I have looked on the AA website, but not found the information I seek.

It is my desire to travel from Seattle, WA to Dubai, U.A.E. using reward certificates. I am not particular which direction I travel; Dubai is nearly equidistant from Seattle from either the east or west. An around the world itinerary could work.

The basic question is this: Can I travel using just one certificate? Or, will it require two? Getting to London or Paris with AA is a no brainer. I would like to fly BA to DXB. CX via YVR and HKG is also an option.

Any guidance is very much appreciated.

Thanks!

I did a RTW *A trip to DXB in early May 2001.
I did the trip via FRA on LH in F since the
LH flight was three cabin. I was on a paid
F ticket but I would suspect that SEA to LHR
to DXB would require two awards as with *A.
If all goes as plan I will do the LHR to DXB
to LHR on BA in a 777 in early July 2001.
Never did consider via Asia.

Out of curiosity, when in July?

As is into DXB on 10 and out 11. Doing to
run as part of my OW RTW F for Exec. Plat.
status.

For single certificate award travel to Dubai you've got 4 options. AA/BA (via London on AA connecting to BA), Cathay Pacific (via HKG), Swissair (via Zurich) and Turkish Airlines (via Istanbul).

Another way is to use a oneworld mileage based award. This is usually a bit more expensive in terms of redeemed miles but has the most flexibility and is pretty much the only way to construct a single certificate RTW itinerary award. An example routing:
SEA-ORD(AA), ORD-LHR(AA), LHR-DXB(BA), DXB-HKG(CX), HKG-SFO(CX), SFO-SEA(AA). This comes out to approx. 19,830 miles, equivalent to a Zone 6 award which is 180K for First, 130K for Business and 100K for Coach.

Apart from that I would think a CX award originating in YVR is your best bet.

Thx, RTW. You will have a couple of FT'rs there about a week before you.

One thing to consider about the award ticket is what class of service it is being bought in. Going AA-BA, you can go in first class the whole way. Going CX, you can't because CX is business class only between HKG-DXB. If you are going coach or biz, I would use CX. If first, then aa-ba.

Thanks All,

The eastbound RTW is intriguing. I am curious about the SFO routing vs YVR. Is this rule-based, or strictly a preference?

Is the zone 6 award claimed via oneworld or would I contact AAdvantage? I am really in virgin territory here; this is my first time with a (possible) oneworld itineray/award.

I do appreciate all of the helpfulness and everyone's unique slant.

Cheers.

FlyAAway - I constructed that routing via SFO because I was not sure if you wanted to do a surface sector between YVR and SEA. My preference would be to terminate in YVR as CX serves that route with 747's as opposed to the A340's to SFO (I really do not like Airbus aircraft). You could also consider originating in YVR and use CX to JFK, then AA to LHR.

The oneworld awards have very few rules. There are four that essentially determine how you construct the routing: 1) you cannot transit a city more than twice, 2) you cannot stopover in your originating city (once you arrive in the original city of departure that defines the end of the trip, even if you have mileage left to use), 3) no reroutes or carrier changes are allowed once the ticket has been issued, 4) two oneworld carriers (other than AA) must be used.

When planning your itinerary bear in mind that AA strictly adheres to the mileage limit for each zone. I had a routing that came out to 20,050 miles. AA inisisted that I use the Zone 7 award (but a little fancy footwork on routing alternatives got me under the 20,000 mark).

I've done three of these awards with quite complicated routings, surface sectors and open jaws. From that perspective the awards are excellent value for the mileage you have to redeem.

To set one up just call AA and ask them to construct a oneworld award ticket. Hope it all works out.