Hi All,

I am doing my first RTW travel and the OneWorld Explorer based on continents seem to be the best deal for me. Please take a look at what I am trying to do and let me know if this sounds good.

Tokyo - Seoul - Bangkok - Cairns - Sydney - Delhi - Cairo - Istanbul - Athens - Venice - Amsterdam - Barcelona - Rio de Janeiro - Los Angeles

I have a few questions:

1) I live in Japan, but the fare is MUCH cheaper if I get it in Seoul, so I am willing to pay for the ticket from NRT to ICH myself. However, I was wondering if it would be possible to buy the ticket in Japan prior to departure, or would I have to go to the ticket office in ICH to buy?

2) I want to go to Australia and then Thailand. Since I am leaving from Asia and then going to Australia, does that mean I can not go to Australia at all?

3) I want to go to Brasil from Spain, so I would probably have to go to London or Madrid, does the airport in between count as a stop?

4) I can fly from Brazil to New York without it counting as a Atlantic crossing, right?

5) Since Cairo is counted as the Middle East, I can buy the 5 continent ticket, right?

Thanks all! I am really excited about trip. I plan to leave in early March and am in the early stages of the planning process.

Alex

Welcome to OneWorld.

You should try to read and understand the detailed rules here:
http://www.hardlink.com/~markdu/OWFi...eExplorer.html

And then you need to use a OneWorld timetable of some sort - possibly the online one here:
http://www.oneworld.com/schedules/schedules_fr.cfm
to work out which of those cities have OneWorld flights and how to get between them.

You have a fundamental problem in that the basic ticket includes only 4 flight segments in Europe/Middle East. You can purchase 2 more but even with those you will not be able to get to all the places there that you want to go. However, there are plenty of low cost airlines flying around Europe these days, including to many of the cities you list so you should be able to pick up the extra flights quite cheaply.

Remember also that you can only have 20 flight segments in total, and many of the links you list require two or more flights to do: e.g. Seoul - Bangkok would need to be Seoul - Hong Kong - Bangkok.

To answer your specific questions:

1) No - if you buy the ticket in Japan then the Japanese price applies even if the route starts from Seoul. You would need to find either a Travel Agent in Seoul or remotely arrange the ticket with one of the airlines and then pick it up at the airport ticket office.

2) You can only enter each continent once, with only a couple of exceptions. Your routing has a problem in that Delhi is in Asia, so you cannot go there after Australia. You could visit Bangkok after Australia for 23 hours because one of the exceptions is that to get from Australia to Europe you have to pass through Asia, but you can only make a transit (which is defined as a stop of less than 24 hours).

3) See above - outside your continent of origin the number of stopovers isn't restricted. The problem is the limit on the total number of flight segments (20 in toatl, 4 max in each continent except N America where it is 6. You can purchase 2 more per continent except origin (Asia), but you still can't exceed 20 in total).

4) Correct. Since you aren't crossing the Atlantic it doesn't count as an Atlantic Crossing! But you don't mention New York in your itinerary.

5) Yes - you are travelling through 5 continents: Asia - South West Pacific - Europe/MidEast - South America - North America. Remember that your ticket would need to have the segments necessary to get back to Seoul included in the 20 segment maximum.

At a very quick look the best itinerary I could suggest would be:

ICN-HKG-DEL-HKG-CNS-SYD-BKK(23 hr transit)-LHR-IST-LHR(use separate low cost tickets to get to Venice, Amsterdam, Athens and back to LHR or buy two extra segments on the OWE in the unlikely event it is cheaper)-CAI-BCN-GIG-(either JFK, MIA or SCL)-LAX-HKG-ICN

which leaves you 4 more segments to play with in either North or South America or Australia.

[This message has been edited by christep (edited Dec 25, 2003).]

Wow, thanks for the quick reply. This trip is involving a lot more planning than I expected However, I think everything will be easier if I just start the trip in OZ or NZ. The OWE ticket cost from OZ and NZ is really cheap! My calculations using xe.com says the tickets are about USD$2300 ( o ) If I figure in $900 from NRT to OZ or NZ, it would be roughly the same as flying to Seoul and buying the ticket there.

If I start my OWE ticket from Auckland, then my itinerary would be as follows:

*Tokyo - Auckland (AKL)

SW Pac1) AKL - Melbourne (MEL)
SW Pac2) MEL - Cairns (CNS)
SW Pac3) CNS - Brisbane (BNE)
SW Pac4) BNE - Sydney (SYD)
SW Pac -> Asia) SYD-BKK
Asia 1) BKK - HKG
Asia 2) HKG - Delhi (DEL)
Asia - Eur) Delhi (DEL) - London (LHR)
Eur1) London (LHR) - Istanbul (IST)
Eur2) IST - LHR

*London (LTN/LGW) <-> AMS EU$20x2 = $40
*London (LTN) <-> VCE EU$20x2 = $40
*London (LGW) <-> ATH EU$60x2 = EU$120

Eur2) London (LHR) - Cairo (CAI)
Eur3) Cairo (CAI) - Barcelona (BCN)
Eur - SA) Barcelona (BCN) - RIO
SA - NA) RIO - MIA
NA1) MIA - JFK
NA2)
NA3)
NA4)
NA-SW Pac) LAX - SYD

The segments with the `*` are the ones I will buy myself. It's really amazing how cheap the flights are in Europe!

I have left open my NA segments because I'm pretty sure AA has routes to most of the places I want to go and because I am still tracking down friends to stay with

What do you think of this trip configuration?

I do have a few questions:

1) I'm really interested in staying in HKG, especially for 10 days (to meet the 10 day minimum). So if I do a BKK - HKG - DEL, with DEL as my destination, do I have to stay in HKG for 10 days?

2) The European airlines use lots of smaller airports, especially the ones in London. Are they inconvenient to get to? I think I will use mostly LTN and LGW, and the use LHR for the OWE flights. Should I factor in additional cash for the taxis around the airports?

Other than these questions, I think the overal flight plans are pretty finished (except NA of course). I think I have less than 20 segments overall and less than 4 segments in each "continent".

Any thoughts and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Alex

The routing looks fine, except that you have to finish in the same country you started in (with some exceptions, but Australia/NZ isn't one of them).

On your questions:

1) I think you may have misunderstood the rules: it is the total time from leaving Auckland to arriving back at Auckland which has to be at least 10 days, not each individual stop! But you should plan to speond a few days here in HK if you can - there are heaps of things to see and do.

2) LTN and LGW are quite a way out from Central London - you wouldn't want to be going between them (or to them from the centre) by cab unless you have plenty of cash. Buses and trains are the best way. There is plenty of discussion on how to get around between the London Airports in the London Forum of FlyerTalk Travel.

Hope that helps.

This is excellent news. I am going to stick with this routing plan for now. And it's great to hear that I don't have to stay a minimum of 10 days at each stop. If I can go to HKG and stay for just a few days, then I would definitely go.

I have been to London before and I may decide to do it once. I will probably go from LHR to the town center, and then go to the out of the ways airports when I use the econo carriers. Thanks for the tip on the London forum.

I am soooo excited!

Alex

Just realized there is no direct flight from BCN or LHR to Rio.

Flight IB 6803 stops in Madrid, and BA 247 stops in Sao Paulo. But both flights show up as one flight with one stop. If I do not leave the airport and just transit, would the one stop count as an additional segment?

Thanks.

Alex

No - if it is a single flight number all the way and you have it ticketed as a single coupon then it is just one segment.

To clarify the teminology, in normal parlance these are "direct" flights, but they are not "non-stop" flights.

[This message has been edited by christep (edited Dec 29, 2003).]

This is excellent news.

Here's another spin. If I am going from Delhi (Asia) to Istanbul (Europe), I have to change in LHR (BA142 DEL-LHR, BA676 LHR-IST). Would this be counted as one segment? or better yet, an intercontinenal segment?

If so, I just gained myself a few more stops in my European segments. I have been counting the DEL-LHR as an intercontinental segment and the LHR -IST as an European segment, thereby eating up two segments.

Also, if I leave go from IST to CAI, I would have to change in LHR, but can I count it as a single segment? I can always do a stopver in LHR on my way from BCN to RIO, right?

BTW, I just want to say thanks for all the great help you guys have been giving me.



Alex

Every flight coupon you use is one segment. Thus, if you use two coupons (e.g. DEL-LHR-IST or IST-LHR-CAI) it counts as two segments. The DEL-LHR is intercontinental but the LHR-IST is European as are the IST-LHR and LHR_CAI segments.

Any time you change flight numbers it is the start of a new segment. Getting off at the stopover point of a flight with a single flight number and getting the same flight number on a later day os also a new segment.

Is this really so hard to understand?

It's a bit confusing because I have flown from LAX-NRT-SGN and then SGN-NRT-LAX. This was a straight round-trip, I did a stopover in NRT for a few days on the way home.

From my point of view, I used one flight coupon for the outbound flight (LAX-SGN) and then used one flight coupon for the inbound flight (SGN-LAX) with two boarding passes (SGN-NRT, NRT-LAX).

So I guess I'm confusing the difference between the "inbound/outbound segment" and a "segment".

So, for the record:

If the flight number is the same, the plane stops at the airport, and I get back onto the plane within 24 hours, then it is one flight coupon (i.e. one segment).

If the flight numbers are different, even if all I am doing is changing from one plane to another to continue my journey (i.e. run from one plane to another plane), then I require two flight coupons and thus is counted as two segments.

I think I got this down, right?

Alex

p.s. I think I also messed up on my flight schedule. Looks like I can only do two overs from my originating continent. So if I start in OZ, then I can only go to two other cities before flying out. As Homer Simpson would say "Duh!"

[This message has been edited by alex_tdi (edited Dec 29, 2003).]

If you are on a through flight, i.e. one airplane between your origin and destination, it is one segment. If you are on more than one airplane (with the rare exception of an en route equipment change) it is more than one segment. In your SGN-LAX instance, it is highly unusual to get two boarding passes for two different flights on two different days from one flight coupon -- not impossible but highly unusual. In that case it would count as two segments. (It is also very unusual to have a direct flight between SGN-LAX.)

You can have four segments in Oz but only spend >24 hours in a location after two of them.

Dear ExMo,

I think I remember now. The flighr from LAX-SGN was an award flight. SO I guess the stopover is allowed, even though it was two flights on two different days.

Now I am confused again. Would a spending more than 24 hours in a location constitute a "stopover"? I am starting in the SW Pacific, so don't I only have two stopoevers?

Thanks.

Alex

I think that's what I said. You can only have two stopovers in SWP. A stopover is a stay of >24 hours. Your origin and destination (where you start and end the RTW trip) do not count as stopovers.

Thanks for all your help everyone. Here is the most efficient routing I can figure out for my RTW so far:

SW Pac1) CNS-SYD
SW Pac2) SYD-AKL
SWP-ASA) AKL-HKG
Asia 1) HKG-BKK
Asia 2) BKK-HKG
Asia 3) HKG - Delhi (DEL)
ASA-EUR) Delhi (DEL) - London (LHR)
Eur1) London (LHR) - Istanbul (IST)
Eur2) IST - LHR
Eur3) London (LHR) - Cairo (CAI)
Eur4) Cairo (CAI) - Barcelona (BCN)
EUR-SA) Barcelona (BCN)-MAD-Rio (GIG) (one flight #, one segment )
SA-NA) GIG-JFK
NA1) JFK-BOS
NA2) BOS-MIA
NA3) MIA-ORD
NA4) ORD-SEA
NA5) SEA-DFW-CUN (one flight #, one segment )
NA6) CUN-DFW-LAX (one flight #, one segment )
NA-SWP) LAX - SYD

I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to avoid going to HKG twice between BKK and DEL, and also going to LHR twice between DEL and IST.

For all your OneWorld pros, is there a better way?

I have done a lot of searching using the One World schedule website and the one world schedule application, but I can't seem to avoice HKG and LHR as hubs

Thanks.

Alex

[This message has been edited by alex_tdi (edited Dec 30, 2003).]