RTW inside an RTW
 

A quick question. I'm planning a OWE RTW that will take me to NZ to visit family originating from ZRH. While there I'd like to buy another OWE RTW originating in AKL to take advantage of the lower cost. The usage would look something like the following:

RTW-1: ZRH.....AKL
RTW-2: AKL.....ZRH.....AKL
RTW-1: AKL.....ZRH

Is this allowed?

This looks like back-to-back ticketing on an explorer! Sure is legal, and you'll actually be travelling both tickets entirely.

The one caveat - as with back-to-backs - is that while legal the airlines will probably frown on this. They often go as far as denying boarding on back-to-backs once they find out what you're doing. You have to threaten legal action etc. As with back-to-backs, get around this by mixing and matching which airlines you are flying, and only put your FF number into reservations after you have traveled.

Otherwise go for it! Sounds like a great idea.

Guy Betsy is an expert on this practice. I am forever teasing him as to the number of RTW tickets he has purchased, and is using sequentially and entertwined. I can barely wrap my mind around the current 6 continent RTW OneWorld ticket that I am using. Your plan of dropping a RTW within another RTW is completely legitimate. You simply have to be careful to finish all of your travel within 12 months of the first date of travel on each ticket.

I wouldn't call it back-to-back at all. There is no front and no back on an RTW, you're travelling one way. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

People here do multiple simultaneous RTWs frequently. I don't know how they manage to keep their tickets and itineraries straight, but I've heard of people having two, three, or even eight RTWs at once!

FewMiles..

------------------
[ FlyerTalkers' Resources on the Web ]
[ Unofficial Guide to AAdvantage ] [ Unofficial oneworld Info Desk ]

I thought that I was nuts maintaing 4! 8!!!!!!!

Yeah, but just because there are even bigger nuts around doesn't necessarily mean you aren't one... http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

LOL... at least you know there's a bigger one out there. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

FewMiles..

------------------
[ FlyerTalkers' Resources on the Web ]
[ Unofficial Guide to AAdvantage ] [ Unofficial oneworld Info Desk ]

I allways nest multiple RTWs and combine them with other trips in between. Never had a problem. Currently i have two RTWs open and for sure get a new one before i am finished with both of them.

Not only do I still have about 6 more RTWs to contend with, I add my itineraries together. So I sometimes end up with something like 65 segments on a single PNR. Good for me, a nightmare for most airlines looking at my PNR.

I'm just amazed that you manage to keep track of all those itineraries. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

FewMiles..

------------------
[ FlyerTalkers' Resources on the Web ]
[ Unofficial Guide to AAdvantage ] [ Unofficial oneworld Info Desk ]

SOOOOO True http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Man 6 @ one time !!! I'm with SanDiego1K it took me long enough to get one 4 continents together never mind 6 http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/eek.gif

GuyBetsy how do you find time to work with so many flights needed within a year ? How to you keep track of them - Excel or something similar ? My hat's off to you http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Ok. So this is legal and I'm not as insane as Guy Betsy. I know, thats subjective, so sue me. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

Thanks for all the responses, btw. Question is is there a difference or advantages / disadvantages booking an RTW directly through a respective airline? I'm Gold with BA but have no status directly with AA but the AA RTW desk provides such good service compared with BAs anemic EU customer service. Should I just give in and call AA to plan this? Are there other airline numbers to call.

Is Oprah responsible for the whole situation?

I don't think it makes any difference what airline you book through, and if you prefer AA's customer service go ahead.

I'm booking my RTW without my FF number in the res and will add it into segments once I've figured out what I need to do to retain BA Gold.

I'm just starting to think about a RTW trip, but I'd be looking at it as a long vacation. this nested RTW is the most intriguing, but I have some questions. What I'm thinking is actually 2 x (A or D) OWE3(4)'s consisting of different continents. For example, have one NA/Europe/Asia (ex-US), and one Africa/SA/Australia ex-CAI. this way, I can take advantange of the CAI pricing for part of it, still get 6 continents, and (more importantly) get 40 segments. my thinking is that I can cheaply get from somewhere in europe to CAI while in europe, then do the inner one from there. Has anyone done a similar trip, or have ideas about it?

With nested RTWs you are going around the world twice (within a year). Can save a lot of money but sometimes may be better to do a paid or award round trip to get to the "cheap" RTW origin point rather than nesting with another RTW.

That said, if nest the obvious thing to do is have the most expansive RTW from the cheap origin and a less expansive from the expensive origin. Eg DONE3 ex US and AONE4 ex CAI.

Note that for One World Explorer purposes, Cairo is part of Europe so you could include it as part of your ex US DONE3 (for example).

CAI is Europe. So the second RTW would need to be a Europe-Africa-Australia-SouthAm-Europe.
Check the flights Australia-Africa and SouthAm-Australia. Only few possibilities, and sometimes difficult to get seats.

One of the main reasons I was looking at the nested was for the extra 20 segments. Seems like a bit of waste to do 20 segs on 6 continents, when for not much more, I can get 40 segs on 6 continents simply by buying a second RTW ticket somewhere else. I realize there is the whole having to go around the world twice issue, but I'm sure we can sort something out with that (drop in at home for a holiday or something).

what a ridiculous thing to do, calling CAI Europe. Thanks for that info. in that case, what is a "good grouping" of continents? Would it make sense to do a AONE3 ex-US, then a AONE4 ex-CAI, so I could do something like North Am - Europe - Australia ex-US, then Europe - Africa - Asia - SouthAm ex-CAI, doubling up on europe?

Thanks for your help!

We here in FT use the shorter, informal, name "Europe" to designate the OWE continent, but the people who wrote the rules actually call it "Europe/Middle East", and place CAI in Middle East, not Europe.

Nope. Any itin involving Australia (or South West Pacific) needs at least 4 continents as Asia is counted even if only transiting between Europe and Australia.

Try something like

A) ex-US : North America-Europe-Asia(-North America)
B) ex-CAI: Europe-Africa-Asia-Southwest Pacific-North America(-South America-Europe)

(could instead go Africa->Southwest Pacific directly but only one flight, similarly between Southwest Pacific->South America only one flight)

Thanks to advice received here over the past month, I’m in the final stages of booking my RTW tickets. The core is a AONE3 ex-CAI that goes on to Africa, Australia, No.Amer. then Europe, stretched out over a whole year (I will finish the booking when Mrs Sobhi returns on Sep. 5).

Within the Australia part is a Star1 that takes me back home (to YVR) via Asia & Europe then, after a month at home, on to necessary visits in No. America before returning to Australia via the South Pacific and NZ (the latter visits, along with cheap Y class, is a main reason for using Star1 rather than LONE4).

Within both of them will be another trip back to LAX/YVR from CHC if a cheap return ticket is available next March, otherwise I will probably nest a third RTW ex-NZ. It seems hard to justify paying $2000 for a Y return ticket when a RTW can be had for under $3000.

I would have preferred to have arranged a DONE3 ex-BKK but could not find a cost effective way to get from SYD to BKK (i.e., why pay $1200 for a Y ticket on a 12 hour flight to BKK and back, rather than just a Y class ticket RTW for under $3000 from AU). I want to work toward both AA and BA credits and find that it is quite an elaborate process to figure out which flights to credit toward AA and BA to get BA Silver and AA-EXP.

At one point I considered four nested RTW (e.g. another one to get from YVR to CAI to start the ex-CAI part and the others for trips back home) but decided that the point made earlier about having to complete them all within the year they started would be too restrictive. Given future uncertainties, I opted to buy cheap tickets to CAI assuming that if I decide to buy a new AONE a year from now, then not much is lost by throwing away the return portion of the ticket to CAI.

I still don’t know the answers to the following questions and would appreciate help on any of them- or comments on any misperceptions above.

1) Do the Comair flights (BA flight numbers) in Africa count toward the 4 required BA segments?
2) I had to recently rearrange my AU segments given the new PER-MEL rule. I assume that the speculation that surface segments count (or at least at certain ticketing offices) can be overcome—otherwise I’m at 22 segments.
3) I’ve noticed above, and on other threads, comments about segments that are hard to book—is there any general summary about segments (especially critical long ones) that are particularly difficult to book?
4) Although I decided against trying it this time, for future trips I would like to know if there are any problems with unflown segments. I assume it is OK within continents but can one not fly (but still build into the itinerary) segments across the Atlantic or Pacific (ordinarily this would not make sense but seems to be relevant with multiple nested trips)?
Thanks.

Thats an AONE5 -- hope you weren't relying on paying the AONE3 price! As for your other questions, BA flights in SA operated by Comair do qualify for the 4 BA segments. Surface segments do not count (yet -- maybe with the next rule change). Hard to book segments are those that have few seats per week, for example SCL-SYD used to be 15 seats/week in F (and mayb 3/wk in A), now it is up to 20 seats/week. Compare with JFK-LHR which has several thousand seats per week. LHR-CPT is very difficult seasonally (but LHR-JNB is much easier). As for unflown segments, technically that invalidates the RTW fare and the airline issuing the ticket can recompute at the point-to-point fare and charge you or your travel agent the difference (I worked it out once and the max possible charge is about USD 40,000). In practice it seems to be ignored, but who knows? Litigating the CoC in the jurisdiction where the fare was purchased isn't a particularly attractive option.

Thanks for the responses, number_6. Yes I meant an AONE4 (not Asia or So.Am) not AONE3- I have been trying to get charged in EGP rather than USD (which would have to be converted again to CAD) but have not been successful. Postings over the past 6 months seem to indicate that this is the current BA-CAI practice. Right?

My initial question about unflown segments had to do with the situation when you are under the segment limit and are likely to drive or train between XXX-YYY but whether you thow it into the itinerary as a flight just in case you change your mind and decide to fly it. In that case, if it is there and you decide not to fly it, can you just ignore it or does the ticket have to be rewritten (in which case it would be best to leave it out initially and add it later if necessary).

Then that led me to reflecting on some of the elaborate 4 or so nested trips (with two or more going in each direction) that I considered earlier in which it seemed desirable on occasion to end one segment in HKG, say, and pick up the next in LAX, say, because you would have gotten there on another ticket and didn't want to fly HKG-LAX on that ticket but wanted to pick it up later from LAX. At the time this seemed to make sense but I didn't work through all the implications-- and so my question was two-fold (a) whether the experienced nesters do this, and (b) whether it is accepted by the airlines.

If you have an electronic ticket and you decide to skip a segment, you need to pay a reissue fee to drop it.

ReelChief, your knowledge of RTWs has increased exponentially since you came to this forum just this summer! That's some very complex routings you've planned.

Trans-oceanic surface sector is not allowed on OWE (and almost all other RTW fares). So your example of not wanting to fly HKG-LAX because using some other ticket is precisely what the fare rules are designed to prevent (and this aspect is strictly enforced, for obvious reasons).

You can nest OWE quite successfully, but you also have to follow all of the rules, even when they are inconvenient at times.

What happens in the case of a paper ticket? Can you really just cancel the reservation (if applicable) over the phone, throw the coupon(s) away and resume your OWE from the next stop(s), just like that, without reissue?

Edited to add: I mean in the special case of an OWE. I have done the above lots of time with 'normal' paper tickets, and the airlines didn't care one bit, but never with an OWE.

... unless the OWE originates in SWP, in which case 1 transoceanic surface is allowed,... for some weird reason I cannot see.

That rule was added to allow using PPT-IPC-SCL on LA and is a fairly recent rule (PPT is in SA according to OW, so PPT-SCL is not a trans-Pacific flight). Haven't read the rule recently, wonder if it is completely generic, however SWP fares are on the high side these days.

I have not done with a dated coupon, but with an open coupon definitely yes - just recently i forfeited two coupons for LHR-VCE-LHR - never made a reservation for those segments, and when I checked in for LAX-LHR-NRT (which would have had the forfeited segments in the middle according to the coupon order in the ticket book) the agent ignored them - instead of throwing them out she said she would leave them in for me to dispose of.

Totally generic, which is good. It might have been added for PPT-IPC-SCL, but the rule makes no mention of it:

Interesting. I wonder if we could stretch the meaning of 'to dispose of' to a very convenient for us 'to use at a later date'. @:-)

Note: before someone says "can't be done", let me say that yes, I agree, I know the OWE is different and this most probably wont fly, but with some (non-OWE) tickets it -can- be done. I have purchased several tickets MAD-EZE-SYD r/t in the past, flown MAD-EZE-MAD and much later flown EZE-SYD-EZE, all with the airline's ok, by the way.

Thanks! This discussion stimulated me to retry a third simultaneous RTW and by trying some new things, what I was trying to do finally works.

The main point is that I find that things I couldn’t do by sticking only with ONEs becomes possible by throwing in at least one STAR. The possibility for backtracking (at the cost, of course, of unused miles) makes it possible for me with a ONE4, a ONE5, and one STAR3 to have an overall duration of one year—and yet be home for periods of 21, 21, 21, and 75 days. Without getting into details, the sequence of the tickets is (omitting the YVR-CAI-YVR at the beginning and the end): O1-S1-O2-S1-O2-S1-O1, where O1 is an AONE4 ex-CAI (covering EU-AF-SWP-NA), O2 is a DONE5 ex-BKK (covering AS-EU-NA-SA-SWP), and S3 is the Star3 (covering SWP,AS,NA,EU but in a bit of a jumbled order). Except for the AONE4, I haven’t booked the tickets and am relying on the OneValidator and the official Star calculator for validity.

My guiding principle has been to arrange to be where I want to be when I want to be there but this forum has encouraged me to throw in an “unneeded” LHR-DXB-LHR. As for FF credits (not yet being a member of either AA or BA), by carefully picking what segments go to which program it seems that I should get the AAPlat Challenge in 2005, reach EXP in mid 2006, and BA Silver then too. (The Star trips get me only to prestige status on AC- because only about 26K of the 39K is actually flown).

For other novices who might be trying nested trips I would suggest that you consider complementing ONEs with a STAR or two—at least it seems to work for me. However, the ticketing is yet to come. It has been fun and challenging to do this—thanks again to all of you for your help.