Your best bet is to check up front for availability a few dates around your booked date. If it looks wide open, it's at least somewhat helpful to your chances of changing later.

In my recent RTW, I had one segment which I couldn't book on my preferred date. About two months later it opened up and I changed it, and two segments around it, to fit. No issues at all. Another segment, I got the only D seat within weeks, and in watching availability for the next three months, none ever opened up on any alternate date within a week of my booked date. I would have been stranded for a long time had I needed to change.

Where/which airline are these trouble spots? I haven't flown an xONEx for several years (but began one ex-JNB recently) and will be majorly surprised to learn I'd better start worrying about availability.

Availability can be a problem on some routes if you are flying a LONEx. Though having said that, we had trouble finding availability on CX's HKG-DME route when we were re-routing our DONE4, so it can happen for premium cabins too

I'm about to book two DONE3 tickets using the online tool (done this before). But this time looks like I need to fly one segment on a different date than my wife. Can I change the date later on other ticket even if both tickets have the same booking code? Or is my only option to book tickets separately?

I'm planning a first time RTW - LONE4 starting January and I've come up with this:
MAD-GYE-EZE-SCL-IPC-xSCL-SYD-MEL-AKL-HKG-DEL-NRT-ICN-KUL-LHR-AMM-MAD

It was priced at €3600. Tried the same thing ex AMM and it was more expensive so I guess the price is ok. I'm trying to maximize miles around some of the place I want to see. Mileage Monkey says 49272 miles. I have an AirBerlin FF card but that's useless. AA seems to be best value and I'd love to visit the US next year with those collected miles. I read they don't enforce a rule for 4 AA flights to elite status. Will I get away with 0? Also can I credit miles and earn status on the way or only after I complete the whole trip? Any suggestions or tweaks to the itinerary would be helpful. Thanks.

Technically you have the entire year to fly the four AA metal flights. From a practical viewpoint, expect the elite status to kick in as soon as you have the required number of miles. Highly unlikely that they'll worry about the four flight requirement.

Generally there is not a big price difference for LONEx fares from different parts of the world, for example base fares for a LONE4 are
Spain: EUR2543
Jordan: JOD2350 (=EUR2458)
Egypt: EGP18800 (=EUR2019)
Bigger savings are to be made with premium cabin fares

With regard to accruing frequent flyer miles, you have some homework to do to decide which program will suit you best.
Your proposed itinerary has IB, LA, QF, CX, JL, MH, BA/RJ flights. You need to ascertain the earnings on each for the various programmes (and also consider how many miles are needed for the redemptions you want).
I know with regard to earning on AA:
QF flights earn only 50%
CX earns 0%

I can confirm that this year at least AA did not enforce is 4 flights rule - I achieved PLT status with no AA flights at all:D
You earn miles and status on the way, not at the end (subject to the program rules, for example Qantas does enforce its 4 flight rule, so you will achieve no status until you have flown them)

Hi,

I'm a new user of FlyerTalk and have searched this forum but not found an answer to my query. If it's in here somewhere, please accept my apologies (and maybe post a link)!

I'm booking two DONE5 tickets through an Australian travel agent and the first leg will be MEL-LAX on QF.

A subsequent leg will be GIG-LHR on BA that I would like to upgrade to First using Avios. I have the required Avios in my account and there are First reward seats available on my travel date.

My questions are:

• Is it possible to assign this leg of my itinerary to my BAEC account so that I can use Avios to upgrade but leave the rest of my RTW itinerary on my QF account so I earn QF points/status? Do I need to do this at all; could I just sign into the BA site using my booking reference number and select an option to upgrade using Avios?
• My BAEC account has an address in the USA but my Travel Agent is in Australia. Does that mean my TA won't be able to do the upgrade but I could using the BA website?
• Provided the upgrade is possible in my circumstances, when does the upgrade get confirmed? If I book the DONE5, log into BA and upgrade with Avios, is the upgrade confirmed immediately and if there is reward space for First will I definitely be provided the option to upgrade using Avios?

Thank you!
James

Welcome to Flyertalk, James Sanders.

I've never tried to upgrade a BA sector that is part of an xONEx but, in general, upgrading any BA flight that is part of a multi-sector itinerary -- even xxx-LHR-yyy, with both segments on BA -- cannot be done online; it requires a call to the service centre. Good luck.

cheers,

Henry

Generally you can only UuA on BA issued tickets (125 ticket stock). See these threads:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...-scenario.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...ht-number.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...t-w-avios.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...mpossible.html

You can have seperate freq flyers number's on each sector, but has a risk. Ask your TA to do this, try on line or ask BA. The issue is that the freq flyer number may stick for all sectors or sectors after your BA flight. So check, check, then check again. Some BA people use www.finnair.com. Seem's to have a good interface to BA. Keep all your boarding pass's. The BA, AA & QF pnr's may be different. Look at Sabre http://www.virtuallythere.com and/or Amadeus:http://www.checkmytrip.com

Having multiple ffp's is often not a good idea, unless you fly a lot. For most people QF & BA ffp's are not as good as AA. AA has less miles for awards & little or no surcharges on awards. With a DONE5 the AA plat challenge would be easy.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/onewo...l#post21739327

Buying the the DONE5 & starting in NZ may be cheaper

First post (been perusing this website for months and the lot of you are currently my favourite people in my life) and have finally today booked my DONE4 (It's currently on hold with AA), but I did have two questions which I hadn't seemed to be able to find an answer to specifically.

The first: if, due to a seat being unavailable, I'm booked into Economy on a DONE rtw, but later on a D or W seat becomes available or I change my date, is switching possible with ease? Would that be a free "date/time/oneworld carrier/inventory" change? Or would that change cost the US125?

Secondly: With E-tickets, open-dated segments aren't possible anymore, is that correct? So for example if I choose to include a "Surface Segment" and a Oneworld airline runs that route, is changing that "Surface Segment" to a flight later when it's available considered a "Re-route" even though the ticketing points remain the same? I would argue that the route was running but seats weren't available at time of booking, but I'm not one to persuasively argue any point, so... :D

That specific flight is UIO-SCL. Instead of booking it as UIO-MIA-SCL, which would add another continent, I told the RTW operator to leave it unbooked - it's not present on the reservation page.

Thank you.

I don't have experience with either situation and I'm sure the experts will come along soon.

In the meantime, I suspect the answer to question one would definitely be that it would be a free change.

Welcome to FT lycidas

I believe a change from an Economy seat to a Business seat is an Inventory change, and as such is free of charge

Correct
Changing a surface segment into a flown segment does count as a routing change and so you are up for the USD125 change fee.

A little bit confused her

• LA flies that route non-stop twice a week Tuesdays and Fridays (it does not have business class)
• and if there is no availability, or the days of the week don't suit you, then you can fly via GYE, or LIM or even EZE
• certainly no need to include Nth America

Just for interest, from what country are you starting? (I see your location is MEL, and I presume you know from your lurking that there are far cheaper places to start from than the Land of Oz;))

So much help needed.
 

Couple of years ago spent time here trying to understand O ne World Explorer and Global Explorer fares. But then we decided to burn off lots of our existing BA Miles/Avios with trips to N. America, then S America and coming up Aus/New Zealand. We still have about 125,000 Avios and a 2for1 voucher so need to find another trip to use them on, but the round the world issue is rearing its head again. I have gone through all 40 pages here (my head is spinning with airport codes - is there a better way of looking them up then Google?)
Basics - BA Frequent Flyer, currently bronze but will revert to Blue soon. Live in London.

Places we will want to visit are as follows (appreciating some might have to be side trips).
Mexico, Cuba, Chile, Easter Island, Pacific Islands, Japan, India?, South Africa.

Does that route (which could be the other way round) suggest Global Explorer rather than OneWorld Explorer? Plan would be to fly Business
Which of those two is generally better value?
Where would be best place to start (not necessarily in the list above?)
And which airline to prefer and which to avoid - though Avios are the desired FF scheme.

That's a start! All and any help much appreciated.