The Oneworld Explorer User Guide
 

Hi everybody

I have created this User Guide Wiki as a replacement for the outdated Oneworld Explorer FAQ Wiki

Hope you find it informative and useful

After a feedback period, I propose to request the forum administrators:

- make this thread a sticky

- unstick and lock the old FAQ thread



Any and all comments/suggestions welcome

pandaperth

I'm making it sticky now.

Gardyloo
Oneworld moderator

Fantastic! :tu:
Thank you Pandaperth.
Will read through it later.

This was really helpful, thank you!

This really is incredibly helpful.

Can anyone recommend an itinerary starting from London that maximises the number of first class sectors flown?

nmm Welcome to FT

Even pre Covid-19 airlines/routes with first class were diminishing. Post Covid-19 will be even less

Link---> OW first class routes thread
Last post was Dec 2018 and last wiki revision was April 2018, so probably not up to date for say Jan 2020

There's a difference between maximizing the number of first class segments and maximizing the quality of the first class segments. Some airlines' first class is much better than others, and some (such as BA) have big differences on the different equipment.

I would like to fly as many sectors as possible before first disappears. I am very happy to have a broad range of experiences and part of the interest will be comparing products on different airlines and aircraft.

It is interesting that there appears to be little up to date information on who stills flies with a first cabin or the routes.

OW still offers RTW in first so there must be some demand but I am really struggling to work out an itinerary that has many first flights.

I just want to clarify something before I book. I want to book a particular route that doesn't have a ton of availability now early in my RTW and then I expect I'll push some of the later segments out because they're more than 365 days away from today, but not 365 days away from the first day of the ticket.

As an example, let's just say my route was JFK-LAX-MEL-SIN-LHR-JFK. If I changed the dates of the LHR-JFK flight before flying the JFK-LAX flight, would it prompt a reprice for the ticket fare? I believe from what I've read that if I wait until after I've flown JFK-LAX to rebook the date of LHR-JFK, it wouldn't prompt a reprice.

From the section in the wiki on Ticket Changes:

• If you are making the changes before departure, then changes to ticketed points or to the first segment (even just a simple date change) will result in a re-price if the fare has increased.

and

• Ticketed point changes are changes to the list of airports in the itinerary – dropping or adding points, reordering the list, and also changing stopovers to transits or vice versa.

Your proposed change is not a change to the first segment or to ticketed points
and so it will not trigger a re-price

A Work of Art
 

Pandaperth, thank you so much for this invaluable tool. Best. Wiki. Ever! I suspect it will eliminate many forum queries, especially in the early planning phase. The infamous booking tool (I tried it the other day) was so frustrating--no differentiation on direct, one stop, and multi-segment flights. All cities were represented by the same little round dot. There is a segment counter down at the bottom, but it just tells you how many cities you've entered and is wrong on the segments. No matter what city pair I entered, the map drew a dotted line between them, and the counter went up by one. Also, the Where We Fly Map has disappeared. I did find a helpful outside site, flightconnections.com. You enter a city and it will give you every nonstop destination available from that city. It has an alliance filter to boot!
Happy trails.

The tool doesn't know how many segment you are using until you pick flights.

That's very disappointing. I used that tool. I liked the visualization.

I haven't tried that site. I use ExpertFlyer to find what flights are possible to/from a city. It's a bit cumbersome but shows accurate information, including which airlines, which codeshares, flight duration, flight mileage, equipment, frequency, etc. It's under "Flight Timetables Search" then "Search By Departure/Arrival City" (pick either departing from or arriving into and the date), then when you get the results, click "Filter Search Results," then "deselect all" and then click the airlines in the OneWorld alliance that are listed (only airlines operating or codesharing are shown). You can click a column to sort by it.

When I'm planning an RTW, I build potential itineraries in a spreadsheet. I check the flights on EF, and put them in the spreadsheet, one flight per row. By entering the arrival and departure times, and an arrival day offset (i.e., +1, +2 for flights that arrive the following day or two days later), the spreadsheet calculates the connection time, if something is a connection versus a stop, the total flown miles, and the earnings. It helps me plan, including picking routes and flights that are more likely to be enjoyable (e.g., no short overnight red-eyes).

Thanks, anablolism. I'm a recreational computer user, plus EMR at work. I don't have a clue about spreadsheets, a real dinosaur. I subscribe to EF, too, and what I did was use flightconnections to build an itinerary with connections that wouldn't have more than one segment. I plugged the cities into the tool without using the interactive map and got a valid itinerary. I hadn't thought of it, but you pointing out EF for flight selection will probably save me a lot more time than trying to use the tool.
The tool used to have blue squares for direct connections. Maybe they were just updating, although this would be a lousy time to try to keep up.
How many of these have you done? Should I purchase, this will be just my third, but I've planned probably 20, all stashed in my oneworld account, but pretty useless as I use positioning flights to get to better priced departure cities and maximize my segments in home country..:)
I appreciate you guys who always seem to be here and the invaluable service you supply to FTers.

I've lost track of how many multi-continents I've flown, but I do at least one per year, some years two, mostly DONEx, but on occasion DCIRxx. I did an ex-US ACIRxx last century, when it was much cheaper.

I'm comfortable with spreadsheets, so I find it very helpful when planning. I can build an itinerary (one segment per row) and see how the connections look in terms of not being too short and not being too long, and play with them (e.g., making a connection an overnight so I can sleep in a hotel), and I can duplicate a sheet and then tweak it. I often have 15-20 versions of an itinerary as I play with different routings, dates, flights. I put the positioning flights and connecting separate itineraries in the same spreadsheet, in different colors. Then, when I'm happy with an itinerary, I copy the flights into my calendar program as events, put the hotel stays in there as events in a different category, and add "enjoyment days" for the full days of enjoying being wherever. That helps me visualize the full thing, with days flying, days enjoying being in a destination, and hotels I'll need to book. When I'm ready to book the trip, I can call the AA RTW desk and read off the flights one by one, or email the itinerary to a travel agent, or try the online tool. You could do much the same just with pencil and paper if you're more comfortable that way. Maybe used lined paper and put one flight or stay in a destination per line.

This is something I have much interest in doing, likely a DONE5.

Would someone mind answering two questions?

With regards to the 16 segments, say my goal was to have a stopover in Washington, DC and a stopover in Appleton, WI. The only available OW route is WAS-ORD-ATW via AA. Does this count as one segment since I am only connecting in ORD? Or is it two segments? EDIT - or maybe this counts as a 'free' flight segment?

Is there a tool to determine what is the best FF flyer program to credit the flights? I figure if I am going to do this, I may as well benefit with OW status with some airline.

(This is a great thread. I appreciate the time and effort it took to put this together!)