I live in New York and am looking to do a RTW which includes Bangkok-Singapore-Oz-NZ. I need to go as cheaply as possible. Do you think OneWorld is the way to go?

Where can I find a website that actually lets me plan the trip thru OneWorld?

I have also found that I can fly to London and get my RTW ticket from there cheaper than going directly from NYC. Is this usually how it goes?

THanks so much.

The least expensive economy, four continent RTW is about US$2500 from London (low season, US$2800 high season) and US$3800 from the US.

You should read some of the past threads here for information on trip planning. You can download electronic timetables that will help you in planning the trip from here and here. The OWE RTW rules are here.

If you really only need Asia and SWP, something else you should look at is the Cathay Pacific All Asia Pass. You can add on Oz or NZ and once there buy cheap tickets for local travel. Information on it is here. Note that the AAP does not earn mileage but you can leave from NYC.

"I live in New York and am looking to do a RTW which includes Bangkok-Singapore-Oz-NZ. I need to go as cheaply as possible. Do you think OneWorld is the way to go?"

If you can get a cheap ticket to London, Qantas offers a couple of useful fares. One is their Discovery Fare and the other is their Voyager fare. Both have a 29,000 mile limit, allow travel on BA or QF flight numbers (including codeshares) and a maximum of 6 stops , of which 3 can be in Australia/New Zealand. It also allows travel on CX within Asia The main difference between the 2 is that the Discovery is booked in M class (M*DISCOV) and the Voyager in H class (H*DISCOV).

In May the fares are $1622 for the discovery (MLDISCOV) and $1822 for the voyager (HLVOY).

With your straightforward requirements, these would seem to be better value for you, plus if you are concerned about FF mileage accrual, M and H are better classes to be booked in than L.

"Where can I find a website that actually lets me plan the trip thru OneWorld?"

Not really. If you download the OW timetable from the AA site, that will allow you to plan a route. The programme can be obtained at www.aa.com , then select travel information and download the oneworld electronic timetable

Dave

[This message has been edited by Dave Noble (edited Jan 12, 2004).]

ExMo,

A million thanks for these links and for your replies to my earlier post about RTW fares.

Thanks so much for the help. As soon as I get home from work I'm checking out all those links.

(BTW, no, I'm not so concerned with mileage accrual as price and flexibility are my #1 concern.)

These threads specifically address those concerns:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum83/HTML/002026.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum83/HTML/002028.html

" no, I'm not so concerned with mileage accrual as price and flexibility are my #1 concern"

the H*VOY/M*DISCOV fares are v flexible, allowing rouuting changes for �50 and date changes free of charge. Also, being booked in H class means that availability for booking/changes mean that you would have a lot more ease finding availability Add in to the mix it being cheaper, it is a great fare if your itinery plans fit in to it ( which it sounds like yours does) . Getting full mileage accrual on H is a nice icing on the cake


Dave

I'm sorry, but I don't know what H fare and V fare means... is that a level of fare cost? Other than that, what are the differences? It doesn't mean where you sit on the plane, right?

Fares comes in "buckets" F is First class, Y full price economy, and H a discount economy for example.
As above, getting full mileage accrual on H is a nice icing on the cake. On a lower grade economy fare, like V, you may get less miles in your frequent flyer account (depending on who your freq flyer account is with)

Anywhere except First class and Business you are sitting with the multitude down the back of the flying bus


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

"I'm sorry, but I don't know what H fare and V fare means... is that a level of fare cost? "

It is the booking class where the ticket is booked into. It is still an economy seat and the fare basis has no relevance to where you get to sit in the plane.

The airline allocates seats to each allocation and you will find that the cheapest ones fill up quicker. H is one of the highest classes ( comes next after Y and B ) and is one of the easiest classes in which to find availability. M comes slightly after H so has less availability. The One World Explorer fares are booked in L which is quite a low class. When I last travelled from UK - Oz in summer, the only fare classes available were Y,B,H and K with all the others unavailable. Given that H is normally one of the last classes to close out, it is a great class to have a ticket booked in. V and N are among the cheapest of the classes and the the 1st ones to go

Dave