKK-HKG-SIN-DPS-DRW-CNS-ADL-MEL-HBA-SYD-CHC-AKL-EZE-SCL-IPC-SCL-
CCS-SJU-DFW-SEA.

Hear are the stops I'll be making. SEA-NBO-overland-CPT-BCN-CAI-BOM-BKK-HKG-
SIN-DPS-DRW-CNS-ADL-MEL-HBA-SYD-CHC-AKL-IPC-SCL-CCS-SJU-SEA.

I'll be taking a full year to do this with the first six months being the part up to BCN and the last 6 months covering the rest. Pretty insane, but what the heck.

You mean that when you buy a RTW ticket you can only fly up to 50,000 miles??

------------------
Thank you for your TIME!!
Eric!
P.L.U.R.
Outer Space Awaits Our Presents All Eternity Is Our Playground�

No -- award travel is currently limited to 50,000 miles.

--Jim

Thanks!
Do you still get miles or an Award Flight??


------------------
Thank you for your TIME!!
Eric!
P.L.U.R.
Outer Space Awaits Our Presents All Eternity Is Our Playground�

Welcome to FlyerTalk!

No, miles cannot be earned on award travel.

FewMiles..

------------------
FlyerTalkers' Resources on the Web: http://home.webflyer.com/fewmiles/
Unofficial Guide to AAdvantage: http://home.webflyer.com/fewmiles/AA/
oneworld comparison chart 2001: coming soon

mcrt,

I am completely jealous. Looks like an awesome trip, and thanks for posting the "gotchas". Have a fabulous time, and don't forget to write to AA to compliment that wonderful lady and to send her postcards from the road--I am sure she's going to appreciate it quite a lot.

[This message has been edited by hillrider (edited 04-04-2001).]

Is the "max of one open jaw" rule in writing anywhere, or is this just one of those "rules" that some overzealous busybody agent made up out of thin air? There is no mention of it in the oneworld award rules on the AA web site.

This is a genuine rule. I had them read the rules to me several times.

One more postscript to this story I finally got the total taxes and tariffs for this ticket. When the guy gave me the number I had him recheck just to be sure. I then gave him my credit card number and had it marked paid as fast as possible. The total taxes ect for this that they charged me was..'insert drum roll here'.... $183.11.

I like my life.

Taxes can be very inexpensive sometimes if you leave from Canada. My last RTW was from YVR and it was great.

My girlfriend and I did OW RTW award last summer for a couple of months and had a wonderful time.

From my own experience, I can appreciate what it took to arrange such a complicated itinerary. Congratulations.

Ahhh, one year, a free ticket, and exotic destinations. A good recipe for adventure.
Have a great time!

I was hit with the "one open jaw" when I did a OWExplorer on miles last summer. It's a real rule. Another rule that hurt me was that you have to start and end in the same city...I was going to start in BOS and end in ORD as we were also moving to Chicago at the time and didn't need/want to end up in ORD.

The thing that really threw me off is that mileage is measured point to point, even if you're connecting. So, I had worked out a really cool itinerary for the 25,000 mile award, eeking out every last mile. Then I found out that we could have, for example, done TLV-FCO on BA thru London, and have it only count as if the miles were nonstop. If I had known that, our itinerary would probably have been fairly different...but I planned it based on OneWorld carriers and routes.

Our routing for the 25K ticket was BOS-TLV (via LHR), TLV-BCN, BCN-FCO, FCO-BKK (via HKG), open jaw (purchased BKK-SYD), SYD-CNS, CNS-BOS (via NRT, ORD). This made it easy to solve the end in ORD problem -- just got off at ORD and went home rather than take the connecting flight

I posted a trip report at http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum81/HTML/001118.html

are you sure it is OW Explorer, not "global" explorer?
there is no mileage limitation for OWE.

i also don't quite understand why you have to purchase bkk-syd, since you already are on a 4 continent OWE?

i believe you are on a different ticket, and it was not OW Explorer

also you can always jump the flight at ORD, i.e. throwing away your ORD-BOS coupon. of course the cost is giving up one stopover/segment -- which you did


------- i was confused when i saw OWExplorer, and forgot u mentioned AA OW award in the beginning...ingnore this

[This message has been edited by pegasus8228 (edited 04-17-2001).]

[This message has been edited by pegasus8228 (edited 04-17-2001).]

pegasus8228, I think what ka9taw is referring to is AA's oneworld muticarrier award.

But I may well be wrong. I have two of these tix issued so far and both ends in completely different cities from the origination points, even in different countries .... I might add in different continents ....

Pegasus8228:

This is American Airlines' mileage-based award, which has different restrictions than the OW Explorer paid ticket. Check out the "oneworld" awards under aa.com