I would doubt very much that UA would give GS based on $12,500 per person.

Note that if you fly FC all the time, FF benefits are generally only useful in IROPs. Otherwise, the FC tickets gets you special lines, free bags, earlier boarding, international lounge access, etc.

I'll just throw out a technique I've used to knock down the cost of premium cabin travel - might or might not work in your case, and probably would require you to move to Oneworld rather than UA/*A.

Oneworld's main RTW product, the Oneworld Explorer, unlike Star Alliance's or Skyteam's RTW tickets, is not mileage based, it's continent based. 16 segments, good for a year.

So an example: RTW fares vary hugely by country of origin/sale. Right now a 3-continent business class Oneworld Explorer bought and started in the US costs $10,964 plus fees and taxes. The same ticket, bought and started in Japan, costs $5532.

The ticket limits the number of flights per continent (6 in North America, only one a transcon, 4 in all other continents.) And changes of ticketed points requires a $125 fee to reissue the ticket.

Hovever here's an imaginary example (probably millions of variations) of a 16-segment RTW ex-Japan that would probably cost around $6200 after taxes, or something like $388 per premium cabin flight. (Note in the US a business class ticket puts you in first class on two-class flights.) That's a good deal for SFO-LAX, but a screaming deal for HKG-JFK by comparison.

And if you want to go farther afield in your travels and can use miles to get to, say, South Africa, then you could start a 4-continent itinerary like this for around $5100 plus taxes and fees.

And of course this amount of flying in premium cabins will put you into elite status almost immediately, and you'll earn enough redeemable miles that some of your premium cabin travel the following year will be on the house.

Up until a year or two ago (when my flying became very curtailed for family reasons) I was buying a 4-continent RTW every other year, flying on the ticket in year 1 and using miles for year 2, rinse and repeat. (Obviously there are cases where you need to fly outside the ticket, but you're still money ahead.) On average over 2 years I was flying something like 22 first- or business-class segments for around $6.5K out of pocket, a pretty good number in my book. It requires putting together something like a "two-year plan" for travel, but the options and freedom make that a pretty pleasurable task.

If interested, plenty of information on the Oneworld board.

Thanks for the helpful advice. Unfortunately, I just wasted an hour on the booking tool, and despite three itineraries saying they would book, none failed to display a price. Display said to contact AA....Oh well, when I am serious about it, I'll try again.

The tool is notoriously buggy, but there are some work-arounds. See this thread: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/onewo...gs-thread.html

Usually the bugs have to do with the choice of the first airline/flight, or in many cases where one airline has taken on the task of doing RTW ticketing on behalf of another, e.g. AA on behalf of RJ - the systems barf. The tool also hasn't been updated to include reliable access to QR or UL. Many complaints have been lodged with Oneworld, the response crickets.

What's your proposed (general) itinerary?

hnl-ty0-syd-cpt-lhr-slc-hnl

Try putting in the intermediate/connection points and see if it works then, e.g. HNL-NRT-SYD-JNB-CPT-LHR-DFW-SLC-LAX-HNL. You'd still be leaving 7 segments on the table.

If that doesn't work, probably the issue is that (IIRC) JAL uses AA to ticket trips where JAL is the first carrier, resulting in the jam I mentioned where JL's and AA's systems can't talk to each other. The AA RTW desk can sort it out for you pronto, (800) 247-3247.

Just FYI, starting in Japan instead of the US would save you over 40% in either economy or business class, a savings of around $2900 in coach and $5700 in business class. Can you get from Hawaii to Tokyo and back for less than that? Yep.

Many thanks!

This is an interesting exercise. Thanks for posting. I'm going to fool around with it a bit this afternoon.

In other news, I wanted to correct my assertion above about PassPlus, which in hindsight didn't make a ton of sense. PassPlus Individual is just that. It cannot be used like PassPlus for a corporation where you have a shared pool. That said, there's a potential workaround for it. But GS would most certainly come at a higher commit than I stated.