Help and Advice for a Global Explorer 34k milage monster
 

Hi

To all you experts can you suggest any advice for the following trip of a lifetime.??

After working for 15 years I am taking my girlfriend off round the world for 9 months, hoping to buy a global explorer ( quoted 2400 inc tax each --ouch ) with a BA premplus card to get miles and with an amex platinum to get our insurance and lounge access with PP :)

We can only afford economy and would welcome any advice on improvements, better routings or tips on how to maximise any rewards or upgrades ....:confused:

My main three questions are
1) is it worth trying to route on a particular carrier
2) is it worth trying to get status anywhere or pay to add miles or upgrade
3) could we do this kind of trip better or cheaper with any other ticket


Date -Approx from to Duration Place Notes
30/12/2007 14:25 LGW BDA 5 Bermuda
04/01/2008 08:25 BDA MIA 9 Miami Flo Keys
13/01/2008 15:25 MIA UIO 10 Ecuador Galapagos
23/01/2008 21:00 UIO LIM 11 Peru Mtu pichu
03/02/2008 14:15 LIM EZE 21 Argentina
Surface EZE to santiago(scl) as otherwise too many flights in south america
27/02/2008 09:10 SCL IPC 4 Easter Island
02/03/2008 10:25 IPC PPT 5 Tahiti
07/03/2008 PPT NAN 7 Fiji
14/03/2008 NAN AKL 48 Auckland
01/05/2008 AKL MEL 34 Melborne
04/06/2008 14:25 MEL BNE 0 Brisbane
04/06/2008 13:55 BNE DPS 6 Bali
10/06/2008 DPS SIN 106 Singapore
Surface singapore to phuket
??? 2008 Pkt Hkong
??? 2008 Hkong london
Final flight to London to close RTW ,going overland from here !!


17/06/2008 14 Malasia Sabah - kota kinabalu
01/07/2008 19 Bangkok
20/07/2008 4 Cambodia Agkr Wat
24/07/2008 21 Vietnam Hanoi & Ho Chi Min
14/08/2008 31 China Yunan Hainan, HongKong, Xian & Pandas( chendu),
14/09/2008 3 mongolia
17/09/2008 3 syberia Lake Irtusk
20/09/2008 4 Russia St Petersberg
24/09/2008 7 London

Many Thanks for any advice

Mad Max

You're leaving the week after next? You may want to be flexible with that one.

Don't forget to leave a couple of days to visit Quito. A lot of people skip it, but it's worth a visit.

Safe travels and ask a the airports for paid upgrades. Some will let you, some won't.

gotta be flexible
 

Thanks millionmiler and darran,

You are right we have to be flexible, in fact we may have a two week delay on leaving as not much availability at the beginning of Jan.

We are not planning to do massive flying after this trip but if we had enough miles for a trip to the US that would be fantastic.

Can you use BA miles on other flights with oneworld ?
IE if we wanted to do a side trip to SARAWAK or Borneo with the miles we get from this how would that work.

My guess is that we get about 9000 miles for buying the 2 £2400 tickets on the 241 BA premium plus amex card, and then some percentage of the 34K miles we will fly on the oneworld flights.

How can we work out how many we will get ? If we fly to bermuda on BA 4000miles do we get these or is Global explorer only a small pertentage ?

Yes.

I am unfamiliar with BA, but some segments may not qualify for miles or full miles in some other frequent flyer programmes.

Possibly, if you start from somewhere else, but you have to add the cost to get to/from the starting point.

Just remember - "Travel between two points by surface transportation will count as one flight segment."

Unfortunately BA is probably the stingiest FF plan of all the OW programs. You'll get 25% of the miles flown, so if you're using most of the allowed 34K miles, figure around 8500 credited miles.

The AA program is better when flying in "L" class - you'd get 100% of miles flown on most carriers (still 25% on BA) and you'd probably find that the "burn" rates (redemption requirements) are more favorable than BA's too. However you can't use the AX 241 plan etc. with AA, and your timing probably doesn't allow you to get an AA Citibank card in time for any bonuses to kick in.

As for there being a better ticket, if you want to go to Tahiti, no.

Maybe it's changed since I last checked the OneWorld routing map (before I became demoralized over the price increases), but I'm pretty sure you can't do this without going to AKL or SYD first and then looping back to Fiji (and because you can't use the flights that stop on Christmas Island, I think there's only like one or two flights a week). Although maybe I'm mis-remembering...

jrgold is right: the only flights out of PPT are the LA flights to IPC and SCL and the QF codeshares on TN to SYD, AKL, and LAX. The latter three are valid for the Global Explorer, but not for the xONEx tickets.

If you are taking this trip in economy at short notice I'd normally suggest using a Star Alliance RTW since it books into higher booking classes that are more likely to be available. Check the *A forum. But *A coverage of South America is dreadful, so probably you are stuck with the Global Explorer.

How is it that neither TN or FJ fly PPT-NAN? :confused:

Because people generally only go to one on a given vacation? In all fairness, I was surprised also.

Virtually no economic ties.

Help BA cant find route
 

Hi guys

Thanks so much for your assisatance, have just got back from Xmas, and after working over most of the break we are so excited that our escape date gets ever closer.

I never imagined that BA would be so stingey on the miles, but GardyLoo is correct that they only seem likely to credit a small percentage of the miles.
Is the 25% a rule of thumb or a guess and can we affect or try to nominate the carriers to maximise this at all ?

If I had miles with AA can I have some routes credited to BA ( ie the full miles BA ones ) and the others to AA or can you only use one carrier for the miliage credit ?

Gardyloo also mentioned the Citibank AA card is this the same as the Uk one where you earn 1 AAdvantage mile for each 1£ spent?
As we are hoping with the Ba card we wil earn 1.5 BA miles with each £1 spent ( and 3 per £ for Ba flights ) ..... Are AAdvantage mile worth similar to BA miles or is there a conversion we should use to weigh the relative value

We might still have time if you think its great value as we have had to delay the trip slightly as after resigning ( am I mad ?) work now know I am leaving... and are after the pound of flesh.

Many thanks

Maximus

Ba booking
 

Dear Jgold and yellow :td:

I read your mails and can see you were right about having to hit auckland first then fiji, many thanks for the advice.

We are flexable so thats no problem for us and so have incorporated that into our routing,

However much more worrying is that BA are now unable to route from Santiago to Easter Island (IPC) at all and cant get us from South america to Tahiti (PPT) I was sure that this was available on a LAN Airways code share out of santiago that should be available via the Global Explorer Partners .... in fact Both Gardyloo and Jgold identified this In their messages earlier ......

Have you any idea what could have changed ?:confused::(

We would then route from PPT- AKL and I would pay fro thim myself if we have to but they state they cant even get us to easter island or tahiti from santiago ????

Anyone have any suggestions or advice

Best regards

Max

Welcome to Flyer Talk max_g

Not sure why BA cannot do SCL-IPC on 27 Feb. The LA flight appears to have availability in the required booking class.

Similarly for LA flight IPC-PPT on 2 March.

Did BA say why they couldn't do it?

Millionmiler is incorrect in implying that all econ is the same, as somebody who flew nearly 100k real miles in Y last year I can say that the in flight entertainment and food on some carriers is way better than on others. I think that with your routing the only place you'll have a choice is from HKG to LHR at the end, their you can take BA or QF,I think the QF IFE and food is better.

You'll use LA a bit, they are as good as QF, unfortunatly you'll also fly AA, they're a huge step down.

Another area to look at the carrier is in respect to air miles. I'd recommend joining the AA program (you'll never get anthing useful with BA), with AA you can check the earning tables for various airlines, e.g. you will earn more with LA in L compared with QF in L. For this reason you may be better booking the SCL-AKL route using the LA flight number rather than the QF one.

You can pay to upgrade to WT+ on the BA flights, however I don't think it's really worth it, save the money and spend it on upgrading your hotel instead.



Also may be worth seeing if you could book with AA, their taxes may be lower for the same itin.

Regarding the Galapagos, you can book the flights in advance with the airline TAME, they fly from UIO to GPS. There's another airline flying to San Cristobal.

You can fly to Borneo very cheaply from JHB (takes about an hour to get there by bus from SIN. AirAsia flys the route and I think we paid about 50USD.

Use your miles for expensive areas of the world (not Asia), in Asia there's a couple of very good and cheap operators, with modern fleets, such as AirAsia. Unfortunately there's also some low quality operators as well.

thanks kiwi
 

Dear Kiwi,

thanks for your help< i couldnt believe it when they told me, I know that some L class is restricted but it seems impossible that all dates will be unavailable.

Is there anywhere where I can check availability of flights online.

cheers

Max

Echo india,

thanks for your advice, I had planned to use a BA premier plus card to book amex on the double ba miles offer, I see that AA would be better and If had more time would have tried to get the citibank card that Gardyloo mentioned.

You suggested the following

Regarding the Galapagos, you can book the flights in advance with the airline TAME, they fly from UIO to GPS. There's another airline flying to San Cristobal.

would I be able to use any miles to book tthese flights ? do you know the other airlines name ?

I will take your advice in asia

Many thanks

The other airline flying from UIO to the Galapagos is Aerogal, both Aerogal and Tame stop briefly in Guayaquil (in case you want to join the flight there).

You won't be able to use your miles on these airlines, for BA you can only book with their partner airlines, same for AA (partner airlines means oneworld plus a couple of others).

You'll have enough miles by the time you get to NZ/Oz to get a flight, however jetstar and virgin blue are very cheap there so don't go wasting miles on a cheap flight.

Also don't go out of your way to get miles, you can buy them for 2.5c each so don't undertake a transactions, e.g. an expensive (annual fees, fx trans fees) credit card unless the miles you'll get are going to be significantly cheaper than 2.5c.

Regarding the SCL-AKL availability you can use www.seatcounter.com
It will show LA but doesn't seem to work properly for BA flights. When we booked this route it was full for every day up to about 3 months out, however this depends on the time of year days can open up due to cancellations, etc.

Many thanks echoindia.

I will try and find the best times for the SCL to Easter island to Tahiti to Auckland flights.

Is there a reservation list if there is zero availability now Ie do seats ever get released after they are bokked ( someone cancels etc )

max

In order to waitlist you'll probably have to make (and pay for) a booking for another date, then ring and see if you can waitlist. I'm told that QF won't waitlist for Y, and that LA sometimes do.

I'd recommend you don't bother trying to waitlist, there's little chance of getting it and you should have firm(ish) plans before you leave.

Also if you waitlist and Y seats become available then it's unlikely that they'll put them back into the L bucket if they think they can sell them in a more expensive bucket.

There's plenty of things you can do/see in central and south america while waiting for your flight. For example LAN sometime have some really good deals on flights. Also the quality of buses is high in most places.

Last year we were hoping to change our SCL-AKL flight during a RTW, in the end it introduced too much uncertenty so we booked (from an internet cafe in easter island) flights from SCL-MEX-SCL and enjoyed a great 6 week break in central america which we hadn't originally planned on.