I don't really have a question, although any comments are always appreciated. We're planning on ticketing our DONE5 in Toronto this Saturday.

The current itinerary is: CJC-xSCL-IPC-SCL//EZE-JFK//EWR-xDFW-OGG//HNL-NRT//KIX-BKK//DPS-HKG-LHR-MRU//NBO-xLHR-xJFK-SCL (49,651 miles).

We'll be using a one-way BA award on American Airlines to get from NYC to SCL (20,000 miles/pp.). This avoids the problem of waiting for capacity to open up on the return from SCL-NYC in late 2009, since we can then just book another one-way award to get home (all for less than the round-trip award if we had used AA miles).

I've also holding a reservation for the Visit South America Pass in order get us around South America, although there seems to be some uncertainty within AA as to whether it needs to be linked to the DONE5 ticket (which takes us out of South America) or to the earlier BA ticketed flight on AA into South America. Right now it's linked to the DONE5, but I guess we'll see what happens when I try to ticket the VSAPASS in a few weeks.

On the Canadian exception angle, we will be purchasing it in Toronto, and the currently quoted price (including taxes) is 9,081 CDS (with a base fare of $8,400 USD). My electronic reservation doesn't display these taxes, so it's hard to validate, but they do appear in line with other tax totals I've seen in various FT posts for similar itineraries. The tickets will be open-dated after the KIX-BKK leg, but I'm assuming that the transfer at the end through LHR is correctly coded as a transit rather than a stopover (since a stopover would violate the rules). So, presumably the taxes are correct.

The AA RTW desk has also indicated that they've given a heads up to the Toronto desk that I'm coming Saturday morning, so theoretically I won't have to waste a lot of time at the airport waiting around for the ticket to be printed. Obviously that's a bit of a wild card.

One other thing I decided to do--which may be useful for others--is to split our two reservations into separate PNRs (although maybe this would have happened anyway?) in order to pay for each ticket separately, since I get better travel protection that way through my credit card (the limits for lost luggage, etc., are per reservation, not per person).

Oh, one other thing the AA RTW desk did that I appreciated (even though I have no status with AA or OneWorld) is to get me on a direct Feb. 2009 flight from EZE-JFK in D, even though it was D0 every time I checked. I was waitlisted for several weeks with no movement, but they cleared me off the waitlist today. This mattered a bit, because it's my first international leg on the DONE5, so it couldn't be changed once ticketed. Also, just adding to what's been said before, the Canadian exception is not well understood by some at the AA RTW desk (for example, a number of people incorrectly told me that I needed a Canadian credit card to pay for this, even when I was physically going to be in Canada when I made the purchase). Ditto for the various exceptions to reentering a continent on a transit without stopover (e.g., Europe and North America) after one has previously left it. However, I should also note that some of the people at the desk are very helpful and really do go above and beyond (e.g., calling me back to clarify aspects about the reservation).

Looks like a great trip - enjoy ^^

I'm sure you have your reasons because you've obviously spent time planning your journey - but I do wonder why you're 'burning' segments on quite short land segments - i.e. JFK//EWR, OGG//HNL, NRT//KIX.

I'd be using them for flights such as: MRU-JNB-CPT//NBO, NRT-PEK-HKG, or BKK-BOM-BKK, or...

With regard to the BKK//DPS land segment - I suspect you're doing the overland journey down the elephant's trunk of S.E. Asia - a great experience!

Finally, I like the NBO-xLHR-xJFK-SCL mileage run at the end.

Fair comment, particularly on the JFK//EWR open-jaw. We're staying in New Jersey in between the South America and Hawaii parts of our trip, so Newark is a bit easier than JFK, but I will look again at whether there's a JFK flight that may make more sense in terms of catching our connection in DFW. In terms of Africa, we're touring via a travel agent, and most of our flights are through that person, so I'm not trying to book too many of those flights with the DONE ticket (plus, some flights, like JNB-CPT are pretty cheap on their own). But I will look into MRU-JNB, which isn't that cheap a flight. The rest of the open-jaws have some basis behind them, in terms of the order in which we're trying to see things, timing the seasons and so on. Or, in the case of OGG//HNL, we're going to go from Maui, to the Big Island, to Honolulu, and I don't want to waste too much time having to route back to where I started. But I very much appreciate the advice...I'm sure I'll be tweaking this up until Saturday...

Now I remember why I did it this way--there isn't a JFK flight that gets me from NYC to DFW in time to make my 11:55 AM flight to OGG (on Mar. 7, 2009). If I fly out of JFK, we lose four hours in Maui, and I'd rather have the extra time. Plus, at this point, the later 5 PM LAX-OGG flight that day is showing A0, so it appears moot. Thanks...

Just following up on my experience, to the extent it�s helpful for others. We flew into Toronto on Saturday on a one-way United (operated by Air Canada) ticket, and attempted to ticket our DONE5 around 8 AM./*/ The one ticketing person who can handle this at the airport was absolutely great. She�s retiring soon, which is very unfortunate, because she was an absolute pleasure to work with.

Not as pleasant, however, was the fact that the ticket that I had been told would be rated by Saturday morning wasn�t (obviously not the ticketing agent�s fault), so we had to wait around for two more hours, until the AA RTW desk and/or rate department opened up. The ticket was 20 segments, with 15 flown segments, and was a printed paper ticket, which made the agent very happy, because she said it takes her around 2 hours to handwrite a single 20-segment ticket.

One thing I�ll just note, without going into all the gory details, is that if you want to buy a Visit South America Pass, and you�re flying into South America on a ticket other than your *ONE* (but out of South America on your *ONE*), make sure to give AA the ticket numbers for the flight on the other PNR (the one they can't see) so it can all be cross-referenced. Otherwise, you risk having your VSAPASS one day get voided out, which is what happened to us (this was all prior to ticketing the VSAPASS). We were able to get the original VSAPASS reservation reinstated, but it was a bit of a pain.

One question on taxes: My DONE reservation was initially CJC-xSCL-IPC-SCL//EZE-JFK//EWR-xDFW-OGG//HNL-NRT//KIX-BKK//DPS-HKG-LHR-MRU//NBO-xLHR-xJFK-SCL.

We then changed the SCL//EZE open-jaw to an actual flown flight, so that the new itinerary was CJC-xSCL-IPC-SCL-EZE-JFK//EWR-xDFW-OGG//HNL-NRT//KIX-BKK//DPS-HKG-LHR-MRU//NBO-xLHR-xJFK-SCL.

In so doing, it raised the cost of our DONE5 ticket by $190/ticket. Given that it looks like I could buy a ticket for SCL-EZE via a VSAPASS for quite a bit less than $190/pp (although maybe that doesn�t include taxes?), does that seem right?? On a related point, because I only found out about this new rate during my one day in Toronto and �had� to ticket it more or less on the spot, is there any point in arguing these taxes with AA now that I�ve already made the purchase? The tax "breakdown" on my ticket is kind of opaque: YQ: $125 CDS; AY: $10.18 CDS; XT: $574.26 CDS.

Thanks much.

/*/ Also, fyi for anyone else thinking of going to Niagara Falls for a two day trip to buy an RTW ticket, Niagara Falls feels a bit like Atlantic City. We stayed at the Embassy Suites, which seemed to get very good reviews on FT. Eh. Every hotel we saw seemed to feel overrun with kids and tour groups, and the food in general was pretty sad. Much, much more pleasent was driving through the wine region and stopping at the different villages on the way. That made the trip for us, and we enjoyed the ice wine a great deal!

Also, if it helps anyone else plan, we flew into YYZ, did a one-way Avis rental to the Niagara drop off (on the Canadian side), and then took a taxi to BUF and flew Southwest home. Much cheaper to do this than to do a one-way rental from Canada to the U.S.

Re TAXes.

You may be able to plug the ticket numbers into LAN's e-ticket print utility and get a further breakdown of the taxes.

I have a 17 segment LHONE4 paper ticket where this DOES NOT work, but after upgrading the AA segments using AAdvantage miles, the computer printed ticket number for those revised segments does come up with information.

Here's a link to the utility:

• LAN E-ticket Print

Thanks. I actually had tried this, but it didn't work for me either. I tried it with the confirmation number and with the ticket number, and both times it didn't work. However, I have a nagging fear I'm typing the ticket number wrong. I am going to push for a detailed tax breakdown from AA, in part b/c of some posts I've read about getting charged for taxes that have already been paid (e.g., in SCL). Thanks.

Just curious: are you using miles to upgrade or why is A class relevant? AA Hawaii flights as part of a DONEx book in L class, unless the rules changed recently.

No, DONE seats from DFW-OGG book in A (and I'm not moving!).

Just following up on this, as I may have noted on another thread, AA overcharged me for LHR taxes by charging me for a stopover there (rather than a transit) during my second pass through London en-route to the US. In order to get the money refunded to my credit card, AA said I could return to Canada for the refund. Given that I live in the U.S. and that this is a bit impractical (particularly considering that the tarrif error was AA's), they said I could go to an AA ticketing desk in the U.S. for the refund to be applied to my credit card. Of course, the AA ticketing desk said this was impossible because the refund is in Canadian Dollars, which means I've now been issued a miscellaneous credit order (MCO) in Canadian dollars, which has to then be sent to the AA Refund Department, which will then apparently send me a check in USD, which I can then cash at my bank. All of which means that sometime in 2009 I should have my money back.

So, to the extent anyone's interested, as mentioned above, we ticketed this in Canada in late May to take advantage of the Canadian pricing exception. This was the final routing: CJC-xSCL-IPC-SCL-EZE-JFK//LGA-xDFW-OGG//HNL-NRT//KIX-BKK//DPS-HKG-LHR-MRU//NBO-xLHR-xJFK-SCL. Our flight into South America is on a one-way BA award on LAN (40,000 BA miles/pp. for OW in business class). We'll book our OW return from SCL at the end of the trip (too soon to book those seats for Oct. 2009).

The interesting thing here is the SCL-EZE flight. I had initially had this reserved (prior to ticketing) as an open-jaw (SCL//EZE), but then replaced it with a flight at the last minute (as seen above). (Our RTW trip has lots of intra-South American travel, and SCL-EZE was a leg I was going to have to purchase anyway.) I couldn't figure out why I hadn't realized earlier that I should book SCL-EZE as part of my DONE5, rather than buying it as part of the LAN South American pass.

The answer, as I recently realized, is that I only get two stopovers on the continent (not the country, as I had supposed) of origin. The not-so interesting fact is that I didn't spot this error. The more interesting fact is that AA's rate desk didn't spot it, and the flights were paper-ticketed as above. The tickets were then re-issued in the U.S. because of the incorrect taxes I was charged, and again, no one spotted (or looked for) the error. I then changed the date of this flight based on some changes in my connecting LAN flights. Again, no problem. I then tried to change the date a second time because of still further LAN schedule changes to our connecting flight, and this time the AA agent pointed out that (1) I had three stopovers in my continent of origin, and (2) I'm not allowed to change the date for my first international flight. Ultimately, AA let me change the date (perhaps because it had already been changed once), but said I wouldn't be allowed to do it again, and that my PNR would be noted that I had now been advised to that effect. The tickets have already been issued, and AA said they wouldn't seek to cancel them or anything like that (notwithstanding the extra stopver in South America). All very odd (and surprising, since this wasn't some sort of secret plan of mine to skirt the rules).