Hi Guys,

after lurking for some time and immensely enjoying the posts in the various forums I've finally had cause to ask a question. Many of you have already unknowing helped me with the great advice in the archives so many thanks!

I'm presently working from our Australian offices but generally split time between Melbourne & Edinburgh. I'm about to book a DONE4 ticket which logically would be ex Edinburgh or London as I already have a return leg from Aus to the UK on QF9, however I'm a little confused with advice of cheaper ticketing ex Zurich or Switzerland say. If I wanted to take advantage of this, how do you go about reserving and paying for the ticket. Can any BA or Qantas office do this?

Cheers,
ozscot

BTW for interest my planned itinerary is as below. Most of these places I have to be at for meetings or conferences.

G'day ozscot, welcome to FlyerTalk.

The cost of a xONEx is the greater of that of the country of purchase and that of the country of origin.

e.g. The base LHR price for a DONE4 is EUR6,939 (£4,549) the base ZRH price is EUR5,312 (£3,482).

To get the EUR5,312 price you need to book AND start from Switzerland. Book OR start from the UK and it's EUR1,626 more.

If you are in Australia, if it is conveniant you can also book it and have it ticketed in Australia at the higher of the Australia or UK/Swiss price. From Australia, the price is AUD9699 plus taxes

To make the booking, I would suggest making a call to the AA ATW desk and get the itinerary stored and they can then price and work out the taxes depending on where you wish to have it ticketed. Just call +1 800 247 3247 . When you want to pay and get the ticket issued just call the appropriate AA office and they will take your money and issue it

Do avoid using QF or BA for this since the fuel fines charged by them will be a lot higher than AA


Dave

Thanks Guys,

I've tweaked the itinerary to start in Zurich using a cheap BMI flight from EDI to get there in the first place. Costs me a Saturday night in Edinburgh due to limited connections on Sunday but for $2k+ saving I'm more than happy. I'll get on the phone to AA when I get into the office.

Cheers,
ozscot.

I'm actually having a bit of trouble getting tickets issued by AA in ZRH without physically going there. There's no AA GSA or ticket office in ZRH, only the airport people, who keep pretty short office hours. Even the German- and French-speaking AA ZRH phone people are in Dublin, so it's unclear how I'm going to go about getting a credit card no. to AA for ex-ZRH xOWEs. I'm looking (sort of, not terribly excited about it) for local TAs that could do the issuing, but would really rather deal with the airline directly. If anybody has insights into AA's operations in ZRH, I'd appreciate a PM. Ta.

Hi Guys,

got the reservation in. I appreciate your advice Dave re the fuel charges however in the end I booked through Qantas with a Zurich origin as this worked best with payment terms and my expense recovery in the office. Appears it may have been AUD$400 or so cheaper with AA tickets but at $9699 base plus $900ish taxes plus $40 booking fee I'm pretty happy for a 43,000 mile trip in business.

The Qantas guy was very good and efficient and laughingly suggested I'd stretched my friendship with all the airlines with my 19 sector itinerary which must mean I'm getting good value thanks to all the advise here ^

Cheers,
ozscot

As long as the trip serves your purpose it is great value. It is possible to get between 55K and 60K miles on a DONE4 ticket, probably your routing qualifies as one of the shortest DONE4s issued (at least by FT standards).

60k miles may have gotten the Qantas guy into a real fluster

I understand traveling West I could have done things like entering the US in LAX and leaving from JFK, however I had too many hard dates in too many places for that to work this time. My only concession to shamelessly collecting status credits is doing HKG-LHR-DXB-LHR where my schedule allowed HKG-DXB-LHR.

My last trip just before Christmas, booked by my now ex-TA was EDI-LHR-LAX-LAS-LAX-MEL-LHR-EDI. This was all booked point to point and cost quite a bit more. I think it's a poor reflection on the agent really that when my itinerary grew from a simple UK - Aus return they just added the US segments rather than suggesting the explorer ticket. Shows that in some cases you need to ask specifically for what you want whereas you could expect using an agent for their professional advice they'd at least suggest an alternative product which is cheaper and offers further flight segments.

Cheers,
ozscot

Enjoy your trip; sometimes it is a fine line we tread between Family, Business & any other relevant issues.

I did a DONE4 that was nearly 70,000 miles (I earned over 150,000) but did it over a 45 week period in four lots with breaks of a month or three in between.

There is some discussion and my evolving plan for that booking here: RTW ticket, longest routing's ??