Some advice please
 

If anyone can help me out here I would be very grateful.

I have never bought a RTW ticket before so please bear with me here ;)

I am considering whether or not it is worth buying a RTW ticket even though our final destination will not be the same as our departure point. (I assume you can do this and just have an unused return back to our departure. If not then the whole thing is screwed anyway!!)

Why am I doing this you may ask... well we are shipping lock stock and barrell from UK to the land down under and thought we would take in some places on the way. This is why I thought a RTW ticket may be more economical than multiple tickets. To clarify we will be going west and not via Asia.

OK, onto specifics...
First off we haven't quite decided on economy or business yet.

As to places to visit the route goes something like this...
Rio de Jeneiro > New York > Toronto > Las Vagas > SFO > (Drive to LA) > HNL > Fiji > BNE (being our final destination). Looking at the rules etc, this seems to be the only route to avoid back tracking etc. So I guess that is a 4 continent ticket.

One of the issues I seem to have is getting to Rio. My options seem to be:
1. Fly BA to Sao Paulo and then onto Rio OR...
2. Fly from UK to Madrid and get Iberia direct to Rio. So....

Looking at the spreadsheet so kindly offered to us, if I am reading this correctly then option 1 would cost £1,389 in Y or £4,549 in J. Option 2 would cost EUR2,349 in Y or EUR5,899 in J. Do I have this correct?? I would obviously have to get from the UK to Madrid though.

Given trhis scenario, can anyone please comment on it and if I am looking at this correctly and is there any other way I could do this.

Presumably, I could still use the ticket to book flights from Brisbane west upto 12 months from booking and then I could purchase (or use miles) a single back to Brisbane from wherever?

Finally, what would you guys recommend in terms of FF programme. I am curerntly with QF but have no real status and only around 30K or so miles. I was thinking AA??

Sorry for the length and thankyou in advance,
Mark.

Theoretically, under the rules if you do not complete the ticket, the fare could be recalculated as individual flights for the segments flown and you would be billed the difference. Has this happened? Not that anyone seems to know/remember. Could this happen? Yes.

To avoid this you have some options.
Firstly based on routing you have lots of segments left - so you've got a few trips in Australia to play around withn then head back to Europe / UK to finish the RTW (assume you might want to go back and visit after 12 months)
Then use points earned from the trip to book a 1-way award back, or start another RTW and begin the merry-go-round again.

Not quite clear from your post but you seem to be based in the UK and considering starting the RTW in either London or Madrid.

Given current no status, the AA lack-of-challenge and points earn/burn and ratios and additional taxes would appear to be most attractive.

:p deleted :p

Fly BA straight through to GIG, on BA247, granted it stops in Sao Paulo first but it's still a direct service and will only count as 1 segment.

As far as the business/economy choice goes, if you can afford it then definitely go business, aside from the comfort it brings, the number of Air Miles & points (depending on which FF plan you attach it to) can easily cover the cost of your ticket and, if you find a city which offers a significant discount in comparison to LON then the miles could easily exceed the cost of the ticket.

For exmaple, Last year I purchased a DONE5 ex-CAI for £3800, plus £180 to get there to begin with so £4000 all-in. I credit the miles to BA, i'm currently 10 flights in and have earnt just over 100,000 miles (albeit 30,000 were earnt thanks to a promotion i wasn't even aware of), by the time i complete my trip it'll be closer to 175,000 miles which would see enough for a First Class return from LHR - LAX... which, even at the cheapest of times is unlikely to be less than £3800. A bargin IMO.

Plus, as MOA999 mentioned if you are planning on returning to the UK for whatever reason with 12 months from taking your first flight then you could end in Europe, and fly back in Business Class on an award ticket.

In terms of the routing, i believe it would need to be a 5 continent ticket? EUR - S. America - N. America - S.W. Pacific - (Asia/Africa) - EUR. Even if you took a direct flight from SYD-LHR without changing along the way you would have to include asia as a segment.

If you are adamant you dont want to visit asia, why not consider routing back to Europe via Africa? Qantas fly to South Africa, and BA then fly onto LHR via either CPT, JNB or MRU - At least these are destinations that are (or in the case of MRU soon-to-be) connected via Comair.

Something else to note are the AMEX 2-4-1 tickets, The BA board has all the details for the BA Amex card in the Ultimate Guide sticky. I believe Amex have recently partnered up with QF but am unsure as to whether they offer the opportunity to obtain 2-4-1 tickets. The 2-4-1 tickets earnt via the BA Amex require a minimum spend of £10,000 (for the premium plus card) and will give you 2-4-1 on award tickets!

It's really not a RTW you're talking about but a protracted one-way trip from the UK to Oz.

If it were me, I'd look at this instead -

Get to Oz as quickly/cheaply/comfortably as you can (note mutually exclusive terms, but maybe a World Traveler Plus or similar ticket could work.)

Once in Oz (even before your cargo has arrived on the boat) purchase a Circle Pacific fare in business or coach as your budget permits. Then you can do the S. America - N. America tour, returning via Asia. Given the Oz origination price for the CircPac fare, my hunch is that you'll end up money ahead and won't need to worry about incomplete RTW itineraries.

At the moment, you can't go to Fiji using either the RTW or the Circle fare, as Qantas don't operate their own planes there. But living at BNE you'll have access to other means to get to Fiji. Earn enough miles in the RTW or Circle fare and you can go to Fiji on an award, maybe.

Thanks everyone for your input. I am still 50-50 on it to be honest. It's not quite a RTW nor is it exactly your standard one way trip either.

Need to decide soon though... 7 weeks until departure :eek: