I'm sorry as I find the rules somewhat confusing concerning the rtw. Since they classify Egypt as being part of Europe, I have a couple questions.

The main areas i'm inquiring about are:

Is there any limit on the amount of times i can pass through LHR since its not my point of origin?

It is only two segments to/from the middle east/egypt (cai-lhr,lhr-dxb)?



Appreciate any help. I apologize if this has been mentioned in previous posts.

I am doing this from memory - so i could be wrong and please correct me:

Multiple stops/transfers should be ok in LHR - limit is 3 if i remember correctly.
But you are only allowed 2 sectors LHR-middle east (which CAI and Dubai is part of). So this would not work.
You could do a BCN-CAI on Iberia at the end.

Your trip is not valid as stated because of the 3 long-haul European sectors.

If you remove the surface/seperate ticket sectors your actual RTW itinerary would look like this:

CAI-LHR-DXB,lhr-sfo-hkg-sin-syd-jnb,cpt-lhr-cai

Running this through the great RTW validator at

http://jph.bytestacker.com/award.htm

fails because of the final LHR-CAI leg.

If you route via BCN as Unterwegs suggests then the result is valid

1: CAI-LHR: 1st of 4 (Europe)
2: LHR-DXB: 2nd of 4 (Europe)
3: LHR-SFO: intercontinental
4: SFO-HKG: intercontinental
5: HKG-SIN: 1st of 4 (Asia)
6: SIN-SYD: intercontinental
7: SYD-JNB: intercontinental
8: CPT-LHR: intercontinental
9: LHR-BCN: 3rd of 4 (Europe)
10: BCN-CAI: 4th of 4 (Europe)
Congratulations!! Valid itinerary!!! - (38807 miles)

And in fact you could add sectors in North America, Asia, South West Pacific or Africa up to a limit of 4 per region and a limit of 20 sectors in total.

My wife are in the middle of our ex-CAI DONE5, which included DXB. We flew CAI-MAD, (connected to LHR by way of a surface segment, which ate up one of our two permitted stops in the continent of origin) and then resumed our ticket by going LHR-DXB-LHR-CPT........

The surface hop cost us only $CAD75 (plus taxes) and allowed us to keep our 20 DONE5 segments for longer flights. If you did not use the surface segment, I think you would have to do CAI-MAD-LHR-DXB-LHR...which uses up one more segment of your 4 permitted European segments.

Cheers,

BdaDiver

You also can end your ex-CAI XONEX in DXB, if you want. The rules allow OWEs originating in the Middle East to end in any other Middle Eastern country. The first segment of your OWE would be CAI-LHR and the last segment would be LHR-CAI. That still leaves you two segments within Europe, which you can use, if you are interested in maximizing your miles, to route from LHR to Moscow or Istanbul.

I did the start in CAI and end in DXB thing last year.

My routing was CAI-LHR-FRA-DFW-LGA//JFK-BGI-JFK//LGA-AUS-LGA//JFK-LAX-SCL-GIG-SCL-JFK-HKG-NRT-HKG-SYD-HKG-LHR-DXB.

Russia (Moscow) is one of restricted long-haul destination from UK(LHR).
So, you can not include LHR-MOW with LHR-CAI and LHR-DXB.

Turkey(IST) is OK.

Since when? If that is correct, it is a very recent change.

You're right. When did that happen?

I don't recall when it wasn't on the rules.

Note IB serves DME ex-MAD daily, so another Moscow work-around.

I checked old starfiles.

http://www.hardlink.com/~markdu/OWFi....02132003.html

At least, since Feb 2003, Russia is listed on ex-UK longhaul destinations.

The earliest version of the rules I could find was dated 1/21/03.
http://www.hardlink.com/~markdu/OWFi....01212003.html

But the rule change actually goes all the way back to April or May of 2001. Darren posts about it here in post #9:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...ghlight=russia

It's quite interesting to look back at those old threads with people starting trips from BUD, JNB, and GIB among others and routing the trips for the 100,000 bonus OW gave five and six years ago. Most of the same regulars still around and posting.

Yeh, really. Bit of a blast from the past.