ATW routing question ex. ICN
 

I see that One Explorer ATW are based on continents, not on mileage so (business);

What category of ATW does following itinerary belong to (please note that due to visa issues, I cannot go via the US)?

ICN-HKG-DEL (stop) - NRT-SYD-SCL-LIM (stop) - MAD-GVA (stop)-LHR (stop)-JNB (stop) - HKG-ICN

Because I am not stopping over in SYD, I would think this would be DONE4, but the actual rules may interpret it differently.

ICN-DEL on CX, DEL-NRT on JL, NRT-SYD on QF, SYD-SCL-LIM on Lan, LIM-MAD-GVA on IB, GVA-LHR-JNB on BA, and JNB-HKG-ICN on CX. Not a bad collection of airlines. Mileage comes around to be about 40K miles.

I am thinking about *A ATW as well (I have *G status and no status on OW airlines), but scheduling may be more convenient for OW flights (if I wanted to fly to LIM on *A I need to do a RT on YYZ-LIM-YYZ before going to Europe).

Nope - stopovers don't matter: if you touch the continent then it counts. That's a DONE5.

First of all, thanks for your quick reply!

Ah, okay. I was reading somewhere about flights between continents without stopover, etc... but I guess that's a different story. DONE5 is about the same cost as CRTW3 on *A (39K miles) so it would make more sense to do *A ATW for me then.

You need a DONE5 indeed.

And I don't see any way to reduce it to a DONE4. There are no direct OW services between Asia and South America, so a transit in either Southwest Pacific or North America is necessary and this continent will count regardless if the transit involves a stopover or not.

If you do not want to go from NRT to LIM via SYD/SCL, you might alternatively fly NRT-YVR-MEX (JL) and then continue to LIM (LP).

I suggest the OP has a close(r?) look at the sticky at the top of this forum:

Still evaluating my options (CRTW2STAR vs. DONE4)

The mileage monkey and oneworld website is not working, but will following itinerary be valid (x = stopover)?

ICN-NRT-DEL(x)-HKG-ADL(x)-PER(x)-SYD(x)-EZE(x)-LIM(x)-SCL-CCS(x)-SCL(x)-LHR-DXB(x)-LHR-GVA(x)-LHR-HKG-ICN


This comes to be around 53K miles and at the end of the journey I should be able to earn QF Platinum.

Any better way to maximize this DONE4?

Places I must visit are DEL, LIM, and GVA (but I can manage a relatively cheap ticket ex UK to GVA).

You have too many segments, you can have 16 maximum in total.
There is also no direct flight LHR-SCL.

This would be valid:

ICN-NRT-DEL-HKG-ADL-PER-SYD-EZE-LIM-CCS-SCL-GRU-LHR-DXB-LHR-HKG-ICN

But you would need to buy a separate ticket LHR-GVA-LHR.

An alternative would be:

ICN-NRT-DEL-HKG-ADL-PER-SYD-SCL-CCS-SCL-LIM-EZE-LHR-DXB-LHR-HKG-ICN

Well, you will have to manage that cheap LHR-GVA ticket because you have 18 segments. The maximum allowed is 16. Also, x = transit and o = stopover. All of my attempts at a DONE4 x-ICN have yielded 52-54K miles so I doubt that you can improve it that much given your requirements.

Would this work?

ICN-NRT-DEL-NRT-BKK-SYD-EZE-LIM-CCS-SCL-GRU-LHR-DXB-LHR-HKG-ICN

Where final LHR-HKG-ICN is a transit in HKG without stopover.

Ah, one more thing... as I am starting from the scratch on OW FF program (I have been UA 1K for quite sometime), to which program (other than AA - since I won't be flying to the US anytime soon) should I credit the ATW mileage to?

STATUS is important and redemption possibility is also equally important.

I am based in Korea (is BA's Gold still 800 points after Silver for non UK residents?)

No, as HKG-ICN would be your 5th Asian segment.

Did you put it through MileageMonkey?

The frequent flyer program it might be best you credit your Flights to depends upon what your are after.

Generally, AA is about the best for point/mile earn/burn ratio. It does not matter that you "won't be flying to the US anytime soon" as you can earn and burn on all oneworld members flights.

QF is best for status earning, your routing (if it was valid) would earn Qantas Frequent Flyer top Level Platinum Status.

Earn and burn is nice but without status, earning part would be difficult... unless I keep flying C. Status is quite important for me - if I won't earn some sort of mid to top tier status with this one trip, I won't even be considering starting from scratch in a completely new alliance system.

I take it that with AA, if I don't fly four segments or so with AA (metal), I wouldn't be promoted to any elite status... is this true? Is there a way to work around this without having to fly AA metal flights?

MileageMonkey seems to be not working from where I am connected (even oneworld.com is not accessible) - I am in Shanghai. :(

I guess I would have to do LHR-HEL-ICN for my return then.

Try the alternate site: http://slfft.allhyper.com/0.95/award.htm

If this is still a problem I'm happy to try to host copies on a couple of sites I have.