Is our trip possible?
 

My wife and I are leaving from Taiwan. We were interested in the OWE LONE3 or LONE4 fare. The 4 continent is still a little too expensive, but manageable. We were hopefully going to visit the four continents of Asia, South Pacific, South America and North America. I just heard that we must travel across both, the Pacific and the Atlantic ocean. It looks like we'll only be able to cross the Pacific with this ticket. Would we still be able to purchase this type?

If not, are there any other types of tickets in the same price range that we could do?

Any help would be great!

Thanks.

Can't purchase the xONEx if not crossing the Atlantic. Take a look at the Circle Pacific ticket.

If you aren't crossing both oceans then the circle pacific seems like the choice.
See the explanations and advice in these threads:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=186569
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=184405
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=184355
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=184355

Current Circle Pacific fare?
 

The latest Circle Pacific fares that I found were from last year. Does anyone have any current Circle Pacific fares. I would be purchasing the ticket and departing from Taiwan or China.

Is this ticket only part of Oneworld and Star Alliance or are there others I should be looking into?

I'm not sure exactly where I'm allowed on a Oneworld or Star Alliance Circle Pacific fare, but we were hoping to visit South America too.

My rough itinerary would be Taipei or Beijing - Tokyo - Bangkok - overland - Jakarta - Sydney - Christchurch - Fiji or any other suggested island - Santiago - Calgary or Seattle and back. (we were hoping to just stop once we get back home to Calgary or Vancouver area and just not use the last portion of the trip back to Asia) Has anyone done this before?

Why do the overland miles count as well? How can they tell where you drive/bus/train to? Or is it only if you go overland to another airport?

Thanks.
Dan

I'll try and answer some of these, but others may correct me if I steer you wrong:

No problem to visit South America with a OW circle pacific, but that locks you into the longest and and most expensive ticket (<29,000 miles even if you don't use them all). You should search the Evil Empire forum too, since for the reason below you may get more joy with their circle pacific product. The basic idea for both is that you cross the Pacific once to the South in one direction, and once to the North in the other. The gateway cities for the northern routing are HKG and NRT (CX and AA respectively).

The problem you will face is that the Circle Pac. ticket is only good on OW metal, and getting OW metal to South Pacific islands is kind of hard. QF only runs codeshares to Apia and Nadi, but I think they have one flight of their own metal to Noumea (from BNE), so that may be an option, although only as an out-and-back from Australia. To get to South America, you'd need to get QF to AKL and then Lan over to Santiago. The other tropical island you can of course visit is Hawaii, via SYD or the continental US.

This is called throw-away ticketing, and is prohibited by the airlines. The penalty for doing this is that you run the risk of the airlines repricing the ticket as a series of one-ways. Not good. That said, people obviously do it so the risk is yours; however some friendly advice would be not to run around publicising your plans on this front too extensively if you decide to do it.

Well you must by definition get off at one airport and on at another, so overland mileage is from the airport you left to the airport you next board.

You might want to research the rules here and think about your routing some more. The links above will help with ideas too.

Circle Pacific fares are only available as 22,000, 26,000 and 29,000 miles variants. The 34,000 mile option is for he Global Explorer fare. To include South America, you must have the xCIR29SA fare type. If including South America, you must travel between Chile and SW Pacific (NZ/Australia) as your south Pacific crossing.

On the 29,000 mile fare, you get 6 free stopovers included, and only one at any one point, and a max of two in any one region (continent really). A surface segment is considered a stopover. You may purchase up to two additional stopovers per region.

Note also that travel on a Circle Pacific fare must be in a generally continuous clockwise or anti-clockwise direction. Backtracking in direction is only permitted where required through certain hub locations

With the Circle Pacific fares, as with moist fares, you are allowed to exercise the "thow-away ticketing" practice of not completing the journey. But the cancellation rule that applies here states the condition of "certified death of the passenger/member of the passenger's immediate family", so that may not be quite such a pleasent manner in which to complete your journey.