Thanks - I'll have another play with it later.

Does the use of co-terminals count as a surface segment? For example, is JFK-LHR and then LGW-NCE counted as two segments or three?

Sadly, it counts as three segments

(but BTW BA flies LHR-NCE and LCY-NCE, but not LGW-NCE, but I suspect you were just using it as example, not with the intent of flying it;))

Indeed :)

Edit: Solved my last problem but I have a much bigger question. After the first flight, all flights are supposed to be open right? So why do you need to book all 16 (or however many you are doing) flights through the oneworld planner from the beginning? Confused.

After the first segment; all flights MAY be open.

While OPEN segements can apparently be done with e-tickets it may not be straight forward and seems to confuse some agents/GDS's.

I finished a LONE4 two weeks ago, this was ticketed in August 2009. FOr the post August 2010 segemnt I used "dummy" dates.

As these segement became available to book, I simply revalidated the booking as appropriate, while keeping the orginal routing with all transits and stopovers intact.

Booking through AA was great as there was no service fee assessed each time I revalidated.

You could ostensibly, book a three segment routing that meets the fare conditions and then pay the USD125 re-ticketing fee (+ tax difference) each time you add more segments. The way I describe above is generally less costly.

There is no actual way to have open segments on an e-ticket issued by AA. BA and CX can ostensibly do it, not sure who else.
If you book a three segment routing and then later add on new stops, you are reissuing the ticket.

Other than the first flight, all segments may be left open on paper tickets, but BA will only accept paper tickets issued on BA 125 ticket stock as of January 1, 2011 on all BA operated flights, so the utility of this is severely limited.

Does anyone have a handy link to a price table for xONEx?

Huh? You sure? Is that only on xONEx tix? If all carriers started doing that, could be really inconvenient.

Positive: announcement from QF

It would be very inconvenient if every carrier started doing this, but for me it's a moot point as I need to fly BA for LHR-RUH :/

AONE4 ex DOH
 

I've got an AONE4 RTW itinerany ex DOH priced up at QAR88,000 (approx £7500 or US$12000) is this a good price?

Also do I just buy it online or do I try to get AA to ticket it which I've read saves taxes or will this not apply in the this case? I'm still in the planning stages but wanted to know the best place to start from, way to go about booking it etc.

The tax and fuel surcharge questions will largely depend on your route and choice of carriers, and can't be answered without more information on your plans.

In terms of base cost for AONExs, Qatar is among the cheaper origin points; you might look at AMM, which (today) would be around US$200 cheaper for a base price.

I take it you mean 44000 QAR? The base price for ex DOH is 37250 QAR.

I assume you have chosen the BA flight as your first which means the online tool will be quite happy to take all your details and then tell you to contact the local BA office to arrange payment. IIRC someone on here has stated that there is some Qatari law or regulation that says than CC payments must be made with the card holder present. So that makes it somewhat difficult.

I also tried to purchase an ex-AMM this weekend which books through AA ticketing and the tool was quite happy to accept all my details and CC number. It then told me that the flights were not available at that fare and to contact the local AA office. This advice was particularly useful since AA don't have a presence in Jordan. :rolleyes:

Upshot is that the wonderful online tool that OW provide is about as useless as used toilet paper in some situations.

I have read on here that someone was able to book an ex-AMM successfully using the online tool but I am unsure which gods you have to pray to that can make this happen.

The online tool has never worked for me when it comes to purchasing tickets, though it ostensibly should work at least some of the time. ex-AMM or ex-RUH first segment on RJ my purchases failed at the same point as Moomba.

If you want AA to issue your ticket offline ex-DOH you might try to contact the AA ticketing representative in Doha. They may or may not be willing/able to issue the ticket without your physical presence.
Another option is to make use of the Canada exception. Have AA hold your itinerary and price it out for purchase in Canada then purchase it at a ticket counter or have a Canadian TA coordinate the purchase.

Thanks for the replies. OOPs sorry - yes QAR44,000 - I'm pricing for 2 people but the £/$ prices are correct.

I'm interested in the Canada Exception - I did read your posts on your trip - Brewer and see that you popped over the border and bought your's in Vancouver - not so easy from the UK;). I have used a Canadian TA recently (a poster on another board) to book a hotel through Virtuoso for me so I could possibly pay that way when I come to book assuning that I can use a UK based Credit Card. Anyone done this from the UK?

Amman is also a significantly more interesting place to start your trip from; and easyJet are shortly starting flights from London which would make getting to your start point more convenient, if not a trip in comfort.

Some questions needs advise, thanks!

1) I am thinking a LONE4 ex-AKL (I resides in HKG but seems AKL is cheaper and I will take positioning flt with award tkt). Any place will be cheaper?

2) It used to be AA ticketing office in Auckland but I no longer see it listed in AA.com, any one know how I can issue the ticket? (I plan to phone AA RTW Desk in the US and set up the ticket to be purchased in AKL...it used to work but don't know now).

3) AA still has the cheapest overall surcharges right? if no, shall I tkt with CX?

4) The following is my planned itn:

AKL-HKG-DEL-HKG-Asia City #2-HKG-JFK-DFW-ANC-ORD-SJU-LAX-LHR/x-DXB-LHR-HKG/x-AKL

(I think it is valid, any point I missed? The AA's ANC-DFW/ORD is summer only and I will take it at Sept, any chance to get more AA miles?)

5) I saw the HKG-AKL with BA flt number when booking with BA.com but cannot see it with Oneworld Timetable, can I book it as BA number?

Thanks!

1. Maybe, I'll concentrate on ex NZ

2. +64 9912 8814 (http://www.aa.com/i18n/utility/inter...oneContact.jsp) There is no AA office in New Zealand. That number will connect you with a Mindpearl office in Brisbane. They often don't want to ticket an ex NZ itinerary if calling from outside NZ.

3) Generally - YMMV

4) CX flys HKG-AKL, there may be a BA codeshare

Dear all,

The rule said that only 1 i/c arrival/departure except “one is a transfer without stopover or on direct single plane service between the SWP and Europe”, is that interpret as:

A: “one is a transfer without stopover” OR “on direct single plane service between the SWP and Europe”
OR
B: one is a “transfer without stopover” OR “direct single plane service” BETWEEN THE SWP AND EUROPE?

I tried the following with online tool and it validated, but don’t know if it still the same when talking with RTW desk.
AKL-HKG/x-JFK-DFW-ANC-ORD-SJU-LAX-LHR-DXB-LHR-HKG-ICN-HKG-DPS-HKG-AKL

Any ideas? Thanks!

AKL-HKG/x-JFK is not SWP to Europe. But you can only ask

To the best of my knowledge, all attempts over the past couple of years to get one of the airlines' tariff desks to validate any interpretation of the "second Asia entry" rule that doesn't entail a SWP < > Europe transit have been rejected. If the online tool okays the route, allows payment, and you actually get an e-ticket with a routing like SWP > xAsia > North America on it, count yourself lucky.

Just ticketed at JNB-HKG-NRT-HKG-MEL-HKG-LAX-DFW-ANC-DFW-LAX-JFK-LHR-TLV-LHR_JNB with the AA RTW desk.. no questions asked.. so the SWP-ASIA-North America was allowed.. FYI...

Very interesting. I wonder if you would have been successful if you also had a Europe-SWP segment. Perhaps this was allowed because you don't have more than one Asia transit without stopover?

I plugged a similar routing into the oneworld itinerary planner to see if I could replicate RTW4's success. Basically, it was DAR-JNB-HKG-SYD-MEL-xHKG-JFK . . . I got a warning saying "your second visit to this continent must be less than 24 hours" when I entered HKG the second time. So it would seem that the 'less than 24 hours' is the key.

I plugged a similar routing into the oneworld itinerary planner to see if I could replicate RTW4's success. Basically, it was DAR-JNB-HKG-SYD-MEL-xHKG-JFK . . . I got a warning saying "your second visit to this continent must be less than 24 hours" when I entered HKG the second time. So it would seem that the 'less than 24 hours' is the key.

RTW4, is your second visit to Asia less than 24 hours?

That's very interesting. May I ask if it's actually ticketed (i.e. e-ticket with ticket numbers) or is it sitting in the Dublin rate desk queue?

Yes.. ticket is issued .. I have flown JNB-HKG-NRT.....

If you'd done DFW-JFK-LAX-LHR you'd have squeezed in a few more miles ;)

I am puzzled by this ticket offer. I am not sure if I am missing anything from the offer.

The 6 continent F ticket cost roughly around 20K US $. Based on the fare it is pretty cheap ( Ex: if i book a ORD DEL ticket in F Class it cost roughly 12,000 US $. )

Are there any other catch in this ? Do I need to pay anything more. I looked through this thread and didn't get the details.

if I have to pay 20 K and get miles it is a great deal ...

Please provide me the details if any one knows more.

No catches
On top of the fare, you have to pay the various govt taxes, which depend on where you fly to. And you also have to pay any fuel surcharges (aka fuel fines) which depends on which airline tickets your itinerary and which airlines you fly.

The first post in this thread gives the basics of the ticket
The fare rules are available on the Oneworld web site - this is the link to them

I'm glad you think USD20,000 is pretty cheap. Personally, I think the approx USD8,300 the exact same ticket costs from The Sudan to be pretty cheap and USD20,000 to be pretty expensive - but not as expensive as the approx USD21,300 the exact same ticket costs down here in Australia!

Thanks Pandaperth.
I didn't mean the 20K was cheap money. Flying 24 segments on F with that amount of money is cheap. I have also checked from India it cost around 10K .. Which is a great deal.

I may plan a trip sometime ...

How much the sur charges ( Fuel fines) cost (approx) ?

Thank You

You are allowed no more than 16 segments these days
and it can be pretty hard to get genuine F flights these days - many airlines have eliminated it (for example LA) and others only have it for their 'flagship' type routes (for example QF only has it on its LHR and LAX flights). There is a thread in this forum on F flights.

The Indian govt imposes an additional tax on premium tickets originating there - can't remember the rate

Depends on various factors - anywhere from zero to say USD1000

You're welcome

I believe its still 10.3%. And I think they expanded it last year to coach tickets also iirc.

That's per segment, right?

NO - for the entire trip

I recently went through the motions of an ex-KRT DONE4 using the on-line tool (KRT-AMM-HKG-PER,BME-PER-DRW-PER-SYD-EZE-LIM-IPC-SCL-GYE-MAD-AMM-KRT)
YQ of USD309.08
plus a 'Tax description unavailable (SDEM)' of USD274.80 which may or may not be related to fuel fines

It should be possible to get YQ down to zero - say by booking on-line with a domestic AA segment as the first segment (so AA tickets) and then NO over-water AA flights and NO BA flights
And of course I'm sure if someone really wanted to - they could construct an itinerary where the fuel fines exceeded USD1000 :D

I've had BA award flights where the fuel surcharge was around $500-$600, so when you said "anywhere from zero to say USD1000" to me that sounds like per-sector. Unless the fuel surcharges for award flights are significantly more than on xONEx?

Mmm. Just looked in itasoftware at a business class return on BA LAX-LHR - and the fuel fines are USD592!!

Last year I posted the results of a quick study I did of the fuel fines vs ticketing carrier - see post #20 in fuel-surcharge-differences-xonex-fares

The main findings were:Things may have changed by now of course. Perhaps it's time for new study;)

Where to look next
 

Looking at travel plans for 2012-2013. Still working, so I cant do one long trip. Been thinking about somthing along the lines of the following.

JFK-LHR-TLV-MAD-LHR-DEL-HKG-SYD-CNS-SYD-SCL-EZE-MIA-SJU-DFW-JFK.

1) How long could I break this up into. I have read one year, I have read one year from ticketing, and I have read that the last segments can be open and booked at a later time?

2) Would I be violating rules if I broke the trip up (Say by returning to JKF after LHR, SCL, MIA)?

3) The cities are not set in stone. If fact they are all places I've been before, and wouldn't mind going back to.

4) I have not started to look and see if any seats would be available on these legs(Via EF). Just wanting to see if it is feasible, and how it would price out (in J) vs. Individual trips.

Thank you.

1. The ticket is good for one year. Since the move to e-ticketing, it's much harder to have open segments (requires paper tickets which the airlines are increasingly unwilling to produce.) However you can put "dummy" dates into the PNR and then just change them later at no cost.

2. You can break the trip anywhere. Many people (myself included) usually start in some less-expensive issuance country, travel around a bit, then come home and resume that pesky work thing, then continue/complete the trip at a later date. If you want to suspend the trip in some intermediate place, fly home on your own dime, then return and pick it up again, no worries.

3. (No comment.)

4. None of those segments, with the possible exception of SYD-SCL, should present any troubles with availability. Of course a lot can change in a year (and especially note new carriers/routes as Oneworld changes/expands.)

However you ought to use EF to check some prices; for example a DONE5 bought and started at TLV is something like $3700 cheaper than one bought and started in the US. By starting in Europe you might think about point (2) above - you could go Europe > Asia > SWP >- S America > N America/home > Europe, save money and achieve the break you're seeking. Plus, you only get two stopovers in the continent of issue; that would help you in North America, where your current itinerary would probably require more stopovers than allowed, and you'd run into a problem with the rules regarding stopovers in the country of issue prior to/after the first/last international segment. Have a look at the rules on the Oneworld site ASAP.

You may like to consider . . . HKG-CNS-SYD-SCL . . . Flying HKG-CNS with CX would free up a segment although the hard product is probably not going to be as good as that on HKG-SYD.