On a DONE4, if you want AA to ticket, you might consider GRU / GIG / EZE / SCL (maybe they still have MVD too?) for your intercontinental segment, leaving TPAC and TATL for JL and QR codes. I don't know if the more northern South America flights that aren't labeled as Flagship would count or not (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Guyana), but anecdotal evidence from last year says that the deep South America flights with Flagship service should count.

As a BAEC Gold who has been earning family status on a couple of RTW trips/year, since COVID, I agree with the consensus here - i.e. the RTW tickets are broadly unaffected from these changes, as long as you avoid as many AA/BA flights as possible, and focus on QR and other 50% earners. (My last DONE ticketed by AA definitely had the $$ amounts posted to my BAEC account for Avios earning, so will of course do the same for my RTW, and those $$ numbers were not great). Just a shame that ticketing via AA means transparency, at the "cost" of dealing with competent RTW staff....

I did a quick calculation that even without deliberate TP earning manipulations I'd be able to get my Gold on two RTW DONExs/year fairly easily, which is fine and in line with my current practices - and going out of Japan is cheaper than GBP20k/year. The reduction in AONEx earning is probably a good reason for me to avoid this temptation too.... :P

(and yes, I am very grateful to lose the 4xBA flights minimum, no need to trouble myself with too much BA except for status)

I�ve also been ticketing with AA and have gotten Avios consistent with the old tier point calculator on QR and JL at minimum (these were prime flights, not code shares). This was just this month. That makes me hopeful that tier points for QR and JL will also be distance-driven, even when AA tickets.

Depends on where you're crediting. Credit to QRPC and AA flights do fine, earnings calculated by mileage, not revenue.

You're entirely right. In this case I am going to continue to credit to BAC (and BAEC before April...) as I am not that far off lifetime status (though a lot further than on the 30 December), and it suits my travel patterns well (living in HKG, using the CX F lounges with OWE status, doing plenty of intra-asia CX flights, but also 2xRTW tickets a year with the family - that all combined should keep us all as Golds for a few more years)

Maybe to be explicit for anyone who will come to this thread in the future: When booking a RTW ticket using the AA RTW desk, there is visibility to British Airways on the implied/calculated spend for AA flights, which prior to 30 December 2024 was used for Avios earning, but will, post April 1, also be used for New Tier Point earning of course. The implied spend doesn't however get passed over on for example QR/CX or other tickets on the RTW (as they don't have a data sharing agreement with BA clearly). As Dr. HFH says, you can credit this to non-BAEC/non-AA FFPs and there is no visibility (but they may calculate things differently)

Here is a simple example of what can be seen. Note those very low GBP amounts won't be good for your new Tier Point earnings. In this case:
BOS-LAX / A (Transcontinental). Old TPs == 210, NTPs = 399 (Implied value at 13.3333x == 2800)
MIA-BOS / D (Domestic First). Old TPs == 40, NTPs == 193 (Implied value at 13.3333x == 533)


Example BAEC posting from an AONE ticket using AA flights - note the calculated GBP values

So you may find it better to post any of your AA/BA flights to a different airline rather than "waste" the miles and Avios.

Just for fun, I threw together a possible DONE4 ex-OSL that I believe should hit at least 20k BA nTP .. plus, it includes AA overwater segment thus can be ticketed by AA RTW desk.

OSL-DOH QR
DOH-LHR-BOS QR-AA
(insert up to 4 N.A. segments on AS/AA)
DFW-SYD QF
SYD-HND JL
HND-BKK JL
BKK-HND-SIN JL
SIN-HND-CDG JL
CDG-DOH-OSL QR

This is a very useful thread, thank you. Please can I check my understanding.

- I intend to book a DONE4 ex-OSL and credit to BAC to earn nTPs
- If I book by AA RTW desk (much the easiest) and therefore have an AA ticket, I will need to avoid AA/BA where possible or else be credited with nTPs on a revenue basis
- The only BA/AA leg I intend to have is MIA-LHR which I will book on BA metal as an AA codeshare
- That will give me the required AA flight that will allow me to book with the AA RTW desk
- For other flights, I will book AY, QR and JL thus attracting optimal distance based earning in D class at 50%. Plus a couple of flights on QF which are unavoidable in Australia domestically
- Alternatively I could book with another OW carrier (ex AA/BA/IB) and then AA flight(s) would provide distance based nTPs.
- If I did book with another OW carrier (ex AA/BA/IB), is there one you would recommend who has competence with RTW tickets? Or should I go to a TA?

For my journey, I estimate that will earn around 19,000 nTPs. This will (hopefully) bring me to BA GGLfL during the trip and I will then be free from needing to worry about nTPs and the new ridiculous thresholds.

Thank you for your help.

Use a travel agent if you aren't booking with AA RTW desk. YMMV.

Bright star,


Your summary looks right to me. Maybe some day the AA RTW desk will share the revenue splits for non-AA/BA flights with BA and then the NTP earnings for those flights will disappear, but it seems not yet.

I gather from what I've read here that Cathay is the second best airline to book with. But it's a distant second, and a TA may be better. There are a few on this board who book RTWs. Fam, please post your experiences.

Minimizing the AA/BA/IB flights seems to be the best way forward. But since one cannot escape having 1 AA trans-oceanic flight, how many new TP's would that be ?? Any estimates? FOr those who have credited some AA flights to AA, what type of numbers are we seeing, 200, 500, 1000, etc?

Out of the three 50% nTP carriers, prioritizing AY then JL and QR for the last if wish to maximize avios earning at the same time. Booked mine with CX, was happy with it and for sure they are not as good as AA RTW desk but I guess the goal here is to avoid as much AA/BA flights as possible

could you expand on your CX ticketing experiences considering that QF agents are not experienced with these tickets? Have you had to make any changes and which CX office did you interact with? More info would be helpful for those who may prefer to avoid AA.

I booked through QF (unfortunately) and got the following:
- AY - nTPs distance based
- JL - nTPs distance based
- AS - nTPs distance based
- AA - nTPs spend based - albeit with a terrible FX rate :/

So, seems to be working as intended.

I've got some AA trip credit to burn, will try and rinse it on my next RTW. Hopefully the same logic will apply to the non-AA sectors

As based in HKG now so working with CX is quite pleasant so far. Though most of the general hotline agents don't seem experienced enough to handle such complex ticket/changes. So you need to expect them to call back by their "back office" team within 48hours after they verify your itinerary and quote properly.
It's a similar experience when you make changes, even a simple one. I have made a simple change to rebook myself from a QR code flight to an AY codeshare(booked on the same QR flight but with an AY code yielding more Avios). The general hotline staff was unable to re-ticket it straightaway, so the case was sent back to the back office team to process.

In short, hotline staffs are nice to work with and fairly helpful and do have some idea what is a RTW ticket about but most of them don't have sufficient knowledge/access right to manually work with this type of ticket when system fail to do auto-price so chance for last minute changes are slim as you need to leave some lead time for them to process it.

I've made maybe 5 or 6 changes. There is a back office team who know their stuff but you can't talk to so you have to either call or whatsapp and convince your request to be passed on which is usually OK but sometimes a bit iffy as the team you're talking to don't understand xONEx fares and sometimes confuse it with other fares. With some patience and some HUACA it's not been an issue.

I've settled on WhatsApp and it's taken ~2-3 days each time. I was able to make a late notice one day change which they gave priority to. Date changes are of course the easiest but I've done a route changes too. IIRC I was emailed a payment link for that. All in all no issue if your changes are not last minute and you're able to stay calm.