Good morning all seasoned flyers. Every itinnery I look has North America in it. If there's anything I would like to avoid on my trip it would be USA. Has anyone got a intriguing itinnery to maximize A without using North America? Preferrably starting from CPT/JNB or MRU?

Without North America at all you can fly;

XONE4 Africa to Australia to South America to Europe to Africa or vv

XONE5 Africa to Asia to Australia to South America to Europe to Africa or vv

By flying to/from Santiago de Chile to Sydney or Aukland direct or to Papeetee and then surface to either OZ or NZ.

If you just want to avoid USA for visa or personal reasons yet still do a North America segment you can fly direct from Europe to

Canada, Mexico, Central America and Caribbean.

From Caribbean; you can do a bit of island hopping with BA and AA but will need to get to Havana to get to Cancun to get to Santiago.

San Juan Puerto Rico will get you to lots of islands (direct flights with Iberia from Spain) but not sure who stamps the passport!

From Canada; Vancouver has direct flights to Hong Kong with Cathay and Narita with Jal and also a flight to Mexico City with Jal as well.

Mexico City in itself is a dead end (as far as N/A segments go beyond YVR if US is out) and you would need to take surfaces if you don't fly to USA but does have flights to various South American cities.

You can fly from Europe to other Canadian cities but would need surface segments to Vancouver to leave the country as even the non USA destinations almost certainly stop in US.

Central America has direct flights from Europe but for hopping around looks very limited.

Most OW routes include USA because it makes life a lot easier when routing but with a bit of imagination 6 segments can be found in North America without US but bear in mind many of those segments could probably be purchased separately at very little extra cost on a point to point ticket.

With those constraints there is not much to choose from: ...SYD-SCL-GIG//GRU-EZE-LHR... and even less when LA drops FC altogether in the not too distant future.

But you can of course use a Circle Trip ticket which lets you do Africa, EMEA, Asia and (optionally) SWP for the same fare as the corresponding 3/4 continent OneWorld Explorer.

MRU-JNB-<somewhere in africa> -JNB-LHR-DXB-LHR//LGW-TFS-LGW//LHR-HKG-DPS-NRT-SIN-BKK-SYD-PER-MEL-AKL-SYD-JNB-MRU

or something like that.

bravo... send the USCIS a message in the process...

that being said YYZ from GRU/GIG or MEX would solve the issue

Not ex Africa, but I calculated mileage for the following LONE4 avoiding NA.

ZRH (BA) xLHR (QF) xSIN (JL) NRT (JL) CGK (CX) HKG (CX) BOM (QF) SYD (QF) PER (QF) AYQ (QF) MEL (QF) AKL (LA) SCL (LA) CCS (LA) xSCL (LA) LIM (LP) EZE (IB) xMAD (IB) DME (IB) MAD (IB) ZRH

It uses all 20 segments and comes up to 57,000 flown miles (IIRC), so depending on class of travel/status/etc. you might earn more than that.

You can even maximize further (especially SWP and SA), since this itinerary is a combination of interest in some locations & mileage maximization. I optimized for L class earning into the QF FFP (therefore minimizing segments on BA, CX, JL and using QF, IB, LA where possible)

OT1: which reminds me, this has probably been reported already but just in case, note Iberia has several new routes, some of which might be of interest. Details here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iberia_destinations

OT2: IB announced today a significant increase in profits. I wonder what that will do to the ongoing talks regarding the sale of the company.

San Juan is most definitely out as well. For immigration purposes, San Juan is no different from any city in the US - you get the full "felon" treatment. (fingerprints and mugshots) The same thing applies at Guam, by the way.

You can certainly improve on that for mileage. Eg AYQ-SYD-SCL means an extra flight can be added. Similarly in South America CCS-EZE (or is it only in the other direction?) is a single flight number.