Well folks, I did it. I will be a premium member of an airline other than DL for the first time in many years.

Since I already made PM for the year with my first SkyTeam C class RTW this spring, I just finished booking a RTW in F on *A. (Both of the trips are for business, in case you wonder why my schedule is so rushed).

I will go SAV-IAD-FRA-LCY-GLA-LHR-FRA-ARN-MUC-MAD-ZRH-MXP-FRA-JNB-SIN-BOM-SIN-BKK-KIX-NRT-IAD-SAV over a 25 day period. 5 of the inter-european legs are a Y european pass nested ticket in order to keep the miles umder 34,000. The longhaul sectors are on LH, SQ, TG, and ANA.

The booking staff at LH were very good, with virtually no hold times and they speak and understand english. (use the reservation number on their USA website, it also avoids all the obnoxious recordings. The LH website must be one of the world's slowest though).

Could not get SA to release a seat JNB-BOM, even in J for me (only Y), so I'm taking the longer route via SIN with SQ.

There was some difficulty in getting the LH computers to see the A availability on the NH 002 flight NRT-IAD, but the staffs of both LH and NH eventually worked out a way to book the seat.

I will apply the miles to my new TG ROP account (I already have 5K miles on them this year from an open jaw leg to my earlier RTW on ST) So I should return from the trip as a newly minted *Gold.

While I have flown all the airlines booked on this trip before (except for BD and Spanair, but thet are short hops that don't really count) I have not flown most of these carriers for a long time. Hopefully I will have mostly positive things to report on my return.

My one worry is that I accepted it to be in electronic ticket form, rather than as a paper ticket. I don't expect to be changing my schedule, as I really don't have much wiggle room in my meetings schedule, but I wonder if it would not have been better to have paper tickets in case of emergency.

I've done a bunch of ST RTWs, but any advice unique to a *A RTW would always be appreciated.