I've been in Colombo a few days and was intending to leave tonight on a more standard multi-segment ticket when last night I read on FT about the OW RTW price increases throughout Asia from Sept 1 - and I thought I had better stay one more night and quickly kick start a new DONE 3 or DONE 4 -

I was intending to do CMB to BKK plus the bare basics and do a route change later - but...one thing has got me flummoxed;

I am aware of the only two stopovers in continent of origin and
I originally wanted CX to do


CMB-BKK // NRT-LHR-SFO // LAX-NRT-xHKG-CMB

They reckoned I couldn't stopover in Narita on the way back from LAX but I would read it as;

CMB-BKK Asia Segment 1 / one Asian stop
NRT - LHR trans-con
LAX-NRT trans con with second Asian stop
NRT - xHKG Asia Segment 2 / one Asian transit
HKG - CMB Asia Segment 3

Is the problem

1. BKK to NRT surface - NRT is then seen as the second stop?

They have ok'd CMB-BKK-LHR-SFO//LAX-NRT-xHKG-CMB

but I would prefer to have the free standing NRT to LHR re-instated and also be able to stop in NRT on the way back from LAX.


Thanks for your help on this and thanks for such a fantastic OW board. ^ ^

The way I see it CMB-BKK//NRT-...etc is just one stopover.

Edited to add: it is the same as CAI-MAD//LHR-... done by many here. I have never heard of that routing being TWO stopovers.

Thanks Viajero for the quick reply.

I'll run it by CX once more tomorrow morning and see what they say.

I think your problem is not so much the number of stopovers, but that a surface sector is treated as a stopover in each city (but only counting as 1 stopover between them). So you are trying to get a second stopover in the same city.

Nothing wrong with that

First stopover is BKK // NRT and the second stopover is NRT:-> both OK in my view. A stopover is anything more than 24 hours (unless they are looking at calender days)

For what it's worth, I agree with Viajero - it looks OK to me.

FWIW, I don't think so.

While I could not find any specific definition in the ONE star file, I did in the Circle Pacific star file and I would venture to say the rules are the same.

63N .3. A SURFACE SEGMENT IS CONSIDERED 1
64N . STOPOVER
65N .
66N . EXAMPLE: LAX-SYD-CNS-GOV-CNS-HKG-
67N . BKK//HKG-LAX
68N . .
69N . A SURFACE IS CONSIDERED AS 1 STOP,
70N . THEREFORE A STOP IS
71N . PERMITTED AT EITHER BKK OR HKG
72N . WHICHEVER BENEFITS THE
73N . PASSENGER. IN THIS EXAMPLE, THE STOP
74N . WOULD BE TAKEN AT
75N . BKK SINCE A STOP WAS ALREADY TAKEN AT
76N . HKG.

I asked again and it seems they consider that CMB-BKK // NRT-LHR as two seperate stopovers (BKK and NRT) which means that all other "stops" within Asia have to be within the 24 hour transit period.

As they don't count BKK-NRT surface as one of the "4 allowed sectors within continent of origin" I - in my self-interested view - don't think a surface sector should be considered a second stop but it's not me who issues the ticket .

I wouldn't say it is 100% the definitive answer - nothing I could see in the rules either way - so each office and airline may have a different interpretation......

I have to mention, a big ^ for Cathay's CMB office which whenever I have dealt with them both now and in the past, have always been 100% professional, efficient and very easy to deal with.

I really wish so many other One World offices were this calm when you mention OW Explorer ....

They are wrong. Why do you give them a ^ ? But maybe the path of least resistance is to get it reissued by a more knowledgeable office later...

Not on this issue, IMO. AFAIK there is not a single post here in recent years that would support a two stopover interpretation for such a surface sector. It looks like CX CMB are letting you down on this one.

Along similar lines, for an ex-MRU AONE5, would this be illegal?

MRU-LHR-...-SYD-JNB(x)-CPT(o)-JNB(x)-VFA(o)-JNB

I'm guessing yes, since I have stopovers in CPT and VFA and the open jaw finish is technically a stopover as well, leaving me with three in continent of origin.

I would put that one in the category of doubtful, but definitely worth a try. There are posts in the archive supporting a yes and others going for a no.

Ireland haven't rejected it yet, but to be fair it's not yet ticketed as we're still wrangling over some routing issues in Asia (apparently QF no longer fly BKK-MEL).

The ^ was because they were able to ok a route , send over detailed tax details within 30 minutes of that and have the tickets ready for issue 30 minutes later.

All offices should be able to do that whether it is a newly issued RTW or a re-routing - but sadly that is often not the case.

It's a shame that all offices don't have standardise responses to all possibilities on the RTW ticket as well - but I took the pragmatic approach - I needed the tickets issued bf 31 August (b/c of the price increase), I really did want to get out of CMB that night and although NRT-LHR is my prefered route, even if I took it - I would have re-routed immediately after - so I may as well re-route immediately before I take the inter-con route.

I will contact Cathay in HK this week and see if they ok a potential re-route
with the contested segment in place.

A somewhat similar question...do you think this is a valid DONE3 itinerary ?

PVG-Europe
Europe-USA
USA-HKG (no stopover)
HKG-NRT (no stopover)
NRT-HKG (stopover)
HKG-BKK (stopover)
BKK-HKG

open-jaw origin/destination between HK and mainland China allowed I think...so starting PVG and ending HKG should be no problem. However, does this origin/destination open-jaw counts as one stopover ?

thanks.