Getting ready to book RTW. Any comment/advices on my itinerary
 

These forum have been extremely helpful for me to plan my trip. Thank you to all that are participating! I'm really a novice & this will be our first RTW but hopefully not our last. I've been considering this for several months now. Just read that there might be an imminent rate increase with OW RTW. So I'm thinking to pull the trigger today or tomorrow by calling the AA RTW department. This is how my latest plan goes:

Starting January 1st, Business Class, 2 people

Tokyo (NRT)-Delhi(DEL)-Doha(DOH)-Sao Paulo(GRU)-Buenos Aires(EZE)-Santiago(SCL)-Lima(LIM)-Medellin(MDE)-Mexico City(MEX)-Santa Ana(SNA)-Seattle(SEA)-Bangkok(BKK)-Tokyo(NRT)

Itinerary validated on OW RTW Panning Tool & comes at $15800 usd for 2 tickets.

We'll do GRU-EZE as a surface sector with our own tickets so we can do Rio, Iguazu Falls, Patagonia & Buenos Aires before heading to Santiago.

Would rather go to SNA than LAX because we have family in Orange county that lives right by that airport. Hoping to be able to include a flight from SNA-SEA with Alaska but not showing on the OW planner. I will ask when I speak to an agent. If I can't, I'll just make it a surface sector & buy tickets separately.

Any last minutes advices and/or comments?

Well, one thing is that you've only got 12 segments. Remember that you have up to a year to complete your travel. Do you have any breaks built into your itinerary? A DONEx is a great opportunity to generate frequent flyer miles. You could make a couple of long-haul side-trips. For example, ...-DEL-DOH-Europe-DOH-Europe-DOH-GRU-... would add one-third more to your points total. What FFP are you in?

C
 

We currently live in Thailand. That's why we're coming back to Bangkok. Planning to return to Tokyo to finish this RTW in June to start a new one from there at that time.

Not sure I understand what you mean by DEL-DOH-Europe-DOH... I did not think I could back track. In any case we would like to be back in Thailand by late March/early April. Then we would leave again for another RTW in June.

Currently FF with AA but open to join another if better.

Europe-Middle East comprise one continent for xONEx purposes. Your present plan ... DEL-DOH-GRU ... involves no flights in Europe. You are allowed four. 'Back-tracking' is not an issue within continents; you are just limited to one flight on any particular sector. If you could add a week in the middle of your trip, you might, for example, go from Doha to Oslo, spend a couple of days there; back to Doha for a day; then to London, for a day or two; back to Doha and finally continue on to Brazil. AAdvantage people here go on about their EQMs and EQDs but I haven't a clue :) ; in any event, such side-trips could net you over 12 000 additional butt-in-seat miles. And QR, in the air, in J, is pretty good.

I couldn't find direct flights of MDE-MEX, MEX-SNA, SNA-SEA, SEA-BKK.
If that is true, it means OP uses all 16 segments.

I see, that is good to know. Thanks for the suggestion but because some of my destinations don't have non stop flights in between them, I'm already at 15 segments total. So I could only add another direct flight. OW does not have many non stop flights from New Delhi to other destinations in Europe. I would have loved to go through London as we could fly directly to Rio instead of going through Sao Paulo. But when I use that routing instead of the DOHA-Sao Paulo, it increases the price of the tickets by about $1500usd.

In any case, our priority on this trip is not so much accumulating miles but more to be able to survive & enjoy doing this trip in a 3 months period, lol

Are you sure ?
In my count, you have 16 segments already.
Be aware, SNA-SEA requires two AA segements because of AA6891(AS527) and other AA direct flights are operated by non Oneworld carrier(AS), so you can't include it in your RTW.

Oh, I recount, and corrected. You have 15 segments. DOH-GRU-EZE is ONE segment if you book it as QR773 from DOH to EZE. You get ONE boarding pass for DOH to EZE.

About LHR routes, 1500USD difference is basically from BA's high carrier surcharge.

Erm ... how are we supposed to know this when you tell us

???

If you've got connections on the way, wouldn't it seem logical to include that information in your request for help?

I'm very sorry if I created any confusion. As I mentioned, I'm really a novice at RTW planning & travelling. I really appreciate both your time & willingness to help.

NRT-DEL 1segment
DEL-DOH 1 segment
DOH-GRU 1 segment
GRU-EZE surface sector (1 segment) on our own we will do Rio, Iguazu Falls, Patagonia & Buenos Aires before resuming the RTW from EZE
EZE-SCL 1 segment
SCL-LIM 1 segment
LIM-MDE 1 segment
MDE-MEX 2 segments as no direct flight. We have to go through Miami for a layover
MEX-SNA 2 segments as no direct flight. We have to go through Phoenix for a layover
SNA-SEA surface sector (1 segment) was hoping to be able to use Alaska Airlines but if not possible one-way direct flights are very cheap
SEA-BKK 2 segments as no direct flights. Going through Honk Kong for layover as Tokyo was not allowed. We've been to Hong Kong many times so no need to stopover.
BKK-NRT 1 segment

Total of 15 segments so far.

Oh No, I just spent over an hour with an AA RTW agent. She was really nice & helpful. I had all my dates & flight #'s I wanted handy so everything was going smoothly. We only had to change 1 flight to make sure I cross 1 of the oceans with AA. But went it came time to pricing, the price came to 5K more than on the OW site :-(

She said she did not understand why the fare was so much lower on the site. She said I should try to call JAL to see if they will quote me the same fare as on the site.

As anyone used JAL RTW desk before? What was your experience?

Woohoo, I figured it out! When I was on the phone with the AA agent. She told me to try to get a reservation # from the OW site. At the time, it gave me an error message & said I needed to contact JAL.

While I was trying to figure out how to reach either JAL in the USA or AA Japan counter. I had the thought that if I connect through Japan on my VPN, it might work on the OW site. I did & it worked. It gave me a reservation # & said that I needed to call JAL within 24 hrs to complete the booking.

I called the English speaking JAL department in Japan using the following # +81367333062. The agent was very nice. She found my reservation & confirmed all the flights with me. At first she was saying something about waiting until 17 June to finalize the transaction. I did not quite understand why. I told her I would really like to finalize everything today because I had to travel in the next few weeks. She said she would try to get the price within an hour or so & will call me back so we can finalize the transaction today.

About 2 hours later, I saw a restricted missed call (not sure why my phone never rang). I assume it was from them so I called the JAL desk in Japan back. I spoke to a different agent. She pulled my reservation & the total price was noted. I was able to pay with my U.S.A. CC.

Now my reservation is saying "purchased" instead of "on hold". The final price came only about $100 usd more than the OW site was quoting me. My final price came to $15805 usd for 2 business class tickets, 15 segments.

I could have never made this happen without all the excellent advices & tips I found on Trip Advisor & Flyertalk forums. Thank you! Now on to reserving my seats & booking my accomodations :-)

Very happy that you have managed to get this sorted. However.....I do have one warning to you. RTW tickets can become quite addictive :)