20 Segment DONE4 from JNB - Aussie Backpacker needs advice
 

Hi, I originally started a thread a few months back called Aussie Backpacker Done3 ex-Asia needs advice http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthrea...197&highlight=

However, as I have been getting up to date on the current info on OWE fares I have decided to start in Africa, the price saving is enourmous, I want more flights in Asia, plus people have convinced me that I should climb Mt Kilimanjaro while I'm there. I have a relative giving me a Qantas flight to JNB on QF points to get me started.

I have questions about OWE, AAdvantage and in general about related things.

With the rule change 1st of June coming in, it's given me a deadline to get my act together and now I'm in a rush to book my ticket before the end of May.

This is now the definite route I wish to take. It hits everywhere I want to go, tries to avoid departure taxes at LHR, Ramadan in the Middle East and hot weather in India. Mileagemonkey gives me the green light except for SEA-SAN:

JNB-HKG-DEL-NRT-PEK-HKG-SFO-JFK-DFW-SEA-SAN-ORD-MIA-MAD-IST//CAI-BUD//HEL-xLHR-MRU-JNB

Other Info:

• I've only gone overseas twice, ever.
• I guess I'm actually flashpacking - in fact I'd be the quintessential flashpacker, going RTW in business class!
• Initial flight JNB-HKG will be on the 4th November 2008, last flight will be 12 months later.
• I will be booking via the AA ATW desk in Dallas and then passing the booking over to the AA GSA in Cape Town.
• I want to join AAdvantage and do the platinum challenge.
• Incidentally I will be doing tours with overland operators in India, Morocco, Western Europe and the Middle East. After my DONE4 I will do one in Africa, then use my accumulated points to get me to Asia and visit the countries I missed like Thailand, Vietnam, Phillippines and Taiwan. Or I could do a LONE4 and take in Sth America if I have enough money left :D

My Questions:

1. Is this really valid or too good to be true?
2. Will it be a major issue if I can't send a photocopy of my passport until first week of June?
3. With payment, can I pay via credit card in someone else's name, or can I do a transfer through some other method. Is it safer just to do it via CC and pay the 3% charge?
4. Once I'm in JNB do I really have to go CPT just to pickup the tickets or can they send them to me in JNB? What is a safe, affordable way to get to Mindpearl offices if I have to?
5. Is SEA-SAN valid for a DONE4?
6. Where can I go to find out the AA codeshare numbers if applicable for my flights? With BA and JAL not offering bonus miles I'd like to find codeshares possible for DEL-NRT, NRT-PEK and definitately for LHR-MRU and MRU-JNB.
7. Can I fly Qantas inside North America? On Qantas website they show flights from SFO or LAX to JFK but I don't know if that's just AA codeshares or Qantas metal....
8. I want to get my AAdvantage Platinum card/details sent to me when I'm on the road, as I guess it's better that way. Should I just get it airmailed from home, or get it sent out to me on the road?
9. Can I lock in the 20 segment booking prior to June 1st but not pay for it until sometime in June/July?
10. How do I apply for a chinese tourist visa if I don't have the actual paper ticket? Do I get the AA GSA in CPT to scan all the pages to me, or what? The visa requirements are to show proof of a departing flight. Can I apply from India or Hong Kong?
11. If I leave on the 4th Nov 08 does my last flight have to be the 3rd Nov 09 or the can it be the 4th Nov 09? Any tricks to stretching the ticket out longer than 12 months?
12. LHR being a transit and not a stopover reduces the departure taxes yes?
13. If I feel like I want to cut my time short at a certain location, how hard will it be to get a D flight to the next place on really short notice (next 3 days?) I don't fully understand the concept of standby honestly....

Thanks in Advance!

The 1st obvious problem as raised by your software is that SEA-SAN is not valid since it isn't operated by an OW carrier

(2) anyone can pay for the ticket, it doesn't have to be you

(7) I don't understand why you would want to given that you are crediting to AA. The only flights within NA of QF (afaik) are QF107/108 between LAX and JFK and the seasonal SFO-YVR. The QF107/8 pairing cannot be used unless flying to/from Australia on QF; the SFO-YVR run should be doable

(9) No, It must be issued by 1 June in order to get the 20 segment allowance

(12) it reduces the total cost of your trip by GBP80. If you actually want to visit UK, I wouldn't be letting that issue be the deciding factor. If you don't want to visit UK, then you are nicely avoiding the tax

(13) how is your crystal ball. The OWE books in D class ( with a few exceptions ). You can make changes on date/time easily as long as D classs is available; whether there will be availability on a specific flight I cannot say

Dave

Yes, the SEA-SAN is going to be a problem as that is a route not covered by any OW carrier.

My suggestion is taking a more feasible routing such as ...HKG-LAX-JFK-MIA... and booking all your US West Coast trips on a separate ticket on your "stay" at Los Angeles. This way you can add other cities that you'd "saved" in your DONE.


During your "stay" in Los Angeles:


Los Angeles to San Diego
There is a flyaway bus that serves LAX and Union Station for $4 one-way: http://www.lawa.org/flyaway/

From Union Station you can take Amtrak, a rail service which links Los Angeles with San Diego for around $30 one-way. Trip time is little under 3 hours by rail.
http://www.amtrak.com


Buy separate SAN-SFO-SEA-LAX ticket
Prices are rather cheap if you don't mind flying in Y. AA.com yields approx USD $309 for flying on Alaska Airlines (SAN-PDX-SFO-SEA-LAX) for random dates in October. You might also get a better deal flying low-cost carrier Southwest.

AA codeshares, in general, are only available on flights to/from the US and connections, so you are neither going to be PLT nor earn elite bonus miles for some of the early flights mentioned above. The only AA codeshare you will probably have any use for is HKG-SFO. The rest of AA codeshares are invalid for your itinerary or do not exist.

I thought I could book under current rules and then I'd have 4 to 6 weeks to actually pay for the ticket.....So I really have to have my ticket all paid up before 1st of June?

Thanks for the info on San Diego by rail. I will strongly consider it. However I don't understand why SEA-SAN is not a oneworld flight when it's an established AA route and part of the oneworld "where we fly" interactive network map.

I guess I might go to SJU in between JFK and DFW instead, I can't really think of anywhere else I can go in North America that's interesting but if you have any ideas for me I'd appreciate that. I will be using NY as a base for Boston, Washington, Montreal and Toronto and Seattle as a base for Vancouver and Portland, Miami for Orlando and San Francisco for Vegas and the Grand Canyon.

My inital legs still count towards meeting the challenge though? JNB-HKG-DEL will get me 10,000 Q-Points flying D on CX?

No, because the PLT challenge is valid on AA coded flights only. To be more accurate, yes, you will have 10K EQP by then, but those points will not be valid for the challenge. 
 

The ticket must be issued before 01 JUN.

Because from the point of view of AA they do offer the service, via codeshares. It just so happens such codeshares are not valid for the OWE fare.

So there are no flights from Sth Africa or inside Asia that are AA codeshares? That sucks! I just lost 15K miles I thought I'd get.

So I would reach PLT on the HKG-SFO leg with 1.5 points per mile (6922 x 1.5 = 10383) is that correct?

Is there a website with all the AA codeshare flights I can search through?

With BA and JAL and the rule that you have to qualify on AA codeshares, is it all still worth it? I get stung before the AA flights start and then soon as I get PLT I arrive in Europe where BA gives me the finger all the way back to JNB......

There are, but they are only valid for pax who connect to/from the US; they are NOT available as standalone flights or for pax with stopovers at the connecting point.

Are any of my BA or JL flights available under other codeshares that do count status bonus such as QF?

Yes, but you must use the AA codeshare. If you fly on the CX number then it is not valid for the challenge.

I don't see any, at least not for the city pairs where JL or BA are the only choice.

Is this really the case...
I had a friend who qualified for PLT back in 2006 by flying LAX-LIM R/T in J on LA (back when it was $1200!). AA doesn't codeshare on these flights.

The rules for the challenge have since changed for the worse. It used to possible to qualify by flying any OW airline but, alas, not any more.

Edited to add: See post #2 of the AA forum sticky.

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.

Edited

From Oz, the AA direct Around The World desk no is:

• 0011 1 800 247 3247

Thanks again serfty.

After getting three to switch on International calls and trying to dial until 2:30am I gave up and went to bed. Got up at 7:30am and went to work, only to find I could dial AA from work fine, but not from my mobile for some reason. The whole process only took about 10 minutes because only the first 5 flights could be dated, the rest are open.

At least the boss is letting me go home early today because I feel like crap after not enough sleep. ^

My final itinerary is:

1. JNB-HKG on CX
2. HKG-DEL on CX
3. DEL-NRT on JL
4. NRT-PEK on JL
5. SURFACE
6. PVG-HKG on CX
7. HKG-JFK on CX (AA codeshare and PLT Challenge flight)
8. JFK-UVF on AA
9. UVF-MIA on AA
10. MIA-LAX on AA (in First!)
11. LAX-DFW on AA (in First!)
12. DFW-YVR on AA
13. YVR-MEX on JL (Sneaky)
14. MEX-MAD on IB (AA Cape Town had no probs with this)
15. SURFACE
16. CAI-MAD on IB
17. MAD-HEL on AY (Finnair)
18. HEL-BUD on AY
19. BUD-xLHR on BA
20. LHR-DAR on BA

50,191 Miles + 25% Business Bonus + PLT Status from HKG-JFK onwards gives me a total of 90,130 miles at the end of my trip.

If I spend the next six months before I leave playing Live Search Club everyday at work then maybe I'll get another 90,000!

Dollar went up again against everything, the DONE4 without taxes is now only AU$5388, awesome. Hopefully taxes won't be too much. And to think, with +++ it's probably only going to be $1500 more than a LONE4 with Qantas.

Just waiting on taxes to book it! :D :D :D

I found out the taxes:

The base fare was actually calculated as ZAR40020 and taxes are ZAR3542 plus ZAR233 for a total of ZAR43795. This equals just a smidgen under AU$6000 which is very nice indeed!

So by avoiding LHR and going through AA, taxes were only 9% of the base fare.

I scanned and emailed my authorisation and identification instead of faxing and it was fine.

I was just reading another thread and someone mentioned they flew LHR-CPT on BA metal with a Finnair codeshare. So I'm thinking, can I do a switcheroo on my last four sectors and fly MAD-BUD-HEL-xLHR-DAR and have the HEL-xLHR-DAR on a finnair codeshare and earn a status bonus?

You could if the LHR-DAR flight carried an AY number, but unfortunately it doesn't. Only OW codeshare I can see on the DAR flight is AA's.