Fantastic!! Pandaperth- do you remember helping me out with my ex-MPM a few years ago? I was a disaster. I hope you are proud of your student's progress ;)

Okay- thank you! The only AA flight I saw for OSL-LAX is on BA and then AA, so I would incur more of those pesky fuel fines. But maybe not as much if it's short haul?

I thought I could only land at LAX on my North America routing one time. And, the ORD stoppover would put me at 17 segments, right?



Thank you! Keep the recommendations coming!

I'm not sure what you mean by "I'd like to get a little closer to Southern California" as you'll be in LAX twice. If you want to be in Los Angeles a third time you can, e.g., HEL-LAX-JFK-DFW-LAX, or if you'd like to go to San Diego you could do LAX-JFK-DFW-SAN, and I think you have one more segment, so you could fly SAN-LAX-PVR or SAN-PHX-PVR.

If you book it as an AA code then the fuel fines are much lower. If you book OSL-LHR on BA and then LHR-LAX as an AA code on BA or AA metal, the fuel fines are still low. Given the choice of AA or BA metal in business class, I'd pick AA as they have much better seats. But BA has better food and drink and service.

You can touch an airport as much as you like, but you can only fly between the same cities in the same direction once. I thought you only have 15 segments but I might have miscounted with the surface segments.

OK, I re-counted, and you do have 16 segments but that's counting JFK-DFW-LAX, with DFW-LAX as a surface segment, so changing that to a flight segment wouldn't change the count.

Ideally, I would like to get back to Southern California via LAX or SAN, but thought that this rule restricts me: Americas - "Within North America, only one transcontinental flight is allowed between selected cities on the East and West Coasts. "Transcontinental" is defined as a flight between one of ATL/BWI/BOS/CLT/FLL/BDL/MIA/EWR/NYC/ORL/PHL/PIT/SJU/RDU/TPA/YYZ/WAS/PBI and one of LAS/LGB/LAX/OAK/PHX/PDX/SAN/SFO/SJC/SNA/SEA/YVR. "

I just put in DFW because it's not on the above airport list and it is direct from JFK, so it doesn't eat up another segment.

Thanks for the help!

TBH I didn't remember you - but now I've checked my old PMs I do remember you:)

Oneworld TATL fuel fines are a rip-off. AA and the Oneworld European Carriers (BA, AY and IB) operate a JBV (Joint Business Venture = a government-sanctioned cartel). They fix prices, share revenue and all charge the same fuel fines between A-and-B.

I have been checking on The Matrix and:

• the fuel fine for OSL-xHEL-LAX is USD161. It matters not which oneworld airline is the marketing carrier for the flights.
• the fuel fine for OSL-xLHR-LAX is actually lower, at USD136.20

As [MENTION=40177]anabolism[/MENTION] said -there is no restriction on multiple stopovers at any point (other than the point of origin that is)
And anyway, your itinerary had you landing there twice already - from HEL and from PVR

You are allowed up to six flight segments in North America, but only one of them can a trans-continental flight. The others can be anything you like (except for restrictions on flights to/from Alaska and Hawaii)
So in your itinerary - your LAX-JFK flight is your one allowed trans-continental flight, and say JFK-ORD followed by ORD-LAX are just another two of your allowed six flights in the continent

Since you seem to have some doubt, I will just confirm that your itinerary has 16 segments, which is the maximum allowed - so there is no problem there
It has 14 flight segments
and two surface segments (DFW-LAX and DPS-SIN)
Changing DFW-LAX to be a flight segment would not affect the overall count of 16 segments and would increase your Nth American flight segment count to 5, so still within the allowed max of six
BTW Qantas subsidiary JQ (Jetstar) flies between DPS and SIN
QR flies from DOH to three destinations in Tanzania - DAR, ZNZ and JRO. JRO is close to a number of game parks and of course to Kilimanjaro itself.

One more reason to fly QR between DOH and North America.


The rules actually have a list of cities that are considered "west coast" cities for the purposes of this rule, and another list of cities that are considered "east coast" cities for the rule. There are occasionally opportunities to game this when nonstop service is added, but they forget to add the city to the appropriate list in the rule. I've done it with back-to-backs LAX-RDU-LAX and LAX-MBJ-LAX.

You would think/hope so, but
Earlier today I looked at QR's YQ for OSL-xDOH-LAX and it came to a whopping USD370 :eek:
(USD222 !! for OSL-DOH and USD 148 for DOH-LAX)

Looking at the reverse, it is even worse
- the YQ for LAX-DOH is USD609 (What the...!!)
- the YQ for DOH-OSL is only(!) USD96

Fair point.

Yes, you can call AA RTW desk and they will be glad to check if your itinerary can be validated, if so, sell you the ticket. I can't comment on your itin as I am in a rush at the moment.

Yes. 800-247-3247.

Booking a Oneworld Explorer ticket in the Oneworld tool. I have Sydney SYD, Tokyo HND, London LHR, New York JFK, <24hr in Chicago ORD and then I run into problems.

I would like to spend several days in Kona KOA on the way back to Sydney SYD so I've continued the itinerary from Chicago ORD, Los Angeles LAX, Kona KOA. That worked OK.

Now I'm booking KOA back to Sydney and not getting any options. I could see there was a Qantas flight from Honolulu HNL to Sydney SYD, so I made Kona KOA to Honolulu HNL a surface sector thinking I would have to buy that as a separate one-way ticket but then the Qantas flight does not show up.

Ideally I want to travel back from Chicago ORD to Sydney SYD with a 3 day stopover at a beachy island (Hawaii, Vanuatu, Fiji etc.) or I am also willing to consider somewhere else beachy (thinking Mexico, Caribbean, SE Asia maybe?)

Any thoughts ?

You could take a routing back via Asia, there are several nice beachy places there best reachable via HK. For example ORD-HKG-DPS-SYD or ORD-HKG-CEB-HKG-SYD or ORD-NRT-KUL-BKI (or any other place in Malaysia)-KUL-SYD.

Another thing to consider, if you're planning on flying Business Class, buy a separate ticket to Tokyo and start your RTW there, the savings can be significant.

Thanks R2.

What time of year are you traveling? Australia has some nice beaches but of course are seasonal. Especially if you were to start in Japan, you could stop-off somewhere nice in Australia.

I love Hawaii but haven't stopped there on an RTW because you can't backtrack to the mainland U.S., and the flights from Hawaii to Australia aren't terrific.

You might consider the Caribbean. I'm personally very fond of Curaçao, which has some terrific beaches and the weather is great all year. With your six flights in North America you could visit there for a few days.

Welcome to FT Preemo

The online booking tool is known to have lots of bugs - we even have a separate thread on FT for that: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/onew...gs-thread.html

But I was puzzled by your reported bug. So I tried the itinerary myself (SYD-HND-LHR-JFK-ORD-KOA,HNL-SYD) and it worked fine.
So I suspect you might be doing something wrong in specifying your itinerary in the tool. I just typed in the list of airports, with spaces between them, marked KOA-HNL as a surface segment and then chose the other flights. Qantas showed two flights HNL-SYD on the day I chose (30th May)