My partner and I have ended up in the very fortunate position of being able to take a bit of a career break and spend a few months doing a bit of travelling.

After, frankly, spending enough time on this forum and the oneworld sites to make my eyes bleed, the plan is to position ourselves in GIB and do take the following route on an AONE4.

Obviously I'd like to maximise the "real" first class experience and I wouldn't be a true Flyertalk member if I wasn't also trying to maximise miles.

I'd appreciate it if the more experienced XONEX-ers out there could validate my routing.

Needless to say, I'm quite excited.

Thanks.

01. GIB-LHR BA J
02. LHR-NRT BA F*
03. NRT-HKG CX F*
04. HKG-PEK CX J
|
05. HKG-SGN CX J
|
06. BKK-SIN CX F*
07. SIN-SYD BA F*
08. SYD-AKL LA F*
|
09. NOU-SYD QF J
|
10. PER-BNE QF J
|
11. SYD-SFO QF F*
12. SFO-YVR QF F* (I can't work out the exact seasonality of this)
13. YVR-JFK CX F*
14. JFK-MIA AA F
15. MIA-DEN AA F
16. DEN-LAX AA F
17. LAX-LHR BA F*
18. LHR-DXB BA F*
19. DXB-LHR BA F*
20. LHR-GIB BA J

| = Overland or alternative flight travel
F = Domestic first
F* = "Real" first

You know you are only allowed 2 stopovers in the continent of origin (so 1 of the 3 LHR arrivals will have to be a transit, with less than 24 hours in LHR). The routing looks legal otherwise (CX is now allowed to SGN but not on the Air Vietnam codeshare, which might restrict your travel dates). SFO-YVR is highly seasonal -- this is the first year for the route, next year hasn't been announced and it may not be continued, and it is operating for only a few weeks this year. So unless you happen to be flying SFO-YVR within the next 2 months you won't be able to book that (and there is no AA service SFO-YVR as AA codeshares on AS is not allowed). You may have to drop SFO-YVR from the routing in order to get this issued, if you aren't within the dates for this flight. Finally NOU-SYD in J tends to be sold out, so might have to be pretty flexible on dates, similarly for SYD-AKL on LA (there are only 20 F seats per week on this route, and they are kept for sale SYD-SCL, so don't expect to be able to book this in A more than a day ahead, and it may take a few weeks to actually get 2 seats on this flight ... most likely you will be flying D on QF on this route).

It looks OK to me too, subject to number_6's caveats. It's a shame not to have a long-haul CX F (caviar etc.).

Instead of EUR-ASIA-SWP-NA-EUR you could do EUR-SWP-ASIA-NA-EUR, for more miles and longer F travel.

Thanks for all of the helpful advice so far. Unsurprisingly, it has generated a few more questions but I think I'm nearly there now.

Ah yes - I did know that but temporarily forgot.
Can I still be in transit if I fly in to LGW one day and out of LHR the next (within 24 hours)?

I found out some further information on the seaonality of this route here and unfortunately this doesn't fit my dates. So I think I'm going to have to rethink that whole section.

Interestingly ExpertFlyer shows D and A availabilty respectively on both of these flights for my dates (quite a few months out). I'm assuming that as long as the fare buckets show availability, there would be no other reason why I couldn't fly those sectors.

Hmm. Yes, I'd like to have put in a bit more CX long haul too. As it stands, the longest F segment I have with them is YVR-JFK. I did have one thought on this. Could I go SYD-HKG-YVR in place of segments 11 and 12 of my original journey if I kept HKG as a transit? It seems possible from the following rule but I feel sure it'll probably contravene another.

This would be a good idea for the miles/F experience but the timing of my trip means I'd like to do ASIA (and particularly Japan) whilst it's still Autumn so I need to do that region first.

Yes.It depends on where you put the implicit comma in that rule. A few people have reported getting it ticketed that way, but more have had it refused. It is most likely that you would get it accepted if ticketed by CX since they would be the ones to benefit, but that is hard to do in GIB!

Unfortunately (if you are into that sort of thing) it is the JFK-YVR sector that has caviar & salmon, not YVR-JFK.

That was Viajero, not me, actually.

Oops. A slip of cut and paste. I've corrected it now: credit where credit's due.

Yet CX has placed (as per the doc in your site) an explicit comma, which seems to negate this possibility, even if it benefits them. A contradiction?

I've been thinking about this one a bit more.

The intercontinental arrival/departure rule in question is as follows (with CX's questionable comma in parentheses).

2 PERMITTED IN ASIA WHEN 1 IS A TRANSIT WITHOUT STOPOVER OR ON DIRECT SINGLE PLANE SERVICE (,) BETWEEN THE SOUTHWEST PACIFIC AND EUROPE

The logic that I follow is:

- If you're on a direct single plane service between the Southwest Pacific and Europe then you're not going to transit in Asia.

- Therefore the "DIRECT SINGLE PLANE SERVICE BETWEEN THE SOUTHWEST PACIFIC AND EUROPE" can only be valid as a whole statement.

- If you put CX's comma into the sentence, the rule as a whole doesn't make sense.

- Therefore the rule must be read as:
2 PERMITTED IN ASIA WHEN:
- 1 IS A TRANSIT WITHOUT STOPOVER, OR
- ON DIRECT SINGLE PLANE SERVICE BETWEEN THE SOUTHWEST PACIFIC AND EUROPE

Of course my logic may be biased as I'm after those two long haul CX F flights.

This passage in the rules, commas and all, has had Talmudic scrutiny, but it seems that recently the near-universal interpretation (by the airlines, who have the only votes that count) is that SWP< >Europe is the only instance where this rule applies; SWP< >N. America does not qualify for an Asia transit routing. But as often said, if they'll ticket it, good on ya.

However I believe the "transit without stopover" and "single plane routing" bits are interchangable, i.e., you can fly Europe-(Asia)-Australia on one plane (thus one coupon) or you can fly Europe - xAsia - SWP with a change of planes/carriers in Asia provided you don't stay long enough to count a stopover. This would allow, for example, LHR-xHKG-AKL on CX, or LHR-xPEK-SYD on BA/QF etc. Two coupons.

YMMV.

We have discussed here the grammatical and or logical aspect of this many many times, always trying to see reasons why the less restrictive view should be valid, but the sad fact is that nobody (AFAIK) has reported here, in *recent* times (last 12 months, say), to have been able to get it approved, by any airline.

OK, I'll give it a rest and accept defeat.
Thanks for all the help and sorry for resurrecting that old chestnut.

That's quite a change, you started by avoiding CX (routing BA LHR-NRT and QF SYD-SFO). I've flown LHR-NRT several times, on several different airlines and despite being in F found it to be somehow unsatisfying. The HKG flight is better (of course HKG airport is also far better than NRT). With the special CX service HKG-NRT -- they definitely focus on this route -- it is so much nicer to go LHR-HKG-NRT instead.

As christep mentioned, the YVR-JFK route is not symmetrical, with JFK-YVR being much nicer than YVR-JFK. And of course the class LHR use of "european" F is LHR-DXB-LHR (though you can substitute Doha, etcc, but DXB is the best destination and airport).

Well there's the thing. I've been planning this trip for quite a while now, making changes seemingly daily. I finally got to a point where I thought I'd got it pretty concrete so decided to check with the experts... and now I've got brand new ideas for both the start and end of the trip - I think I'm going back to the drawing board.
Thanks for the recommendation of going out to NRT via HKG. The main reason why I was routing straight out to NRT was that our trip starts in September so I wanted to get to Japan in the Autumn - but I suppose a transfer, or even stopover, in HKG on the way wouldn't hurt.