Just registered. Bit intimidated by the knowledge here. Makes my Travel Agent look like a beginner. Family of 5 going rtw traveling from Toronto to Ecuador, Samoa, Fiji, Auckland, Brisbane, Joberg, Toronto. According to my agent this means OneWorld: yyz-uio-sti-akl-bne-jnb-lhr-yyz. It also means separate flights at additional cost from NZ back to Apia then on to Nandi before continuing. Furthermore, returning to Toronto from Joberg has to be via London adding a 5th continent to the fare. Is this what you would do? To add insult to injury, my Diners Club card accrues points on a Star Alliance carrier while my credit card points may be transferred to BA.
Any suggestions would be most welcome. Be gentle.

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Family Man

You are right about one thing - you need a better travel agent!

However, you will also notice the best ones are actually not travel agents!

Just before I say anything, as a suggestion, please spell out your inquiry more clearly next time, because when I first read your question, my head just went globetrotting at the same time! And I still haven't figured out what does that have to do with your credit cards and I am Canadian, I know which cards you are talking about. Even that, I am somewhat lost.

Now let's make one thing clear, you intent to buy a RTW fare using money in a specific class travel to all the destinations you listed above in one single trip. So you are not using points and etc. If this is correct, then here is the solution for you:

Buy a RTW fare on Oneworld and use the following arilines: AA, LA, FJ, QF and maybe BA as well. For the purpose of RTW fares, FJ (Air Pacific is allowed). Here is what your itineary look like roughly:

On AA (American Airlines)

YYZ-MIA-UIO

On LA (Lan Chile)

UIO-SCL-AKL

On FJ (Air Pacific)

AKL-NAN-APW-NAN-BNE

On QF (Qantas)

BNE-SYD-JNB

Now here is the tricky part:

The RTW fare allows you to purchase QF codeshare on SA (South African Airways). However, I don't think they code-share on the North-America - Africa route though you must check with Qantas to be certain. If they do, that would be the best as you can continue on QF to do a JNB-JFK, then LGA-YYZ on AA. BTW, FYI, JFK and LGA are both considered New York City. In the more likely scenario, you will have to do JNB-LHR-YYZ on BA as the last part of your journey.

In any case, you require the Oneworld Global Explorer RTW at 34K miles in order to do this on one itineary so given the difference in mileage between JNB direct to North America or via LHR is only about 1,000 miles or so, it makes no difference on the price you need to pay. And you are looking at about $4900 CAD for the itineary in economy or $8500 for Business class.

Guava: "The RTW fare allows you to purchase QF codeshare on SA (South African Airways). "

I don't see that in the rules - typically code-shares on non-OW metal aren't allowed.

If allowed, it might be useful for JNB-PER as it looks like QF isn't flying that route themselves at the moment.

I got my info from FewMiles's informative Oneworld Desk. Here is the link to the exact page:

http://members.shaw.ca/fewmiles/oneworld/globex.html

then read line: 37N

and I quote: "37N .-EXCEPTION TRAVEL ALSO PERMITTED ON QF CODESHARE SERVICE ON NF/PX/SA/TN/VN"

The codeshares mentined for QF are valid on Global Explorer tickets but not Oneworld Explorer tickets. The recommendation that Guava gave was for a Global Explorer trip, not OWE.

You folks are indeed brilliant. Excuse the confusion my question may have created. Can someone confirm that Air Pacific can indeed by utilized to backtrack in the South Pacific. My agent suggested that was not permitted. All else being equal, if I could manage to include Samoa and Fiji without incurring additional cost, that would be a small victory in itself. The reference to credit cards and Diner's club was about conflict between splitting airmiles between Star Alliance and OneWorld.

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Family Man

I suggest it may be time for you to find a new travel agent or hire a Flyertalker[actually, there a is thread on this in the community forum]!

Line 147N to 155N clearly talks about what's permitted and what's not in backtracking. Please read the link I provided on the previous for more details. I will just quote the passage here:

8. THE SAME CITY PAIRS/SEGMENTS MAY NOT BE FLOWN MORE THAN ONCE IN THE SAME DIRECTION.

9. BACKTRACKING BETWEEN REGIONS AS DEFINED UNDER APPLICATION IS NOT PERMITTED. EXCEPTION - ASIA MAY BE PASSED THROUGH TWICE PROVIDED THAT ONE OF THE DEPARTURES/ ARRIVALS IN ASIA IS A TRANSIT WITHOUT STOPOVER IN CONJUNCTION WITH TRAVEL BETWEEN THE SOUTWEST PACIFIC AND EUROPE.

Your AKL-NAN-APW-NAN-BNE portion, you will only stop in Nandi, Fiji once and the other time you pass through NAN is solely for the purpose of connection. As long as you don't stopover in the same city twice, you are fine. Besdies, the NAN-APW-NAN is permitted because it's within the same region [South West Pacific] and you did not fly this route more than once in the same direction. From APW to BNE, it was necessary to connect through NAN so given it's the most direct routing, it would be allowed even if it constitutes a backtracking of some sort. Usually, you are allowed to pass through a same city twice and stop no more than once. And you know what, worse come to worse, do a AKL-SUV (Suva, Fijian capital) open-jaw, surface sector to NAN, which you can visit the country along the way or take about 3 hours of ground transport to Nandi on the other side of the island. You can keep this in mind as well.

As to the credit card question, obviously, this is not a small purchase considering you got 5 people. If you have AA or BA miles as per your Royal Bank Visa, then, why don't you consider buying one of the RTW using miles? Granted, you'll need a separate ticket for the Air Pacific portion, but it's easily doable and I will show you how:

If you currently hold RBC British Airways card, you should consider changing it to the RBC Avion version unless the BA Companion ticket is a must perk for you. The Avion card gives you the flexibility to choose between AA and BA and you will need AA miles for the Air Pacific portion. Then, you will need 140K of BA/AA miles for the Oneworld carrier portions of your itineary if you intend to fly economy or 190K for Business class. Essentially, your itineary doesn't change except you leave out the Air Pacific portion and your Oneworld ticket will simply note an open-jaw between AKL and BNE. Now, use 20K AA miles, you can claim a separate reward ticket for AKL-NAN-APW-NAN-BNE. All these segments are direct and operated by Air Pacific. I don't know if you have any Qantas points, you can use it as well for the Air Pacific portion if you have any. So the Air Pacific portion will allow you one stopover (Nandi), destination = Apia and Open-Jaw to Brisbane, perfectly legal under AA terms. Note that if you want Business, the Air Pacific portion will cost 40K as opposed to 20K. So all in all, if you want to use airline miles to purchase your itineary and face some constraints such as more limited capacity control, the economy class version can be have for 140K + 20 K = 160 K or Business class for 190 K + 40K = 230K It's not unusual to see people with millions of miles so even for family of 5, there are quite a few here who can take their whole family of 5 on a Business class RTW using only miles. So here is the miles option if you can do it.

Now credit cards...you know what, in your case, the best recommendation is neither Diners Club or the RBC card if you intend to use cash to purchase those 5 tickets. But first of all, it would require you to get rid of your current TA because you need to make your booking with TD Travel Center using their TD Gold Travel credit card. Here is why, they offer you 5 TD pts per dollar spent on purchases with them. Each pt has the value of $0.015 CAD. So by spending a dollar, you earn 5 X $0.015 = $0.075. Because you intend to buy bargain fares, getting cash back will be more useful than getting miles on your credit cards. Here is why:

Suppose you decide to put all 5 people in economy so it will cost $4900 X 5 = $24,500 CAD in total spedning. By putting this amount of money on a miles CC, you get 24,500 of Air Canada or AA or BA miles. Considering the economy version of your reward ticket will cost 160K in total, 24.5K/160K represents only 15.31% value of one ticket. Not to mention, using miles is more restrictive to get seats and don't earn miles when you fly them and - no status. Had you put this on the TD Travel Gold Visa, your 24,500 spending will generate $1,837.5 of travel certficiate which you can apply against your purchase. Now $1,837.5 / $4,900 = 37.5% value of your ticket that's twice more that of miles earning credit card. In addition, when you fly, you will earn miles. Considering your total distance is in the proximity of 32,500 miles in total distance and you can subscribe your whole family to AA's Platinum challenge for this - this means, after your first 10K miles, you can get 100% bonus on the subsequent miles + the possibility of converting AA electronic upgrades into miles. So you are looking at generating: 32,500 + 22,500 + 6,000 = 61,000 miles per person flying! And, in the middle your trip, even if you fly economy, you will start getting lounge access due to your Oneworld Sapphire status when the Platinum challenge kicks in immeidately, your status will be AA Platinum and should be accessible accross Oneworld computer system. So the 61,000 miles generated per person X 5 has a value of 305K miles. This divide by 160 K = 191% or 1.91 times a RTW ticket for your itineary. Let's add the 0.375 from the cash earned previously to the 1.91 obtained here = 2.285, you just got yourself back a bit over the value of 2 tickets. So it's like buy 5, get 2 back. Considering you really only paid 2.715 times your ticket X $4,900 = $13,304. Divide this by 5, and rougly, the average real cost of your ticket per person goes down to $2,661 CAD. Show this to your travel agent if you want, he/she might learn a thing or two. Good lucks!

Just one minor point, although if you are taking five people it may not be so minor. The Global Explorer fares ex-Canada went up on 15 April. The 34,000 mile economy is now C$5,099 and business is C$8,999. Unfortunately, FewMiles' site has not been updated in some time so the fares and rules there are a bit out of date.

You can see a current copy of the rules and the new fares here.

One other suggestion:
Did you also look at the possibility of using a Star RTW? You then could use NZ from LAX to many of the islands in the south pacific?

If you travel F or C, then you should also look at different starting points (Thailand and Egypt come to mind). Prices are very different in different counrties.