The rules no longer allow you to end in a different South American country from that of origin.

I did not know that. Thank you.

A bit of a drop.

A bit of rearranging gets up over 79k without purchasing anything extra. Still not sure that 80k is reachable, but I would happy to be proven wrong.

Maximum xONE3 ex Asia
 

The maximum I can come up with is 55936 miles for del-nrt-cgk-nrt-dfw-yvr-dfw-anc-dfw-sju-lax-lhr-mct-lhr-fco-nrt-del. Anyone else have better ideas? The Lhr-fco link is almost a total waste as lhr-nrt is not much lesser but I have already used up 6 North Am and 4 Asia so need to take a non mid east Europe leg.
My interest in this is to start a platinum challenge and do this RTW. Ex india fares for lone3 are around 2500 USD a/i. So I am thinking I start a platinum challenge. Do a ORD-DEL trip . Start the RTW. I should hit platinum on the DEL-NRT leg so from then on I should get the 1.5 bonus so that works out to almost 90000 miles and combined with the del-ord return trip should give me exp. Thats 1000 dollar for the ord-del-ord and 2500 for the RTW. 12 days of travel and 3500 USD for EXP on AA. Worth it? Details from milemonkey below



Origin: DEL (in) xONEx Fare Estimate
1: DEL-NRT: 1st of 4 (Asia)
2: NRT-CGK: 2nd of 4 (Asia)
3: CGK-NRT: 3rd of 4 (Asia)
4: NRT-DFW: 1st of 1 (intercontinental entry to North America without immediate transit & departure)
5: DFW-YVR: 1st of 6 (North America)
6: YVR-DFW: 2nd of 6 (North America)
7: DFW-ANC: 3rd of 6 (North America)
8: ANC-DFW: 4th of 6 (North America)
9: DFW-SJU: 5th of 6 (North America)
10: SJU-LAX: 1st of 1 (North America Transcon)
*10: SJU-LAX: 6th of 6 (North America)
11: LAX-LHR: intercontinental
12: LHR-MCT: 1st of 4 (Europe)
13: MCT-LHR: 2nd of 4 (Europe)
14: LHR-FCO: 3rd of 4 (Europe)
15: FCO-NRT: 1st of 1 (intercontinental entry to Asia without immediate transit & departure)
16: NRT-DEL: 4th of 4 (Asia)
Congratulations!! Valid itinerary!!! - (55936 miles)

# of AAdvantage miles earned (base)
econ biz first Continents A/C types Distance Sector
3675 4594 5513 ~asa-~asa JO 777 (jy) 3675 DEL-NRT
3632 4540 5448 ~asa-~asa JO 777 (jy) 3632 NRT-CGK
3632 4540 5448 ~asa-~asa JO 777 (jy) 3632 CGK-NRT
6420 8025 9630 ~asa-~nam AA 777 (fjy) 6420 NRT-DFW
1753 2191 2630 ~nam-~nam AA 757 (jy) 1753 DFW-YVR
1753 2191 2630 ~nam-~nam AA 757 (jy) 1753 YVR-DFW
3041 3801 4562 ~nam-~nam AA 757 (fy) 3041 DFW-ANC
3041 3801 4562 ~nam-~nam AA 757 (fy) 3041 ANC-DFW
2166 2708 3249 ~nam-~nam AA 757 (jy) 2166 DFW-SJU
3385 4231 5078 ~nam-~nam AA 757 (jy) 3385 SJU-LAX
5448 6810 8172 ~nam-~eur AA 777 (fjy)
BA 744 (fjpy) 5448 LAX-LHR
3628 4535 5442 ~eur-~eur BA 777 (fjpy) 3628 LHR-MCT
3628 4535 5442 ~eur-~eur BA 777 (fjpy) 3628 MCT-LHR
898 1123 1347 ~eur-~eur BA 320 (jy)
BA 321 (jy)
BA 767 (jpy) 898 LHR-FCO
6161 7701 9242 ~eur-~asa JL 744 (fjy) 6161 FCO-NRT
3675 4594 5513 ~asa-~asa JO 777 (jy) 3675 NRT-DEL
55936 69920 83908 55936
16 entries

nrt-mex-yvr would be better than nrt -dfw-yvr for a start.

I have in mind that there is a fairly hefty tax for business tickets bought ex-India, so you might be better off switching DEL and CGK and buying ex-Indonesia even though the base price is a little higher.

I don't think this is right.
When you hit PLT you will get double redeemable miles (not EQMs), but I'm not sure what you mean by 1.5 bonus? Are you thinking of the 1.5 EQPs earned on DONE and AONE (but not LONE), which means that the 55936 miles will earn 83904 EQPs and therefore close to EXP by the time you add in your ORD-DEL flights?
But a DONE3 ex-India will be more like $4700 + taxes & fees.

Happy Travels.

Hate to bust your bubble, but the 10K points you need to challenge to Platinum have to all be on AA-numbered flights. If you fly ORD-DEL in a 1-point-earning fare (which typically are a lot more than 1/2 point earning ones) you will earn 7480 or so points (3740 in a 0.5 EQP fare) and your next Challenge-qualifying flight would be NRT-DFW, since AA doesn't codeshare with JAL out of CGK, only on CX via HKG, so your port of entry into the USA would have to be on the west coast or JFK. That said, regardless of your fare class on ORD-DEL, your L-class NRT-DFW leg would qualify you for the Plat challenge, so you'd get bonus miles for that and successive flights. Note that Plat bonii are NOT awarded for JL, BA, or MA-coded flights.

After any Challenge, your elite status is based on cumulative elite-qualifying miles and/or points earned. Your Plat bonus (100%) is only redeemable, not elite-qualifying miles - you still need to earn 100K butt-in-seat EQ miles or 100K points in a calendar year for EXP. In business or higher classes (also BA premium economy, not sure about QF) you'll earn 1.5 points/mile, but only 1 EQM per mile. So attaining EXP through this route is quite off the table for you.

There is one item I noticed, but I am not sure whether that is correct. Segments 6-9 should be a transcon from YVR to SJU, even though it is broken into several segments. Segment 10 is a transcon too. I always believe that a transcon does not necessarily mean a transcon in one flight. If I am right, there will be two transcons. Am I wrong?

On the other hand, if it says valid, then I have been wrong all the time.

LAX-SJU is the only transcon on the itin as posted. One is allowed six segments in North America, of which only one can be a single-numbered flight (whether it stops or not en route) between the coastal cities mentioned in the rules.

Yes I was confused about the bonus on RDM and EQM. But the fun thing is right now AA is having a double EQM promotion and this itinerary has 41000 miles of AA (15 on the 0rd-de-ord and 26 on the rtw) Also even though BA and JAL will only give 25% and 70% RDM they will give 100% EQM so the total EQM comes out to 100000 provided I do this before June 15(or at least the AA segments before June 15) Only bottleneck is DFW-ANC will only be available June 11 onwards. Also the RDM are also not bad. While I will lose out with BA and JAL to some extent once I hit platinum I will be gettin 100% bonus on the AA segments which are all but the first ORD-DEL so I get 34000 bonus RDM so get about 92000 RDM. Now I am trying to optimize the route to have most Nights on planes to avoid hotel charges and also minimum number of visas. Also I am thinking of sacrificing a few miles to replace CGK with DPS and take a few days vacation in Bali. Also am thinking of keeping the Bali stopover at the end of the trip just before flying to Delhi and relax after the 10 days of economy hell :)

The 2500 is inclusive of all taxes. As this is a L class it wont have the service tax imposed on Business and First. Right now with the Oneworld 10 year promo lone3 ex delhi are 107000 INR +25000 INR tax which is roughly 2500 USD as the Rupee is very low almost 52 to the dollar.

request for tweaking
 

Right. I'm not pretending that this is any kind of record-breakingly long routing. In fact, I am posting it here in the hope that maybe some of the OW RTW gurus will be so kind as to point out opportunities for stretching it out even further. It is a recreational DONE5 Mrs999 and I are thinking about, starting late this year and ending late 2010. I have read the numerous discussions in this Forum about booking online - etickets - how far in advance - changing dates - paper tickets - open segments, etc., etc. I am not new to RTWs but this will be our first on OW. I have hammered on this plan for a while and, as it stands, it does what we want it to do. The question is, can we do (something very like) this and squeeze out even more miles?

The plan :

Starting in South Africa because the Rand is low and the price is good from there right now. Also, never been there before so we're looking forward to having a butch. Once we get started, mandatory stops are HEL, Australia (somewhere) and YYZ. No stops in US. Four flights on 'BA metal' at the beginning give us Executive Club Silver, before a long break (from the rtw -- not from flying) at home in Finland. Maybe ten months later, we re-embark for 6-8 weeks, with about half spent in Oz and half in Canada. In the process we will garner enough TPs and four more BA flights to raise our EC status to Gold.

The routing :

JNB-cpt-lhr-MCT-lhr-HEL-bkk-SYD-PER-hkg-CMB-hkg-DPS-HKG-YYZ-lhr-DAR

This itinerary is OK for both the online xONEx planning tool and the mileage monkey, where it comes to 55 913 miles. I should say that CMB and DPS were chosen instead of, say, BOM and DEL because we've been to India many times and even the prospect of slightly higher mileage on those sectors was not enough to outweigh our wish for 'someplace new'.

Any comments or suggestions? Thanks in advance,

cheers,

Henry

Try this:
JNB-cpt-lhr-MCT-lhr-HEL-LHR-SYD-PER-nrt-dps-hkg-cmb-HKG-YYZ-lhr-DAR

I know nothing about BA tier points, but I do know its almost 5k further. ^

For BA, segments over 2000 miles are very important in TP earning.

Indeed. :) Thanks.

cheers,

Henry

If you are willing to drop Australia and Cape Town you could instead see Rio, Santiago and Easter Island at the same price
JNB-lhr-MCT-lhr-HEL-nrt-dps-hkg-CMB-HKG-YYZ-scl-ipc-scl-eze-lhr-DAR 59686 miles

Correction Buenos Aires not Rio