Interesting options for Japan trip - Any ideas
 

I need to be in Tokyo from about 9 Oct 23-12 Oct 23 and I would like to extend my trip at either end and include some interesting countires, i am looking at a total trip time of about 20-25 days.

This will probably have to be an economy trip unless I can come up with some decent business pricing. One thought is that I may want to split some of the longer flights with an overnight stop just to make economy travel more bearable e.g. 24 hours in the emirates.

Before I get to deep into this can anyone suggest any routing to include interesting places, I have spent some time in Japan before so I would like to go elsewhere this trip although Okinowa in Japan is one option I was considering Tawain has been recommened but I am happy to consider anywhere else with decent links between the UK and Japan. I am pretty sure i will have to step outside oneworld at least for some of this trip.

Any tips to for keen business prices also appreciated.

TIA

Routes between Okinawa and rest of Japan are well served by JL. Both CX and JL fly between Taiwan and Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya. You certainly don't need to step outside of oneworld if these are the excursions you are considering.

If you are just considering breaking a long-haul between the UK and Japan into 2 medium-hauls, within oneworld I can't think of anything else other than QR, many of whose fares do allow free stopover in DOH.

Looking at previous posts, back in April you were talking about trying to get (back) to BA Silver from nothing. Is that still the case? Also, what would qualify as "keen" business pricing? And a related question, what if any other travel plans do you have for the remainder of 2023 and the first half of 2024?

Here's a thought, maybe quickly discarded. Buy a 3-continent Oneworld Explorer business class RTW with the ticket starting in Norway. RTWs are priced very differently from one country to another (where the trip begins, not where you live) and a 3-continent business class "DONE3" ticket originating in Norway has a base price of £3840 compared to one starting in the UK with a base price of £5471. You can get (economy) from London to Oslo for under a hundred quid, so some obvious savings.

The DONE3 is good for up to 16 flights over the course of a year, of which four can be in Asia, four in Europe (which includes the Middle East) and six within North America, which includes the Caribbean and Central America.

So imagine you fly to Oslo and activate the ticket, fly to Helsinki and connect to a Finnair flight to Singapore. Gobble some Hainan chicken rice or whatever for a day or two, then it's up to Japan (can we assume Tokyo?) for your visit there.

When you're done, do a combination tier point/mileage run/autumn foliage tour. Fly back to Hong Kong, then back to Japan, but this time to Chitose/Sapporo in Hokkaido, where the autumn foliage should be well on its way to gobsmack levels. Tour around for a couple of days, then head back to Hong Kong (or just back to Tokyo, but fewer tier points) and then it's across the Pacific to Los Angeles. Do an easy tier point turnaround from LAX up to Anchorage and back (maybe too late for much autumn color in Alaska but possible) then it's off to Boston and some "leaf peeping" in New England. Get a car and head up to New Hampshire or Vermont for some autumn glory, then back to Boston and back to London. You'll have been gone from home for around 3 weeks, so within your parameters.

BUT... the RTW still affords you three flights within Europe (and two stopovers, with London/Norfolk being the first) and you'd still have 10 or 11 months left on the RTWs calendar. So maybe sometime in the winter or spring you take a trip to the Middle East - maybe Qatar or Oman, or Israel, then it's back to Oslo to finish the ticket.

Here's an imaginary route that complies with the RTW rules - OSL-HEL-SIN-HND-HKG-CTS-HKG-LAX-ANC-LAX-BOS-LHR-MAD-DOH-OSL that would generate something like 1440 BA tier points, close to Gold, never mind silver. You'd need some BA-metal segments if you don't have enough already, but these could be easy weekenders to Scotland or Ireland, Holland or France, whatever's cheap and interesting.

So anyway this MIGHT be a solution to your desire to get back to Silver (or better) with BA and open the door to some interesting destinations. Granted, this is a lot of butt-in-seat miles (more like butt-in-bed) over a short time, but it would be far from grueling. Maybe worth some thought.

Hi Gardyloo, your reply is exactly the sort of thing that make this forum so useful, yes I am still looking to get back to Silver, I had to delay it a bit due to other priorities. I would never have thought about the RTW fares without your post. This looks like a very interesting option and I think I will be spending a lot of today exploring it. Thanks for posting and I even like your possible routing.

Thanks It seems that Okinowa is not somewhere that is well covered for visitors from Europe, I guess its more of a local holiday centre and possible somewhere US folks go to more. I have always been fascinated by the place so am keen to get a few days there.

I had a play with this but although the base price is as you said, once the surcharges etc are added it comes to just under 7000 GBP, unless of course i have missed something important?

Shouldn't be that much. If you don't mind sharing, what route did you specify and where did you obtain the price? It sounds suspiciously like you've gotten the ex-UK fare, not the ex-Norway one.

Note that relying on the Oneworld online tool for this can result in hair loss at a minimum. The tool is hopelessly buggy and unreliable, and tends to default to higher-cost options, e.g. choosing British Airways as the initial carrier in order to get BA's usurious surcharges and fees applied to all flights, not just those operated by BA. There are workarounds possible, with the emphasis on "work."

Interesting I used the oneworld planner with BA as preferred carrier, I have attached a copy of the generated fare, any hints on how to rework this would be appreciated.

It is a puzzlement, but honestly not a surprising outcome if you're using the online tool. A couple of things:

Somehow the fare details you appended are for a Global Explorer trip, not a Oneworld Explorer. This is Oneworld's mileage-based RTW product (maximum 34,000 flown miles in business class) which has a base price a few dollars/pounds cheaper ex-Norway than the Oneworld Explorer, which is maybe some decision made by the Oneworld robots based on the mileage of your trip. The Global Explorer is far less flexible than the Oneworld Explorer; if you were to amend your plan to include more stops and more mileage, you'd have to convert the GlobEx to a Oneworld Explorer (OWE) with, of course, some major service charges.

Regarding the big number for carrier surcharges, not having a breakout by segment is a major problem, but I took it upon myself to use ITA and look up the YQ and YR charges listed for the various segments and carriers on your itinerary. These are shown in the currency of the departing airport, so one needs to change them to Norwegian Kroner to see how the total compares to the NOK 28,002 total on the estimate. And, guess what... the numbers don't add up at all. The total YQ/YR surcharges using he segment-by-segment approach comes to NOK 10,842, of which NOK 8934 is from one segment - BOS-LHR (US$850, the standard YQ charged by all the Oneworld carriers on USA-UK business class segments, whether it's LAX-LHR or BOS-LHR, LAX-MAD, JFK-HEL, you name it.) By comparison, the YQ/YR charged by Oneworld carriers on Canada-Europe business class segments is CA$714.50, or US$536. From the Caribbean it's US$365, from Mexico it's US$400.

My hunch - and this is just a hunch - is that when you put Finnair in as the first carrier, somehow the fare calculation and ticketing duties get assigned by the robots to BA. (This is similar to the Star Alliance online RTW tool, which assigns everything to Lufthansa for ticketing, whether or not LH even has a segment in the trip.) BA is notorious for adding YQ surcharges on segments flown by everyone in the itinerary, even if those carriers don't charge YQ or YR themselves. (Note I don't know the difference between YQ and YR, but they both turn up as "carrier surcharges," so I just lump them together.) Anybody who's used BA Avios for award travel knows that even on non-BA segments, BA whacks you with big surcharges (incorrectly called "taxes" by many) as a form of revenue enhancement, i.e., profit-seeking, on BA's part. My guess is that that's what's happening here.

Possible workarounds, no guarantees or promises offered: Redo your itinerary so that it will be palatable for American to do the fare construction and ticketing. First, make sure it's a Oneworld Explorer you're buying, not a Global Explorer. Second, put in an AA-operated over-water segment, not an AA codeshare on BA or QF metal. SYD-LAX on AA 72 would get my vote but it's your call. You might also add a BOS-YUL (non-Oneworld so outside the ticket) segment then fly YUL-LHR to get the cheaper ex-Canada transatlantic YQ charge. You can afford the surface segment. (Or you could add two segments in North America and fly BOS-ORD-YYZ, or if AA is flying its seasonal route to Cancun, go BOS-CUN-LGW)

There are various workarounds, but the main thing would be to get someone besides BA to do the ticketing. Like I say, no guarantees but maybe worth some time.

I'm attaching a pdf of my worksheet. Hope there aren't any gross errors.

Edited to add - I see I left out the legitimate taxes and non-YQ/YR fees from the fare quote, so the bottom "all in" line on the spreadsheet is bogus. But the math is easy.

Unfortunately for OneWorld Explorer ticket's that method of YQ/YR calculation doesn't work. It's quite a bit different on an Explorer ticket than individual revenue tickets. From my best understanding it's varied quite heavily based on the point of origin of the xONEx ticket and the ticketing carrier, but for example an ex-TYO DONE5 tends to have around 40,000-60,000 JPY in YQ/YR but if you checked the same itinerary on Matrix you'd end up easily with 200,000-300,000 JPY depending on the itinerary. The only way I know to get a full breakdown by carrier is to get a travel agent to run the itinerary for you.

Right, that's my point (which I made poorly, evidently.) The lumped-together YQ/YR total in wytco0's fare summary is opaque as to both who did the calculations and what the per-segment charges were. As I said, I suspect the culprit is BA, but the only way to know for sure is to see the actual ticket numbers once issued, so you could see the prefix that indicates the issuing carrier, hence (presumably) who did the numbers (e.g. 001, AA, 125 BA and so on.)

I think I once got a full breakdown from the AA RTW desk but I can't find it now (years ago.) The ticket had been issued by AA's GSA in Cape Town, but the (then Dublin) AA rates desk had done the crunching.

Even after issue, I think it depends on who issued your ticket if you can see a breakdown or not. On my last year's QF issued one, I could still only see the lump sum when I pulled the ticket on the Finnair site (QF site is as hopeless as their CS agents). But I've ran a few different scenarios for my next one for December start this year and I get fairly similar results from CX and QF (haven't tried AA and probably won't because I'll get screwed on the AA segments going revenue vs. distance, I guess if they were magically $1000 cheaper then it'd be ok and I could donate to the AA hotels no-show cause to make up the difference, but that's not going to happen since the total YQ/YR on QF or CX issued is far far less than $1000). I absolutely will not do another QF ticket after the last experience but it's a good data point to compare fees.

I was able to get a very close quote. To answer the most important part of your question, the main chunk of carrier surcharge is from QF, which adds 1145EUR each on HND-SYD and SYD-LAX.
I am a bit confused whether BA or AY was used for plating. Thought it would be AY. Anyway, there is no difference between YR/YQ whether BA or AY plate is used.
The easiest way to reduce YR/YQ would be to change HND-SYD to JL (note, seems no D available on the same day) and SYD-LAX to AA (or use the AS code-share with QF or AA).

I only see a very small difference on YR/YQ whether BOS-LHR is on AA-code or BA-code, or whether SYD-LAX is on AA-code or AS-code, when plated on BA or AY.

Your suggestion of trying to get TYO-SYD on JL is a solid win if the OP has any flexibility in the date and can find a date its available. Now that QF has a lot more Japan flights back online, it's not as hard to get JL as it was last year. Last year the entire business cabin was sold out (on any fare class, even J) months in advance sometimes. QF hands down has a better seat than JL, even though it's on the A330 and I don't care for that plane, but JL's service and generally food quality is much better. The other downside to JL is their (Hollywood) entertainment is nearly non-existent but I can tolerate that, easy to download some stuff to your own device if you're not planning to sleep.