I have for the last two years purchased AONE4 tickets in Cairo. I would be pleased to hear from anyone as to whether this is still the cheapest starting point when compared to fares ex LON.

Harare. Presuming you don't care about cost of getting there. Actually several African countries have the same pricing (unfortunately it is in USD so no currency arbitrage play).

Try this thread and this spreadsheet.

Sorry should have explained that I do not want to start at a point any further from London than Cairo. Thought I saw that someone was suggesting cheaper in Germany or France. I have LHR/CAI in A class left over from previous RTW. On next trip have two friends travelling with me who do not have LHr/CAi ticket so if there is a cheaper starting point that is closer to London than Cairo will take it.

The cheapest within europe is Romania now. Good luck getting a ticket issued there (should be possible, but wont be easy).

Thanks for the spreadsheet but from the link it opens in QuickView plus and cannot change data in the yellow cells as instructed. How do you achieve this?

Want to change currency to GBP and compare to London. Sorry to be a pain.

Right click the spreadsheet and select save as or save target as to save it to your hard drive.

I am currently talking to a travel agent in Rumania for a DONE3 fare ex OTP.

If they manage to book the trip I will post the details.

That's great! We will be anxiously awaiting the results.

Talked with BA Reservations today based on the fares quoted in Weary Biz's Spreadsheet. The fares quoted in EUR for Romania and Sofia according to BA Lon Reservations are incorrect. The spreadsheet has Romania $7099 for AONE4 and $7549 for Bulgaria. These are EUR fares according to BA and as such are more expensive that first seems in GBP if they were dollar fares.

Just to clarify, did BA tell you that the fare levels of 7099 for Romania and 7549 for Bulgaria are in fact EUR, and not USD? That's a 26% difference based on the current EUR/USD rate.

Didn't we go through a similar bout of confusion when IST switched from USD to EUR? Then again, the data kanebear provided were pulled straight from a GDS, so it'd be strange if it were incorrect.

Let's see what Rambuster's TA in Romania has to say.

When I looked at the rate for those East European countries, I notice that the actual numbers seemed to bear a strong familiarity with the previous Turkish prices in EUR. Some of the countries that formerly had USD currency now have EUR as the base currency. It did seem odd that some switched while others did not. And if the attempt is to 'normalize' fares among the countries, using EUR not USD would be the way to go. Bad news on the horizon I'm afraid.

Edited to add: The fares for Serbia-Montengro are the same as Romania, except they are EUR's, not USD. Croatia switched to EUR from USD in this update. I suspect that Romania and Bulgaria have the incorrect local currency in the star files. Once all those countries have EUR's not USD, as the currency, the differences are miniscule. Only the former soviet republics that are now independent use USD within Europe.

Which? I've gotten a tentative reply from Travis and am also awaiting results from the itin I gave them.

Yes, that happened. It also happened when BA started announcing that fares ex-Poland were priced in PLN instead of USD (around 16-18 months ago) that converted to way, way higher prices than were shown on the then-current starfile. AA's RTW desk kept quoting the lower USD fares, and one or more FTers managed to purchase tix through AA's GSA in WAW, TAL Aviation. Then in April/May last year the starfile fares showed up in PLN (at the level stated by BA) and that was that for WAW.

I've also tried communicating with a couple of TAs in Sofia to see if they speak Oneworld. No replies yet.

Your logic regarding Romania and Bulgaria being incorrect seems very plausible.

Looking at other possibilities for AONE3s now that CAI is out of the picture, Doha, Qatar (DOH) would seem a good bet at c. US$7,142, BUT Dubai (DXB), which was previously a good starting point, has gone up to c. US$8,574. Why the huge difference? They are both roughly the same distance from LHR. Is there another anomaly here as well?