Your circumstances are your circumstances, but BRU-OSL is a two-hour flight and costs €160 or so, maybe €300 RT. That flight would save you over €2,000.

:tu:

Its true but $2K is a low number given the amount I travel, given I have to leave home on Sundays to get to meetings on Monday, and given that I might have to leave home on Saturday to do an overnighter in Oslo to make sure I get a flight to LHR in time to connect to my US bound flight. Time is simply more important.

Thanks so much for sharing your story - I feel this any many threads here often skew massively in favor of “how much can I get and how little can I pay” and often ignore the value of time and going places you actually want to go.

I just finished my (first pre-devaluation) ex-CAI DONE5 and it was a great value. I didn’t do the maths on miles earned of qualifying points but got to do lots of flights I’ve wanted to do for years - and do it for much cheaper than buying them on their own.

I had so much fun I just started a devaluation-based ex-CAI explorer yesterday. Sadly going to have to change at a minimum the dates for segments 6-16 and might also change the routing because the more I think about it 7+ days in CXI might drive me insane.

I’ve done dozens of CAI fares over the years (they’re often convenient for me too as I transit between Southern Africa and Europe) so if anyone has CAI questions feel free to ask. Just as a heads up: anything in Egypt targeted at foreigners has already been repriced for the devaluation. When I started the previous fare about 6 weeks ago I noted several prices (hotels, Ubers, meals, etc) and without exception they’re all 50%+ higher in EGP just a month later.

Absolutely agree. Also, many threads skew in favor of accruing mileage in a specific program or only on specific airlines, which further limits the scope of discussion. Not everyone wants to fly via DOH on QR, and it's OK to fly on AA long-haul flights. It's also OK to start the RTW ticket in US.

especially if someone else is paying 😆

(I did a few of these on multi stop work trips because it was significantly cheaper than buying a few one-way biz fares)

Of course! Everyone has different reasons for flying these fares. Some are to rack up as many miles as possible, and that's fine. Mine have mostly been about wanting to fly US-AU in J and discovering that it's not much more expensive to book an entire RTW and structure it around existing travel plans instead of using miles. I brought up the OSL example for the prior poster just to ensure that they didn't miss out on €2000 - if their time is more valuable than repositioning to OSL, it sounds like they're doing just fine!

So I do appreciate the reference to the $2K saving and if it was purely my money for a vacation I would probably take advantage of it. Having said that, since I am a part owner in the company that is paying for it, it is also my money. But it is a different kind of money because it is heavily tempered by a lack of time and the great fatigue one gets when flying too much (18 years of monthly cross-Atlantic plus the bi-annual RTW has that affect...oh how I loved the Covid years).

Thanks for all the feedback.

About 3 months into Covid I thought the same thing - my body was definitely telling me “see how great you can feel when you’re not putting 200,000+ miles a year and constant time zone changes” - I seem to have forgotten that lesson…and combined with another five years younger I’m thinking my higher mileage years are also in the rear view mirror.

no matter how much we love this “hobby” it definitely takes a toll!

Ha "hobby" love it. I think that is what most people think it is (even the ones close to us). Anyway, no point in complaining :D

Hi all - this is pretty embarrassing, but can someone point me to the Wiki itself? I have navigated the forum from the beginning but can't find the actual information and am driving myself crazy here...

Relatively new to FlyerTalk, so I appreciate the patience :)

It's at the top of this page. Click "Show more" to expand it.

I may be crazy, but I'm still not seeing it - between the first post and the top navigation bar, I don't see the Wiki (where it typically appears on other forums - see screenshot below). Anyone else having this issue / is it limited to folks with a certain # of posts/time on FlyerTalk?

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...10edc03e7f.png

Do you have hide wikiposts selected in your options? Have you clicked the Hidden button at the top right?

I double checked and the "hide wikiposts" is not selected. I also don't see a "Hidden" button anywhere but never saw anything except what is in the screenshot (I've used other Wiki pages on here before, and was confused when it didn't appear).

I booked 2 DONE3 tickets in one order(booking reference), most of the time we will travel together, but now we found that in US we might have differenent routing. Can I change these tickets separately?