Iceland on RTW?
 

Hi everyone, I'm new here and I've tried to find the answer to this question by searching, but I can't come up with anything. Hopefully someone here will have a better idea.

This summer I'm hoping to do my first RTW (an LONE4). I live in Canada, but would like to start from the UK as the LONE4 fares are much cheaper from there. One of the places I would really like to visit is Iceland. I see that BA is starting their LGW-REK-LGW flights soon, but I can't figure out how that will affect my trip. I was hoping to start ex-LON but is that even possible while still including Iceland? Will oneworld have to create a new exception to allow trips to REK?

Any help anyone can give me is very much appreciated!

Thanks,
baby_beluga

KEF will just be another Europe destination so ought to be okay on xONExs. You can return through LGW without anything bad happening. Remember only 2 stopovers in continent of origin.

Actually, I believe he/she will have a problem. You used to not be able to go through your city of origin, but that was changed. I don't believe, however, that you are allowed to go back into the country of origin once you left. So he or she would have to begin in a country besides the UK or not go to Iceland. At least that's my recollection of the change.

I agree with Darren - Iceland is not going to be possible on a UK originated xONEn, or at least only one segment would be - you could do an open-jaw at KEF and use miles or something to get to the next place... e.g.
LON-KEF//HEL-MAD-FRA-HKG-..... -LON

That's what I'm afraid of. That makes getting to KEF a whole lot trickier. You'd think OW would make exceptions for this sort of thing, where there is only one way in and out, at least in terms of OW flights. Things would be so much easier if there was a flight from the States somewhere as well. Sigh...

Why not simply start in Dublin? DUB-(x)LON-KEF-LON-... is OK.Pricing for LONE3/4 is slightly lower than UK currently.

No I think you're right - I was getting it confused with the stopover at point of origin being okay. But here's the rule -

113N . 4. 1 INTERNATIONAL DEPARTURE AND 1 INTERNATIONAL
114N . ARRIVAL FROM/TO THE COUNTRY OF ORIGIN PERMITTED.
115N . EXCEPTION - ORIGIN USA - 2 PERMITTED. 1 ARRIVAL-
116N . DEPARTURE MUST BE A TRANSIT WITHOUT STOPOVER.

Sorry.

This is good the get a commonly understood confirmation for this "transiting through the country of origin once you've left it" -issue as there recently was a thread about longest routings and one of them included multiple international arrivals into HKG (which was the origin) and nobody mentioned anything being wrong with it...

What I want to know is why do the KEF flights have such bad times.. it's impossible to connect from anywhere to LGW-KEF, and not much choice KEF-LGW-XXX either.

Because of Icelandair maybe and hard taxing on foreign carriers. Icelandair is critical to Icelandic economy.

I can't see that BA regard the KEF flight as high on their priority list of "must do seamless connections..." list. It may even be dropped if there is not enough paying traffic (not just those low yielding RTWs that we seem to love).

BA is currently really low fares ex-LGW to KEF. Might be worth your while to just buy a side-trip instead of trying to incorporate it into your xONE ticket. I bought an "I" ticket on BA which essentially cost about $130 more than the lowest Y ticket I could get for that time of the year. Nochanges of course.. but hey!

Sorry - I must have missed that. Transit through the city of origin is allowed, but once you are back in the country of origin you cannot leave it again (with the exceptions of travel within US/Canada, and the Scandinavian countries each being regarded as non-international). So this is only really useful for tickets originating in those two regions or Australia or Spain or the UK (those being the only countries with significant domestic OneWorld networks).

And for those who can still stand coach for a not-too-long segment, BA's cheapest one-way on the segment totals about $125 including taxes.

I'm still pretty confused in terms of what to do with this trip! Getting to Iceland seems so hard on an ex-UK xONEx ticket.

Thanks for the advice on DUB, christep. I didn't think about doing it that way. It looks like it's actually a little more (a couple hundred $$) to fly out of Ireland for the time I want to go (June) so it might just be easier for me to purchase a separate ticket from LGW-KEF (thanks for the advice on that, Guy Betsy and JohnAx) before starting my RTW. On the plus side, a trip to DUB might make for some good times.

I'm also hoping to visit DXB as part of this trip, so as far as i understand the rules, I think I would still be ok with DUB-(x)LON-KEF-(x)LON-DXB...

I do have some BA Executive Club miles available, so I could do what christep suggested and start ex-LGW and do LGW-KEF then use miles to get to DUB maybe, then go DUB-DXB... but that's too many stopovers in my continent of origin isn't it? It looks like the roundtrip for this award would be 25,000 miles, but I can't tell for sure because Iceland isn't listed yet, but if it is, does that make the 1 way 12,500 miles?

Thanks again everyone. It's nice to have so many pros around!

baby_beluga