Help, please. Stopovers in continent of origin?
 

This appears on the Oneworld website:

"You are allowed to take two stopovers in total within your continent of origin in order to get to or from a gateway to begin or return from your international travel."

My departure city will be Madrid, and will need to go to LHR for a flight to DEL.

If I go straight to London, can I then take a two- or three-segment trip out prior to departing for Delhi? That seems to be the implication from PhilH's post below.

Or could I take a side trip first, such as to Malaga, then Barcelona and then to London?

Also, if my departure city is going to be Madrid, do I have to buy my ticket through a Spanish agency? I live in the US.

Thanks for any clarification.

That is from the oneworld explorer page on the oneWORLD web site.

In relation to your general question, there are rules that specifically affect you. The actual relevent texts from the rules are:Basically you can have up to 4 segments and two stopovers within your continent of origin (Europe) and you may not purchase any more segments. What you do with these segments/stopovers is up to you as long you stay within the rules. This does not prevent you from purchasing a separate "linking" trip with a separate booking.

For example if you purchase a DONE4 using a US travel agent for travel commencing from Spain you pay the higher price between Spain and US. In this case the US price is USD7700 and the Spanish price is EUR5250 (~USD6400) so you would pay the the USD7700, some USD1300 more than if you used a spanish travel agent.

If I understand your plans, you intend to first travel from your home in the U.S. to Spain, using another ticket not related to your around-the-world trip, then obtain a One-World-Explorer ticket in Spain, and fly around the world beginning and ending in Spain.

That's a reasonable thing to do because tickets for essentially the same journey are priced differently depending on where you begin and end it, and the U.S. not surprisingly is an expensive place to begin. Of course you have to figure in the value of getting from the U.S. to and from your rtw starting point.

Note that you are contractually obligated to end your trip where you began it (with, in a few cases, a little flexibility for alternate ending points). There is occasional discussion here about the consequences of violating that contract. If you don't finish your trip to the starting country, the consortium is entitled to charge you full fare for the segments you actually flew, a sum that will be truly staggering, but while there is no known record of that penalty being extracted, those of us who live cautious lives don't tempt fate.

The other advantage of starting an around the world trip outside your home region, especially if it's he U.S., is of course the subject of your original question. If you begin in Spain, when you get back to North America you'll not yet be finished with your trip. You'll be allowed to fly up to 8 segments within North and Central America (subject to a total maximum of 20 segments for your whole trip) at your leisure, during the one-year validity of the ticket. And you'll also be left with the transatlantic segment (assuming you flew east) plus anything you have left in Europe.

Again to address your question - if Europe is your continent of origination, you may fly four segments total there, and include no more than two stopovers. If you stay in a city for 24 hours or more, it's a stopover. The segment that takes you from Europe to your next continent, say Asia, doesn't count against the 4-segment limit, nor does the return to Europe at the end of the trip. If you begin in MAD, remember that at the end of your (eastbound, for example) trip you'll need to either have to fly IB from NA to Spain, or save a European segment so that you can get back from BA's (for example) hub to Spain.

Yes and no. You have the relevant *files and some good answers quoted above, but let me explain it to you this way.

First, you're limited to 4 segments total in Europe (the fare is really designed for you to bounce back and forth twice from your origination, not do what we almost all do and originate someplace cheaper) so in practicality you have 3 segments to play with while in Europe since you seem to be planning on going to LHR to go to DEL. However, also add in there that unless you're planning on flying into MAD from another continent (NA/SA more than likely) to end your trip (IB/AA have directs IIRC) you'll need to save one of those segments to get back to it once you've flown into LHR/FRA/wherever.

So, yes, you might have 3 segments if you plan out very carefully, but more likely two. So yes, more than likely you could do MAD-BCN-MAD if you want...but...

...add in the restriction that on your entire Europe trip you can only have 2 stays at locations in Europe for more than 24 hours (the stopover rule). So yes, you could do Barcelona, but you'd also have to be very careful to make sure your return to in MAD and subsequent travel to LHR on the way to DEL is less than 24 hours each (LHR less than 24 hours will also save you a decent amount on taxes, incidentally, and is not at all hard to do), assuming that if you were to fly into someplace other than MAD on the return you stayed there. (Then again, if you did MAD-BCN-XXX-LHR and made sure to fly back into MAD when you're finishing you're trip you could stay in BCN and XXX for however long you wanted as long as you made sure LHR was less than 24 hours.)

So yes, you can, but you have to plan it accordingly.

The way the rules work is that you have to buy your ticket from either an agency in Spain or a oneworld airline office in Spain if you want the (cheaper) Spanish price - otherwise if you pay for it in the US, you pay the higher US rate even if it originates in Spain. Most international offices are more than happy to take your credit card number over the phone or by fax and have the ticket waiting for you to be picked up (some will even offer to ship it to you in the US, which I've never understood how they get away with). However, you can (and should) book it through your local oneworld RTW desk (usually of the airline that is doing the big overwater segments); trying to get an international agent that may not be perfectly fluent in English (assuming its your native tongue since you live in the US) to deal with all the stupid OWE rules when you're not positive of them yourself can be a little hard.

Hope that clears things up and it gets easier as you get more experience!

Er, you can't do MAD-BCN-MAD if your originating city is Madrid. First time you return to your point of origin is the end of your trip. And bear in mind that you can only reenter the country of origin once (with some exceptions, but Spain isn't one of them).

Which rule talks about this? I cannot find it (I was looking at the AA rules dated 11/23/04).

Please note, I am not disputing this. I am just trying to find the rule. Thanks.

The rule used to be:

22N . -TRAVEL VIA THE ORIGINAL POINT OF ORIGIN NOT
23N . PERMITTED.

but it was removed late last year. Since then this question has been tested (QF and AA), and found that yes, now you -can- travel via the original point of origin.

Thanks.

My apologies - I'd missed that change in the rules.

But that only allows domestic routes - the rule of only one international departure/arrival in the originating country still applies.