DONE4 Validation and Suggestions Welcome
 

NRT-HKG-LAX-SJO-LAX-BNA-LGA-LAX-SCL-IPC-SCL-EZE-MAD-LGW-TUN-AMM-FCO-HKG-CMB-HKG-NRT

I had to get creative going to North Africa due to flights being from LGW instead of LHR.

Any suggestions for improvement? My first criteria is visiting faraway places (I'm trying to go to every country in the world over five years), so I'll be combining some overland travel in the trip to also visit Libya, Algeria, Uruguay, etc. My second criteria is mileage, and of course, fun. :)

It comes out to 54,272 miles according to the Mileage Monkey tool. I have no status with AA yet but will do the Platinum challenge.

I'll break up the trip at least once to return to my home base of SEA, which ironically isn't part of this itinerary at all.

Assuming this is an acceptable itinerary, how do I actually book it? I see conflicting reports here-- do I call up the AA RTW desk and then pay through AA Japan, work through a Canadian agent, or something else?

Many thanks to all in this community for inspiring my journeys.

Both are valid methods of booking and ticketing. A TA will charge a service fee, whilst the airline won't. It might be worth booking with the airline directly if you've planned the whole thing out already. However you do get benefits like a longer ticketing time limit, better chances of clearing waitlists (maybe) etc if you book through a TA.

Additionally you can also pay the ticket via AA in Canada at the Japanese pricing. This might be a better option than calling up AA Japan, particularly if a paper ticket is required. AA Japan will not issue paper tickets over the phone whereas Vancouver is only a short drive away from Seattle. :)

I seriously doubt that AA Canada would be willing to ticket this, esp. as the OP has carefully avoided flying AA on either Pacific or Atlantic (so not much revenue for AA on this ticket). A Canadian TA is probably the best choice for a first RTW purchase, and some charge <$100. Alternatively CX in YVR will issue the ticket without charge (presuming that NRT-HKG is on CX, and if it isn't then it should be). Dealing with CX is pretty good, and you can start by calling the CX 800 number in the US. There is no need (or value) in going through the AA RTW desk for this kind of routing. Not sure how much higher CX taxes are than AA (but you would have to go to NRT by the ticketing deadline and pay for the ticket in person, if you want it to be AA issued, I think).

I just ticketed a DONE4 starting in Japan.
1) I am fairly sure that in order to get the Japan pricing, you must have it ticketed in Japan. Even if the itinerary starts in Japan, if you ticket in North America, it is priced as from North America.

2) The AA RTW desk were very helpful in setting up the itinerary, and were not bothered when I told them I would ticket it in Japan. They gave me a record locator and told me to call back in a day or two as the itinerary had to be sent to Dublin (?) for pricing. In fact they called me back the next day to point out a small problem.

3) Then I contacted the AA office in Japan by email, gave them the record locator, and they confirmed the pricing and I charged it to my credit card. They will not mail the ticket to the US (>16 segs so had to be paper ticket) but will mail it to a friend's address in Japan, who sent it on to me.
I was a bit shocked to find that it is not just a paper ticket, but five hand-written tickets taped together! I haven't had a hand-written ticket on a major airline for years.

In case you are interested (as your itinerary is similar to mine), mine is:
NRT-HKG-JFK-LAX-SJO-LAX-ORD-SJU-JFK-GRU-SCL-BOG-EZE-MAD-MOW-AMM-MCT-LHR-HKG-DEL-NRT for 62,354 miles and cost JPY849,130 including all taxes.
I booked the first 6 flights and left the rest open.

Happy Travels.

Yes they will. They will want to put the OP on a AA codeshare number for LAX-HKG though.

Just looked at your itinerary again in detail.

1) BNA-LGA-LAX. I am fairly sure that AA does not fly LGA-LAX. Probably you were planning on skipping over to JFK and doing JFK-LAX. However, I discovered to my detriment that a land segment even between co-terminals such as LGA-JFK (or in my case EZE-AEP), counts as a segment. I think this will put you over 20 segments, if I counted correctly. I think AA does have one Eagle flight per day BNA-JFK so that might fix it for you.

2) I don't think CX is currently flying to CMB due to the volatile situation there. If you are trying to do a long leg within Asia, probably your best bet is HKG-DEL as I am doing.

Happy Travels.

I don't think the trans-oceanic flight is relevant; my itinerary doesn't include a trans-oceanic on AA.
What does matter is the sales restriction as follows:

When travel originates in a country for which a specific local currency fares is published and the ticket is sold in another country, the fare will be that published for the country of origin converted to the currency of the
country of sale at the bank selling rate. The resultant fare must not be lower than from the country of sale.
Exception: Not applicable for sales made and/or travel originating in Canada

However, I'm not quite clear exactly what the Canada exception means; does it mean that Canada is the only country where you CAN purchase tix at the fare of any other country? If so, everybody would be flocking to Canada to purchase AONE6s ex-MRU.

Happy Travels

It is a new exception and yes it does mean you can purchase tickets in Canada at the fare of any other starting point:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...ghlight=canada

NDFan and everyone else, thanks for that helpful info. It is all good to know. I was aware of the co-terminal rule, but the validator I used showed a LGA-LAX AA flight. Now that I'm looking at real flights on Kayak, I don't see one... so I may indeed need to catch the all-economy flight up to JFK from BNA. Alternatively, it looks like I could go to MIA or BOS (the longest) and then on to LAX.

About the CMB flight, hmmmm, I didn't think about that. I'm not planning to go there for a while (the end of the trip will be in the summer), so I wasn't concerned with the present booking situation. But if that prevents me from including CMB on the itinerary, I may replace it with KHI.

Countries
 

Hey no-one commented on your admirable goal of all countries in 5 years. I did a rough calc and given there at least 192 recognized countries in the world (an a lot more depending on how you define them) you would have to be getting to a new country about every 9 days starting now! I hope you already have some countires up your sleeve or you will deifintely become the ultimate road warrior - at least you'll be likely to win the AA competition when you write of your travels:) Looks like a lot of DONE6's to me as well!

My more tame goal is to stay ahead of my Birth in years. I'm 36 and well ahead at the moment but I'm already noticing that it is becoming increasingly harder to add countries. Africa is getting me a few at the moment but the OW services (or lack thereof) in there are killing me - RJ has definitely improved things but I wish EK was part of the alliance too.

Good Luck, paul4471^

LGA-LAX is a 1-stop (it is actually LGA-ORD-LAX and often with a change of plane at ORD but a single flight number, so counts as 1 segment) and might be seasonal. AA regularly comes and goes with these through flights. It is of course a far inferior service to the nonstop JFK-LAX, if comfort matters.

The Canada exemption is historical and dates back to the IATA being headquartered in Canada. I still think AA would refuse to write this ticket in Canada (only the airline flying the first international OWE leg is required by OW to issue the ticket, for other airlines it is optional). AA in Japan will issue it, of course (even though they are not required to).

My thoughts too. 5 years for approx 200 countries (depending on which list you use) is very ambitious. I try to visit 12+ new countries each year (average 1 per month). It is getting harder to achieve this every year.

Thanks for the comments on my goal. I'll be starting a web site that chronicles the journey beginning in February, and when I do that I'll make a post about it somewhere in the appropriate FT forum.

As for the calculations, I've already been to 72 countries, so my goal is focused on all the places I haven't been yet. I lived in West Africa for four years, so I'm used to challenging travel situations, and I have a lot of countries in Africa off the list already. But yes, I realize that the goal will still be very challenging.

The list I'm working on is 203 countries-- the 192 U.N. members that paul4471 mentioned, plus a few places that aren't technically countries in a political sense but really should be-- Kosovo, Taiwan, Western Sahara, Somaliland, etc.

As KiwiFlyer correctly noted, the greatest challenge is that as you visit all the "easy" countries, the hard ones get harder and you end up going back to a lot of hub cities to try to get to new places. I still haven't done much in the South Pacific or in Central Asia.

Anyway, more details on my project are coming soon. I appreciate having a community here that appreciates a goal like this.

i spoke with the cx cmb office when i was there last month. they told me that they do not foresee cx resuming flights to cmb. evidently the false start they did last year (stopping cmb service then resuming then stopping it again) scared the execs and killed any chance to resume service.

If you're going there after 30 March 08, you'll need to be even more creative. http://www.britishairways.com/travel...s?p_faqid=3028