I've been pricing long-haul bus class tickets from N America to South Asia and Australia, and just realized what many others already know - that the RTW fares can be as inexpensive as (or even several thousand dollars cheaper than) regular fares. I'm drafting a corporate budget for planned travel later this year for these trips, and want to be sure that I'm not underbudgeting by using these RTW fares as references. Could anyone summarize the pros and cons of RTW tickets (including pros and cons in terms of BAEC tier points and miles) for use on business trips (or identify an existing thread I could read)? I'd likely be booking all (or most) of the segments about 4-6 weeks before starting the trip, and might add a few leisure stopovers en route. Thanks.

This isn't a complete answer, and I don't know a thing about BAEC tier points, but the 10-day minimum duration is one thing that keeps most business travelers from using them. That's a full week, plus the weekends at both ends, plus at least one more weekday. If the trip you're planning is already going to be that long and fits the other rules, the savings are real.

RTW tickets earn full BA tier points, at least in business and first (I don't know about coach).

The biggest problems with your proposal are that you are going to paying a per diem for your employees for at least 10 days (likely less than the difference in air fares so shouldn't be a huge issue).

But the bigger issue is that, for work in SE Asia and Australia, it is an awful long way home when you have to fly the rest of the way around the world to get home. Obviously a bigger issue from the west coast than the east coast of the U.S.

RTWs work for me because I have business in SE Asia and Europe so I can schedule it to do on RTWs (at least most of the time).

I am not the RTW expert that many other FTers are, but I just returned from a business trip using RTW tickets, and thus have some experience. In my mind the biggest "catches" to the RTW tickets are (1) if you are originating travel in the U.S. or Canada, you must reserve your first international flight (flights between the U.S. and Canada do not count for this purpose) at least seven days in advance, and (2) you may not return for 10 days.

The seven day advance purchase obviously will work for some trips, but not for others. Also, once you're inside the seven day window, you may not change the reservation; your only option if your plans change is to refund the ticket, which will incur a 10% penalty. Maybe some FTers know a way around this rule, but I did not learn of any.

As for the requirement that you not return for 10 days, this is easy to get around by purchasing a second RTW ticket (which is exactly what I did on my trip). So, for example, if you travel frequently from NY to Hong Kong, you can purchase RTW ticket #1 to travel JFK-LHR-HKG, and purchase RTW ticket #2 to travel HKG-YVR-JFK. You can then use ticket #2 to travel JFK-LHR-HKG on your next trip, and ticket #1 to return HKG-YVR-JFK. (Note that for RTW tickets originating outside of the U.S. and Canada, there is no minimum stay requirement, so you could return to HKG on ticket #2 in less than 10 days. Also note that there may be further money-saving opportunities employing this strategy by purchasing RTW tickets outside of the U.S., as RTW tickets are priced in the local currency of the country where travel originates, so long as the ticket is purchased in that country. On my recent RTW trip, I purchased a RTW ticket in Bangkok for travel originating there, and saved about US$2,500. Thanks to other FTers for this tip.)

Another thing to consider, as already pointed out by others, is that your intercontinental flights all have to be in the same direction (i.e., if your first flight is JFK-LHR, you have to continue to fly east to get back to JFK). For this reason, a RTW ticket to fly from the eastern U.S. to Europe doesn't make sense, even though it's cheaper; in my example, to get home from London, you'd have to travel to Asia (or Australia) first and than return to the U.S. on a transpacific route. Thus, as others have pointed out, the RTW strategy may work for travel from the eastern U.S. and eastern Canada to Asia or Australia, but probably not elsewhere. (I'm not a geography expert, so others please correct me if I'm missing something here.)

If you decide to pursue the RTW strategy, the advantages can be tremendous. In addition to the cost savings, you can build in other "free" travel. So, for example, if you travel frequently from NY to both Asia and to LA, there are easy ways to cover trips to both in the same RTW ticket, so that the cost of one RTW ticket can replace the cost of a NY-Asia ticket and a NY-LA ticket. Once you get more knowledgeable about the rules, doing these things becomes fairly easy. (BTW, my NY-LA example is not a great one, because one of the annoying rules is that a RTW ticket can include only one transcontinental non-stop in the U.S and Canada. So in my example, you could fly non-stop between NY and LA in one direction, but would have to connect through ORD, DFW or elsewhere on the return.)

This is a lot of information to process, and I was unaware of all of this until about two weeks ago. I leared it all by reading the rules, reading other posts on FT, and posting a lot of questions (some dumb and some not-so-dumb) on FT. I'm glad I did, though. The RTW ticket is a great product.

Thanks to everyone for the tips. I think that the 10-day rule might not be too much of a problem for the Asia/Pacific trips from East Coast N.A., since our scheduled business often takes up 3 days on-site, we can easily add some other useful business activities in the region, and can add some business activities to the European stopover. And I'm interested in adding a little holiday time to the long-haul trips that I do. We probably won't use RTWs all the time, but might do so for a couple of trips per year.

That is pretty much what I do. Some of my travel is very predictable, so the restrictions that an RTW poses are not a major problem. The predictability also allows me to group together 2-4 locations in one trip, dealing with any 10 day rule issues and offering great value.

I normally then get to abuse the NA segments for maximum BA tier points and miles. If you plan on doing the same, DFW/ORD - SJU is a good flight to consider as it comes in over the 2000 mile mark - earning 120 points rather than 40. Try and book on either BA or QF flight numbers too, to earn your status bonus.

There is one other thing to be aware of. The RTW tickets 1st and business class tickets are not booked in F and J , but rather A and D respectively. There is less availability in these classes, especially A class on AA domestic ( 2 class airrcraft ) sectors where it is used as the mileage upgrade class from economy.

Dave

Isn't the case, though, that AONEX travelers always have access to A inventory, whereas AA elites only have access inside of their 100-, 72- or 24-hour windows?

Yes, if you are planning travel beyond the 100 hour window, there should be no problem getting A class seats on AA domestic flights. The only flight I ever had trouble with was an ORD-SFO flight on a 763, when they were three class. In that case, the RTW AAgent had to call revenue management who got the seat released.

Holders of A class tickets can indeed book at any time into that class if it is available; so can people wishing to use miles to upgrade from economy to 1st. Since it is used for mileage upgrades, availability can be much more limited than on other carriers

The 100hr/72hr/24hr upgrades from upgrade credits (aka stickers) are booked into another class (X iirc).

Dave

[This message has been edited by Dave Noble (edited Jan 13, 2004).]

It's also the inventory YUP fares get booked into.

I use RTW tickets fairly regularly to get from the East Coast of the US to Hong Kong. Given that it equidistant from the East Coast either transpac or transatlantic, I'll usually travel in the direction of the tailwinds (BOS-LHR-HKG-JFK-BOS) and cut total travel time substantially (on top of nice savings and the "free" segments to boot).