I am currently in month 9 of a year long business class RTW as a flashpacker. Staying in good hostel, meeting great people and having fun. Reactions from the people I tell that I am flying business class are excellent especially when they find out how little I paid for it compared to their economy tickets.

Enjoy your time and the excellent product!!

SEA-SAN is an established AA route, except that flight is operated as a codeshare flight on Alaska Airlines. Alaska Airlines isn't a OW carrier. Restricted to OW, you could fly to SAN-DFW-SEA though I'd hardly recommend wasting your time backtracking to DFW when you can go straight north on a separate ticket.

As for your base:
If you want to visit the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas, Los Angeles is closer, cheaper, and faster choice for a base than San Francisco. Heck, Los Angeles is in a nice geographical location that can be used as a base for San Francisco and San Diego too. And I'm not saying this because I'm a local Angelino, but because of the wide variety of cheap transportation options available in and out of L.A.:

• Amtrak rail to San Diego
• Long-distance buses to Las Vegas, Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon (Greyhound and Amtrak buses)
• L.A. also offeres competetive airfares to Las Vegas as well (US Airways, American, Southwest, Delta, Northwest, United)
• Very competetive airfares to SFO/OAK/SJC (American, Southwest, Alaska, United)
• Have lots of time, patience and taste of a cool adventure? Then I highly recommend traveling on Amtrak's Coast Starlight from Los Angeles to Oakland (San Francisco) to Seattle - all on rail

When you're in San Diego, you can also take a day trip to Tijuana just to say that you've been to Mexico. There is a trolley station in front of the San Diego Amtrak station which takes you all the way down to the US-Mexico border. After that it's just a walk across the bridge and you're in Mexico.

If you're into collecting entry stamps in your passport, ask the station personnel in one of the buildings right after you cross the border into Mexico. Usually they don't give out stamps since most people visiting Tijuana by walking across the border are there for less than 72 hours.

Getting a stamp placed in your passport is a hit and miss though. Ask nicely you might get it for free as a souvenir. However, if the guy is in a bad mood you'll have to do the legal way of filling out a Mexican tourist card and pay $27 at a bank to get the stamp.


Other places of interest - if you are into planespotting, I suggest visiting SXM (St. Maarten). You can get there from MIA using AA and include that into your trip. That will be one interesting experience as you'll never find any other airport that will let you be as closest as you can be directly underneath the landing path! Oh, and beautiful beaches too ^

Good to know!

The codeshare must also be a more recent occurence as I traveled with him back then and despite looking up a codeshare only found the LA offering.

LAN has been codesharing with AA LAX-LIM for as long as I can remember. The oldest reference I found was from a trip report from PresRDC in 2002, and I remember it being around even before that.

I have been have keep looking through the rules and found a totally different route. The rules I like are that I can transit through LHR between Africa and America if I end up in Dar as Salam or Nairobi, and that Mexico is included as part of America.

How does this one fly? Is it valid? Mileage Monkey gives it the green light, but the oneworld itinerary planner hates the fact I'm not ending in JNB and going through Europe:

JNB-xLHR-LAX-JFK-DFW-YVR-MEX-MIA-JFK-HKG-DEL-NRT-PEK-HKG-AMS//CAI-MAD-HEL-BUD-xLHR-NBO

Perfect weather for the whole trip, except Oct/Nov in Canada and North America, I think I can live with that.

No, not valid. Two entries into Europe. South Africa is not one of the countries that allows a "free" London transit.

Garydloo is correct. The rules states:

So you can either:
enter Europe the first time from one of the listed countries and just transit to another continent - e.g. NBO-xLHR-LAX...
or
enter Euorpe the second time from another continent and transit to one of the listed African countries - e.g. HKG-xLHR-NBO

(or vice versa for both of course)

Your intinerary on the other hand has you transiting Europe from JNB and later your are stopping at various places in Europe and finally transiting LHR to NBO.

The rule is that your are allowed to transit Europe, not that you are allowed to transit LHR

So a re-worked valid itinerary is:

JNB-LHR-BUD-HEL-MAD-CAI//AMS-HKG-PEK-NRT-HKG-JKF-MIA-MEX-YVR-DFW-JFK-LAX-xLHR-NBO

I'd also love to slot in a Caribbean Island, everyone seems to use St Juan (probably because of all the connections for mileage runs) but I was looking at Saint Lucia with a week of kiteboarding lessons right near the airport http://www.slucia.com/kitesurf/index.html

Now the oneworld itinearary planner flash thing says there are no direct flights valid from JFK, however the oneworld timetable shows that today there is an AA 2009 JFK-UVF so do you reckon it's valid? Please let me know because I'd love to visit the Caribbean. As an Aussie I don't know much about the different islands, is any island better than another for independant travellers?

If so, then my final routing which I will book in 4 days will be this:

JNB-HKG-DEL-NRT-PEK-HKG-JFK-UVF-MIA-DFW-CUN//MEX-YVR-LAX-BRU//CAI-MAD-HEL-BUD-xLHR-NBO

MEX-YVR would be on JL, hope AA don't mind.
YVR-LAX is also coming up as invalid in mileage monkey, but there is clearly a codeshare with LAN.

Unless someone can figure out a better way to get into Cancun and out via Mexico City and a better use for that spare segment, like CPT-JNB.

Has anyone had any experience getting a courier to send you tickets from the AA office in Cape Town to somewhere in Johannesburg? Do you have a link?

I'm on the home stretch!

AA2009 JFK-UVF is definitely valid as it's AA metal.

Not seeing any oneworld operated flights for YVR-LAX; I suspect that you might have been looking at an AS-operated flight. Quite a few oneworld airlines codeshare on AS flights (including AA and QF) but as AS isn't a oneworld member those codeshares cannot be used.

Flights need to be both marketed and operated by oneworld carriers to be included in the xONEx.

The flight is perfectly listed on the OW Map. Also AA2018 back to JFK.

Just be aware that the MEX-YVR is not a daily flight. And there are no north-south connections on the west coast of the US/Canada on OW metal at all. So no way to get direct from YVR to LAX or SFO or SAN or SEA.... You will always have to go through DFW or so to get there.

OK, I think I have my final itinerary locked in, after spending 2 days choosing between St Lucia or Barbados:

JNB-HKG-DEL-NRT-PEK//PVG-HKG-JFK-UVF-MIA-MEX-YVR-DFW-LAX-BRU//CAI-MAD-HEL-BUD-xLHR-DAR

I will be calling Dallas RTW AA desk tonight to book this (have to wait until Midnight from Melbourne). Soon I can finally stop learning airport codes and plotting flight paths and start researching accomodation and activities, woot!

24 year high for the Aussie dollar yesterday fits in nicely with my planning hey! South African Rand also just dropped a bit, making my DONE4 $150 cheaper than last week.

Last 3 questions:

• If I leave flights as OPEN, how/when do I pay taxes, at check in? Is it better just to pay it all up front or do I risk some taxes not being listed on the paper ticket and chasing refunds?
  
• How soon before a booked flight can I change it?
  
  I'm trying to find the best way to Cancun, either fly MIA-CUN, maybe find a budget mexican carrier to take me MEX-CUN, or I can get to Austin and fly Viva Aerobus to CUN, but perfect thing would be some sort of cruise from MIA-CUN that's affordable. I want to do a G.A.P Adventures or Intrepid 15 day tour overland from Cancun to Mexico City and continue on my DONE4.
  
  I could go overland from Shanghai to Hong Kong, seeming I'm already going from Beijing to Shanghai that way, and instead use that extra sector for the non-OWE flight from MIA-CUN..... I can't decide. I could also spend a few days in Seoul or Taipei, what to do, what to do?
  
  
• If I book MIA-MEX, but then I end up making my own way from MIA to MEX, can I just keep going without paying a rebooking fee?

Thanks Serfty for the info.

I actually think the above route is invalid because there is no direct flight from LAX-BRU. Correct me if I'm mistaken.

So I'm thinking that seeming it's a surface sector as soon as I land in Europe, I might as well fly into LHR because I won't be slugged a departure tax as I'm not actually departing LHR, my next flight is CAI-MAD..... am I correct?

My very last question, if I do change my mind mid-way and want to re-route some segments, can I change 6 segments and get charged the one fee?

I'm just waiting for Three to activate international calling on my phone, I got an error when trying to call AA in Dallas.

Right, there's no LAX-BRU. You shouldn't be charged UK passenger duty fee as it's departure-based. You will be charged a stopover of course.

When you re-issue you can change as many segments as you want all at the same time. Taxes and other charges will be adjusted accordingly.