This was going back a longer time. Check this: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/onewo...n-pricing.html

IIRC, I got an AONE3 ex-ICN for around USD $5.3K during the OneWorld 10 Year Anniversary 10% Off Sale.

And don't forget that RTW base fares are understated by US$1k or so because on many segments you will enjoy paying the airline its "hope-the-pax-call-it-taxes" hidden fare component, YQ/YR.

On those airline surcharges which are erroneously called taxes, wouldn't their designation as taxes mean that you can deduct them on your Federal tax return if you itemize?

I'm thinking of doing this DONE5 route:

Cairo (BA)
London (QF)
Sydney (QF or JAL)
Tokyo (Sri Lankan)
Colombo (Malaysian)
Kuala Lumpur (Cathay)
Hong Kong (Cathay)
New York (AA)
Cancun (AA)
Miami (AA)
Los Angeles (Lan)
Santiago (Lan)
Easter Island (Lan)
Rio de Janeiro (via Santiago = 2 segments)
London (BA)
Cairo

The fare rules say I don't have to terminate in Cairo, I can terminate in another Middle East location. For me, Amman would be preferable. However if I substitute Amman for Cairo at the end of the trip, the price goes up significantly.

Am I missing something? Is it pricing the whole trip with the AMM price rather than the CAI price due to finishing in Amman?

General comments on my itinerary also welcome as are the logistics of actually paying US$24,000-odd for 2 adult+child+infant tickets in Cairo when I live in London.

I think I have it pretty efficient. Every flight except Easter Island -> Rio is a single sector and I actually do want to go to all those destinations. Only thinks I'm thinking of now are deleting something like Miami and adding either Cairns or Vancouver.

Oh another one. Of all the OW airlines, Malaysian is the most likely to cut routes.

If MH stops flying Colombo-KL after I've bought the ticket, what happens?

I believe there is a bug in the tool that it doesn't price up tickets correctly when you end at a different city than you start at.

The only way around this I can think of is to purchase through another method (CAI based agent) or ticket as ending in Cairo and pay the 125 USD change fee per ticket to change after you have it ticketed.

You wouldn't be able to take JL to SYD as it would add one too many sectors (assuming I am counting correctly). The QF flights count as one sector even though there is a stop over in DXB as it is the same flight number all the way. Using JL would use two sectors. You could do BA to SYD on the one flight number as an alternative to QF if you wished.

If MH pull the flight you still have a direct flight on UL that you could take to KL.

Oh yes, to clarify that is what I plan. LHR->SYD on QF with a single flight number which the OW-RTW booking tool is showing as one segment. Quite a distance for one segment!

It is the segment from SYD-Tokyo where I am considering taking either QF or JAL.

According to the booking tool, the itinerary above is 16 sectors.

Thanks for the info about the bug. I may just end the trip in CAI then as a US$125 change fee x several tickets adds up.

Ah yes I see now. Sorry I misunderstood your original post re the JL flights.

Good luck with getting the tool to ticket. The way it has been behaving lately it seems you are lucky if you can get it to do anything other than throw an error on the very last page. :eek: Having said that as your first sector is BA that seems to one of the more stable ticketing options on the tool.

Another thing is I've put a stopover in London between CAI and SYD at the start of the trip.

I've also put a stopover in London before CAI at the end of the trip.

Both stopovers over 24 hours. Booking tool has not complained about it. I thought 2 x stops (not transits) in the one city was not allowed but it seems I'm being allowed to do it.

Not so

On my last xONEx I had three stopovers in PER, perfectly OK
(...HKG-PER-BME-PER-DRW-PER-HKG...)

In the continent of origin (in your case Europe/Middle East) you are allowed only two stopovers. You have the allowed two (both in London as it happens) so that's fine too.

As Moomba said - there is a bug in the tool that incorrectly prices the itinerary when you start in one Middle Eastern country and end in a different one.

With regard to getting your itinerary ticketed - you could book it with the AA round the world desk and then contact AA's sales agent in Cairo to pay for it. To do this AA insists on at least one of the "over water" (i.e. inter-continental) segments being an AA flight. On your itinerary that could be either HKG-JFK or LAX-SCL flight (CX or LA metal, but book the AA codeshare). If this option is of interest, let us know and we can provide advice on how to go about it.

Enjoy:D

ps You must of course consider the frequent flyer mileage implications of your trip- a whole new world of possibilities!

Hi, that would be great if you could give me some info on having the AA desk ticket this, esp if it means I can terminate the trip in Amman instead of going back to Cairo. I have doubts I can get £16,000 worth of tickets to go through on a website without human intervention somewhere. I'll need a human in any case as I need an infant ticket, which cannot be booked online.

What's the latest date of the last flight, is it 330 days from date of ticket issue?

Oh yes; there is a reason why I've put in HKG-JFK with later flights back to LAX via CUN and MIA instead of just going direct HKG-LAX, then JFK-MIA-CUN and from CUN there is a direct Lan Chile flight to Santiago. But that would reduce my FF mileage ;)

Due you want to finish in AMM or just any ME destination besides CAI? Try DXB; I believe that works using the tool.

I'd rather go to AMM..... if it finished in AMM, I would actually use the last flight. If it was CAI or DXB, I suspect the last flight might go bye-bye since the second last stop is London, which is home....

Last time I went to Jordan, a decade ago, I didn't climb up the hill to the Monastery in Petra, can go back and get it this time ;)

LHR - AMM using RJ would also be quite a bit cheaper than either CAI or DXB on BA (due to outlandishly high fuel surcharges added by BA).

+1 to the advise of using the AA RTW desk for setting up ticketing. It requires a phone call (rather than the DIY website), but it might save $ ,000s.

Does this mean the last flight could be as late as 12 months + 330 days (ie almost 2 years) from the ticketed date?

Something like that

Let's say:

You book the itinerary today
with the first flight in 300 days
and the last flight in 330 days (note 1)

Then during the intervening time you can move these dates out further into the future and finish up with
The first flight one year from today (note 2)
and the last flight one year after that

Note 1: you would likely want to have a (short) stopover between flights, rather than transits. This is because later changing a transit to a stopover is considered a re-route and so attracts the USD125 change fee

Note 2: There is a risk to changing the first flight of the itinerary - which is that if the fare has increased since you purchased the ticket, then you have to pay the new fare. This is also the case if you re-route any part of the itinerary before taking the first flight.

Why take BA to DXB when you can take a QF 380?

-10 to that suggestion! The RTW desk can be fine, but that depends on the agent who picks up the phone. They will transfer you to a specific agent if you know who to ask for.

But the rate desk they must use to verify and price your ticket is nothing better than pathetic. Unless price is of little importance to you, you'd want an independent way to verify their price.

I recently finished an ex-JNB trip, making several changes along the way, and the only time the pricing was correct was initially. That was done by the agent in Capetown, after he'd waited several days for the official rate desk to do it. I've posted several times about their errors.

Booking and ticketing ex-JNB was by phone. The personnel who answered were always intelligent, professional, and competent. But time zones meant I needed to call around midnight my time, a bit inconvenient. There was (is, I believe) a very good agent in Cairo who handled a couple of previous trips by email.

On the subject of AA code-shares, such segments will have a YQ/YR chosen by AA which might be lower than the operating carrier's. I saved about $200 on JNB-LHR that way. But when I showed up for that flight, the agent said "oh, your flight was canceled. We put all our pax on the later flight, but you'll have to talk to AA. Didn't they call you?" I don't remember if the rtw desk was even open at that hour, but with a lot of pestering I did get a BA supervisor there to rebook us - it wasn't easy or fun, though.

In another thread here we discussed whose responsibility it was. I don't recall the consensus, but BA certainly thought it wasn't them and they were the gate-keeper at that moment.

A lot of happy-face comments may be from people who've been luckier than I, or haven't flown recently, or haven't checked to see if the Good Old AA ATW desk did it right. We've flown a dozen xONEx's over the past decade or so - a pittance in some lucky folks' history - and I can assure you it's not like it used to be.

You are correct that my last positive AA ATW desk experience was a few years back. Based on your more recent experiences I shall stop recommending them.

I think like all things which are complicated, your success rate will depend a lot on the knowledge of the person who handles your call.

I'll give the AA desk a try, it's not like the OW-RTW tool is pricing up trips correctly if you start in CAI and end in AMM either!

I only have good things to say about AA's GSA in Cairo. The ladies there are outstanding and have helped me, more than once, outside of normal business hours. My current ticket has become a dog's breakfast and they are responding quickly to try to have it fixed.

Just to confirm the information regarding length of trip with the rules experts:

If I purchased the ticket on 17JAN2014 and segment #1 (trips started) occurred on 28FEB2014, what is the latest date I can fly in 2015? Departing from my last stopover.

Thanks.

28th Feb 2015 .... 1 year after the first segment.

Great. Thanks!

Departing on 28Feb2014, departure of your last segment has to be on 28Feb2015 or before.
You may arrive on 1Mar2015.

If you purchase on 1st March 2015, and depart on 29th Feb 2016, your last segment has to be on/before 28th Feb 2017.

Lazy Sunday here in PER, and have been pondering this

Leave LAX on 28Feb2015 and arrive in SYD on 2Mar2015, having crossed the dateline in flight. ;)


The rule actually states:So, there could be a number of transits between the last stopover point and the final destination. Each transit could be up to 24hours long.

The rule on stopovers states:So if you had an itinerary with two stopovers followed by 13 transits, with 24hrs at each transit point plus a westbound crossing of the dateline, that's two weeks (plus actual flying time) between departing from the last stopover point and reaching the final destination.:D

I expect you will run into difficulties trying to get such on an e-ticket.

IMHO, still general IATA ticketing rule is applied.

For example, according to expertflyer, normal Y fare rule shows

MINIMUM STAY NO MINIMUM STAY REQUIREMENT APPLY.
MAXIMUM STAY NO MAXIMUM STAY REQUIREMENT APPLY.

However, validity of normal fare is still 1 year from the departure.

I'm not aware that even true airline taxes can be deducted.

Are you sure this applies to xONEx (as opposed to xCIRxx)? I recall that on Circle Pacific trips the number of stopovers is limited, and changing transit to stops has implications, but I thought that wasn't the case with xONEx, and I have switched transits to stops without penalty.

I have no first hand experience either way (changing a transit to a stopover and either being charged the change fee or not being charged it).
But it is my belief that the change fee is charged, because it requires a re-issue and is therefore considered a re-route.

Searching for evidence, I see a discussion on this in the FAQ Thread around post 280, dated Dec-11 (some of the posts are by jerry a.laska and therefore IMHO carry some authority:))
However, if you are sure you have changed Oneworld Explorer transits to stopovers without a change fee, then that is definitive evidence.

In my experience, using the AA RTW desk, even date and time changes require a re-issue (except in cases where only AA flights are changed and the agent does a re-validation). Re-issues don't mean it's considered a re-route nor a fee charged.

The fact that I've been able to do it without the agent even suggesting it would be a re-route isn't conclusive, since it's possible the agent was mistaken.

I don't see any mention in the rules that to me covers this. The rules do say:
Also
...To me, this seems clear that if a connection is changed to a stopover, that is only a date/time change, not a change to a "ticketed point."

My recollection (could easily be wrong of course) is that the xONEx fares don't care about stopovers versus connections (aside from taxes), while the Circle Pacific fares most definitely do care. Here is the text about stopovers in the Circle Pacific rules:

I'm two-thirds the way through a lengthy oneworld Explorer where the final sector is LHR-JED. Only now, however, have I discovered that Saudi Arabia does not have a tourism industry. To get a visa you must be on business or visiting family; there's no such thing as a tourist visa. Serves me right for only looking for the best mileage!

So I'll have to incur the USD125 re-route fee which is fine. But where to go to.

I expect it will be DOH, DXB or AUH, only AUH of which I have not been to.

Will I have taxes reassessed on the entirety of the remaining itinerary (about six flights) or just the LHR-wherever? Is my understanding correct that QF and BA to DXB, BA to AUH or QR to DOH will all see me hit with a fair bit of tax (upwards of USD100), in addition to the USD125?

I think they also grant visas for visits to Mecca. But perhaps you don't qualify?

Since you must have started in the Middle East (in order to be ending at JED) - you can finish anywhere in the Middle East; so in addition to DOH, DXB and AUH there are AMM, CAI, BAH, KWI, MCT, BEY and possibly TLV (this perhaps depending on where you originated). This assumes you have only one segment left to get from LHR to the Middle East; if you have more, then there would be more options - fancy a trip to KRT perhaps?:)
My understanding is that only the changed segments are re-assessed.
Your departure taxes from LHR should be the same (the APD tax is distance-based, but I expect all the Middle Eastern destinations will fall into the same distance band. And the BA fuel fines will be similar.
So the difference will be in the arrival taxes at your destination. (According to itasoftware JED has no arrival taxes)

Many thanks for all that.

I will look into the Mecca idea but I doubt I would qualify.

Yes, I did begin in the Middle East (SSH). BEY is out as I have been to TLV with this passport and they don't admit people with Israeli stamps. KWI and BAH are options but both seem really quite expensive accommodation wise. I have been to AMM and CAI on this trip so real desire to go back there just yet. MCT was an option I looked at but ruled it out for some reason. From memory, I think it was also the Israeli thing that would prevent a visa.

I indeed only have one more segment remaining.

My view towards DOH, DXB and AUH was principally because I have an AA award JED-xAUH-PEK already booked and ticketed. However, EY has made a schedule change delaying what would have been my departure from JED by 24 hours. Being such a significant change I'm reasonably confident that I will have a bit of leverage in changing the JED-xAUH to X-xAUH, possibly moreso from DOH being so close. (I'm aware EY doesn't fly from DXB.) And of course if it's just AUH-PEK well that's a whole lot easier but not maximising my AA award value. So ideally I'd like a destination that EY services (to simply substitute for JED-xAUH) but that's not overly critical. On top of that, this is for travel between Christmas and new year so award space is likely gone, hence my desire to leverage the significant EY schedule change.

I'll report back on the tax situation when I finally get in a time zone that will allow me to call the AA RTW desk.

This is incorrect. You cannot visit as a tourist on your own, but a local tourism company can arrange the paperwork for you. You will need to be on an "approved" tour, and there used to be some rule about travelling in groups of four, but I imagine that is up to the tour company to set up.

http://www.samallaghi.com/index.php?lng=en has a good reputation
http://sauditourism.sa/en/Pages/default.aspx I found on Google

If you are not a woman (we all have our faults), you can also obtain a three day transit visa that would permit you to go out and wonder around by yourself. If you look in the Trip Reports forums several people have had success with this process. NB., this advice is quite dependent on the passport you hold.

An Israeli stamp or two is not a problem for Oman. In fact evidence of visiting Israel is much more likely to be a problem in Saudi Arabia. If you do decide to visit Saudi Arabia as a tourist, I suggest replacing your passport before you go or travelling on a second passport, if your government will issue a second one to you.

As for the taxes, they are simply recalculated on any unflown sectors. If there are more taxes (or fees) to pay, you will be charged. If taxes have gone down, you might get the money back. You are not going to be taxed twice.

(my emphasis)
I was unaware of this - I believed re-calculation was only for the changed segments; in other words you get back the taxes and charges on segments you are dropping and you pay taxes and charges on segments you are adding, but that segments that are unchanged (and not yet flown) are not recalculated (which would mean additional payments if any of their taxes and charges have increased since you paid for the ticket).

My apologies. I am aware of visas available to tourist groups, just not as an individual. But my post was misleading; poor form on my part.

Indeed, that is one fault I will carry to my grave.

The only information I could find on Saudi transit visas was for a maximum of eight hours. But I'll check out the trip report forum and see what information I can find. The Saudi Embassy in Canberra has been completely and totally unhelpful, ignoring my email for well over a month.

Buggered again. I do indeed have an Israeli stamp.

Well that doesn't sound so great. It would mean I'd have to wait until four days before departure - the date of arrival into LHR - before booking the new sector. I'll have to really suss the AA RTW desk out on this one, particularly considering it will be Christmas when I travel.

Thank you for the info. More research for me, it seems.

Perhaps my post was too sharp. My understanding is that the tour companies can help you "find a group" and then set up the visa for you. If you still want to visit. :)

There is definitely a 72 hour transit visa available, which permits you to leave the airport. An Australian shouldn't have any problem getting such a visa, at least no more than anyone else (except for the Israeli stamp—don't they do those on detachable paper now?).

Look it might be a problem, or it might not. However, Oman is also a great place to visit and it won't be a problem there.

I'm not sure what you mean. You can change the ticket at any time, you don't have to wait in between flown sectors. Unless you paid UK Air Passenger Duty or airport service fees before they went up last year and you want to avoid paying the difference?

However, others here think that only the changed coupons—not the entire fare component—will be recalculated, so I might be wrong on that score anyway.