Someone will try to calculate the cost of your flown itinerary, and subtract that from the paid fare. In principle that could be a series of Y fares tagged on to each other. That is your refund.

The difficulty arises when it is not actually possible to construct your flown itinerary as a series of oneway fares on one ticket.

That penalty is before taking any flights.

If flown any sectors, then the equivalent one way fare is calculated for the sectors flown and added up. This is subtracted from paid fare to determine the refund. Thus refunds are not likely to be significant if the RTW was purchased cheaply compared with one-way fares for the sectors flown. There is no easy way for passengers to calculate/estimate the refund.

And if, as I expect would happen not infrequently, the passenger owes additional money, is it collected?

Most countries with a notion of contract law would not allow that ...

Why not?

"This is a special fare which requires a complete journey from initial origin to final destination and is based on the passenger completing the entire trip. Failure to complete the entire trip as ticketed will result in repricing those segments actually flown as one-way point-to-point flights in the cabin actually flown, which may result in a refund to, or additional collection from, the passenger."

Seems to me that that would do it.

If that were very clearly stated at time of purchase, and those one-way prices were available to the purchaser, perhaps. It's the open ended and opaque nature of airline pricing that seems to me to make this look very slippery, especially if these tickets are sold to consumers.

On a separate point, many one way fares do not allow themselves to be used for historical repricing of flown sectors. Many of BA's fares now include the condition that "FARES ONLY APPLY IF PURCHASED BEFORE DEPARTURE." After the sector is flown you essentially have an empty tariff with no price for that leg.

The other take could be - if the sum of the one way fares exceed the value of the originally purchased xONEx - then the ticket can not be cancelled/refunded and no money is refunded/asked for from the customer.

Happy wandering

Fred

Yes, but these are theoretical fares and purchases. The passenger doesn't actually buy them; they're used only for calculation. Doesn't matter if they were actually available at the moment that the passenger paid for the RTW ticket. Sort of like HIP calculation, no?


Well, sure, if the airline feels like letting the pax off the hook. So, for example, if you only need a one-way ticket (e.g., meeting a cruise ship) and the xONEx fare is cheaper, why not buy the xONEx fare and just not fly the rest of the itinerary after the city where you board the cruise? No penalty and no exposure under your scenario.

Removed

Mileage Monkey Says this is a valid xDONEx routing, is it really valid?
 

Can anyone help me? Is the following a valid xDONEx routing?



CAI-oLHR-ARN-LHR-MEX-oMIA-JFK-LAX-HNL-NRT-HKG-MLE-HKG-BOM-DOH-DXB


Thanks in advance

Just to be clear, the notation is o for stopover and x for transit. You are only stopping in London and Miami, and the rest are transits?

Assuming you have that the wrong way round then it looks OK to me.

Thanks Chris

Sorry just read your previous replies, Im getting some grief with the interpretation of flying the same airline pairs twice on the xONEx fare, mileage monkey says the routing works, but I still need to understand why its the particular CAI-xLHR-oARN-oLHR- segments and the -oHKG-oMLE-oHKG- segments are valid, so I can try to explain to the airline to issue my ticket.

Thanks

CAI-xLHR-oARN-oLHR-oMEX-oMIA-oJFK-oLAX-oHNL-oNRT-oHKG-oMLE-oHKG-oBOM-oDOH-oDXB

The full rules are here: http://www.oneworld.com/documents/10...9-d346ec820edf

The restriction on city pairs is "The same city pairs/sectors cannot be flown more than once in the same direction". You don't breach that rule.

(It wasn't there in the dim and distant past, so I did HKG-NRT-HKG-NRT-HKG as my Asia segments many years ago, but that wouldn't be allowed now.)

Your routing is valid, but you are violating one little rule - "Maximum two stopovers permitted in the continent of origin"
Your continent of origin is Europe/Middle East and you have three stopovers there - ARN, LHR and DOH (your final destination - DXB - does not count as a stopover)
So one of those three will have to become a transit.

From a true FTer point of view however:

• you are throwing away one segment - you are allowed 16 and you are using only 15, how wasteful!
• you have a tiny little flight DOH-DXB! Why not BOM-AMM/HEL/LHR-DXB? ("/" means "or")

Well ... :)

DOH-DXB will be in F on a J ticket. The other routings would not be. Depending on the airmiles scheme this can be more valuable than the actual distance, particularly in comparison with AMM-DXB.

HEL-DXB is (on some days of the week) a seven hour night flight operated in a Euro short haul config. It should be avoided at all costs.

LHR-DXB may incur an additional fuel surcharge, depending on who is plating the ticket. :)