YOUR MISSION SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT.....

OK Here Goes - I'm very new to the site but have picked up quite a bit of interesting information and now I'm planning in a trip in about 7 weeks and would love the advice of all you guru's out there.

I live in PER. I need to visit ATL on 10&11 Jun and AMS on 21&22 Jun.
I also need to go to LON, BWI, ORD, YVR, TYO, SYD. The dates for these are flexible, but need to be close to above and at least one weekday at each. I only want to be away from wife and kids for 2-3 weeks max.

I am a QFF with about 120,000 points but still only bronze status (mostly credit card points). I am obviously keen to maximise points and SC's. I assume I need to avoid AA as much as possible since no points?

I wrote to travel agent in BKK to see about prices and they quoted 121,160THB ($4,045AUD) which really surprised me as the TA here quoted me $3,239AUD - high season and $2939AUD if I leave before 31 May. Have I misread something here as there seemed to be a lot of posts saying BKK was really cheap for OWE?? Is there somewehre else I should look at getting the ticket? And od the season rules apply worldwide?

So .... thoughts on best itinerary, price etc. I'm happy to buy a OW to Asia if it means I can get a cheaper LONE4 fare?

Lots of questions - no anwsers. Thankyou very much in advance if you have any words of wisdom for this confused traveller!!

BKK is (relatively) cheap for D (Business) Class ONEx tickets (but not Economy L class). The current BKK DONE4 ticket, is, I believe, about AUD7200 give or take (add around AUD400 in taxes). Of course, you must pay in THai Bart for a ticket bought in BKK and start the trip in BKK. If you buy it in BKK for an Oz departure, you are charged the Oz (equivalent) price.

Worth checking the fare rules (www.travel.com.au will have them). Also, since you are in L class availability may be a problem so close to proposed travel dates. You can check availability on:
http://www.flyaow.com/classavailability.htm

A price list for xONEx tickets that may be a bit out of date now is:
http://www.hardlink.com/~markdu/OWFi...orerFares.html

Thanks for the info. I checked availability at AMEX and had a bit of trouble reading it. seems like all the classes either had a 0 or a 9 next to the letter. I am assuming a 9 means there are some setas available and a 0 none? What does a 3 mean?

Your right as the PER-LHR leg looks difficult, at the moment I'm thinking that I might have to go:

PER-MEL-LHR-AMS-BUD-LHR-BWI-ATL-ORD-LAX-YVR-NRT-PER

Do you see any problems with this?

Note that one a LONE4 you are not going to score a huge amount of status credits, so its unlikely you will progress from Bronze to Silver early in the trip, so we don't need to worry too much about the status bonus earned on BA verses the 25% base points. So I will avoid AA and BA as much as practical.

So how does this sound:

PER-ADL-AKL on QF
AKL-HKG-YVR on CX
YVR-ORD-ATL-DFW-BWI-DFW-JFK on AA
JFK-HEL-LHR-HEL-AMS-HEL-HKG on AY
HKG-NRT on CX
NRT-MEL-SYD-PER on QF

I make that 20 segments, 44,904 miles flown, 320 SC's and 37,978 base QF points.

note that if you could make one of the USA sectors via an alternate means (ie drive, purchase a cheap AA fare etc) you could finish USA with LAX-JFK-HEL using QF107 LAX-JFK earning more SC's and points.

ATL and BWI are the difficult ones since you need to go through ORD, DFW or MIA to get between them.

I also considered taking CX HKG-JFK (transit in YVR) and then continuing JFK-YVR on CX since it would be a connection from an international flight, but that added an extra sector and I could not then include ATL, BWI, ORD request and still get you out in AY from JFK.

You could leave from LAX/SFO on BA and get more SC's, but less points and more time in the air, so it depends on what you want.

A 9 means there are at leats 9 seats available in that fare bucket. A 3 means there are currently three seats available in that fare bucket. You need to look for a number other than 0 following the L for a LONE4 fare. Note that some airlines use a number less than 9 to indicate the "at least" value. AA uses 7, some use 4. So on those airlines you never see any more than 7 (or 4 or whatever) showing on ITN.

Looks for alternates such as avoiding making LHR your Eueopean hub. If you use HEL as the hub you get to fly AY and hence full points rather than BA's 25% reduction.

Your original post has dates for ATL before AMS, so you will need to go the other way around the world. Also note that AA don't offer direct BWI-ATL, so you will have to use ORD, DFW or MIA as a hub for them. I would recommend YVR-HKG-NRT using CX. Then NRT-MEL is just over 5000 miles on QF so you get 40 SC's instead of 25.

Your rounting above does not include SYD as requested.

Thanks for the fantastic work and all the advice - yes for luggage (& other) reasons I've decided that the dates in AMS can be flexed and we�ll travel the other way. We intend bringing some relatively heavy electrical gear back from the US and I understand that traveling across the Pacific we have much better luggage allowances.

Your suggestions are really appreciated.

Do you have a suggestion as to the best price I�m likely to get if I buy the ticket in Aus or are all TA�s likely to charge the same?

I notice you suggest BWI-DFW-JFK, do I actually achieve anything in terms of QFF points or SC's for this flight and if not, would it be more sensible to go via BOS?

My suggested itinerary should work in reverse. Note that flying towards the west means you will spend more time in the aircraft as that is generally flying into the prevailing winds. Can add about 3 hours of flying time to a RTW if heading westward rather than eastward.
How could I leave a challenge like this one .
Can't really help you too much there. Mine have generally been DONE4 and booked through our corp travel agent, where we get a discount depending on the amount of QF metal involved. It may be worth booking it directly with QF and then getting a TA to issue the ticket. Some TA's offer 5% or so of international published fares. not sure if they include LONE4 type fares.
The only reason for that suggestion is to get you to the AY flight to HEL and it leaves from JFK. AY codeshare with AA from places like ORD, but you may have problems convincing the TA to book the codeshare flight instead of the AA flight, and the AA flight means no points or SC's so you don;t want that . And there are not too many options from BWI - just the major AA hubs such as DFW, ORD, MIA etc.

AA don't operate too many domestic flights to/from JFK. Most are to/from LGA. Part of their theory is that there is no need for connections since they fly from ORD or DFW to most of the same places they fly from JFK.

of couse if you can incorportae LAX-JFK or JFK-LAX on QF107/108 then that is a good SC/points eraner for a QF FF member. But you are short of segments in the USA since you want to get to ATL and BWI, which mean traversing AA's hubs and using segments, of which you only get 6. You could perhaps look at catching a train down to BWI from JFK to save some segments. There is an Amtrak station at BWI airport.

Amazing advice so far NM so I may as well keep pushing my luck. I'm trying to tavel on the cusp of the low fare in LONE4, do I have to leave Australia before 31 May or just commence travel. That is if I depart PER on 30 May can I stay in MEL or SYD and not leave until 2 Jun and still qualify for the cheaper fare?

Er, no. It makes no difference. If your ticket includes segments via North America then the luggage allowance for all of the segments on that ticket (wherever thay are in the world) is based on the piece system, not the weight system.

Yes, the checked baggage allowance is 2 x 32kg bags for the entire itinerary. But if I was planning to purhase leage items, I would want to route to minimise the number of times I had to lug them to/from/between airports.

That's one for the airline or agent to answer for you. I can't find a specific reference to it in the rules. However the rules do note that the first international departure must be a confirmed reservation, while all other sectors can be "open".

The section of the rules unfortunately doesn't allow the proposal (see below):

A.THE DATE OF THE FIRST INTERCONTINENTAL SECTOR
DETERMINES THE APPLICABLE SEASONAL FARE FROM THE
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN FOR THE ENTIRE JOURNEY - E.G:
SYDNEY TO AUCKLAND DEPART: 20 MAY
AUCKLAND TO LOS ANGELES DEPART: 01 JUNE
LOS ANGELES TO NEW YORK: DEPART: 10 OCTOBER
ALTHOUGH TRAVEL ORIGINATES IN AUSTRALIA - THE
FLIGHT THAT DETERMINES SEASONALITY IS: 01 JUNE
(I.E. HIGH SEASON-FROM CONTINENT/SOUTHWEST
PACIF.)

"I wrote to travel agent in BKK to see about prices and they quoted 121,160THB ($4,045AUD) which really surprised me as the TA here quoted me $3,239AUD - high season and $2939AUD if I leave before 31 May. Have I misread something here as there seemed to be a lot of posts saying BKK was really cheap for OWE?? "

BKK is very good for business and 1st class tickets. For economy, the BKK price is higher than the Australia price. If youi want to pay around AUD6,500 , you can get a business class RTW ex BKK

Dave

I do RTWs several times a year and go through Australia as that is where I need to go for business. As an old fart (60 this year) I now only fly east to west as it significantly reduces jet lag for me. The flights are longer, but so are the days and recovery seems to be a lot easier.

If you're going to be using your miles in the future it is worth calculating the additional miles going on a 4DONE fare and what it will save in the future. If you can write the ticket off on business then compare the fares with the tax savings included - that's how I was able to justify moving to business Also it is important to max out the segments on a RTW, maximizing miles in order to justify costs.

The best part of a DONE fare is that you do survive the flights in a lot better condition and are able to enjoy looking around all the places you can visit.

While you may arrive in NY at JFK it is also possible to depart from ORD - a far better airport in my mind than anything I seen around NY.

Have a great trip - there is nothing like a RTW trip to realize just how much there is in this world to see.