MountPleasident

With United's mileage devaluation, I'm looking to burn 260K of my MP miles on a UA/*A award biz RTW ticket before the redemption requirement increases to 350K. I'd greatly appreciate the advice and experience of the FlyerTalk forum in shaping an itinerary. I'm also open to alternatives to a RTW ticket, such as utilizing RTs awards with stopovers. I need to book something by January 31.

I'm looking to travel Thanksgiving 2014 through just before Christmas 2014, departing from WAS and returning to JAX to spend the holidays with my family.

Some basic rules for a *A RTW biz award ticket:

1) It's basically 6 OWs and one open-jaw, with <23 hour stopovers.
2) Must travel continuously in the same direction: east or west.
3) Good for seats found as biz saver.
4) Must start and end in the same region.

I'm also 1K with UA, therefore I can more freely make changes to dates.

I'd like to focus most of the itinerary in warm weather destinations, so probably mostly the tropics to the southern hemisphere, but avoiding any rainy seasons.

I've never been anywhere in Africa or Australia, so I'd ideally like to include them. I will have already traveled to most of SE Asia from Singapore up to Laos and most of South America, but only once to Brazil, so I wouldn't mind a repeat visit.

I'm more than open to suggestions outside of these parameters. What are some routes I shouldn't miss out on? What are your favorite destinations?

Thank you for any and all of your suggestions.

UAPremExecflyer

I'd suggest you read this thread from the UA forum as your question directly relates to using MP miles.

noah

You have basically a month -- I'm not sure if your priority is the number of places or getting quality time in many places. If it is quantity of places, I'd think about something like this:

1) IAD-Brazil STOP
2) GRU-JNB-CPT STOP
3) CPT-JNB-DAR (or somewhere else in East Africa) STOP
4) African stop - IST STOP
5) IST-BKK-SYD STOP
open-jaw
6) AKL-PEK-IAH-JAX (or something similar)

Have fun!

MountPleasident

@noah, I like that itin a lot...Both South Africa and Tanzania or Kenya are on my shortlist of destinations for the near future.

I have been to IST quite a few times, even though logistically it makes a lot of sense using TK or TG, I'd probably sub something out for that. I've done Turkey, Israel and Jordan in that immediate region. I haven't been to Dubai, but I also don't have a strong interest in it.

I guess I'd like to do some balance of destinations new to me and quality biz products.

noah

In that case, I'd probably still fly via IST so you can use TK, but add another destination like the Maldives, India, Sri Lanka etc.

kamelia52

Planning a RTW for 2 people in 2015, leaving in January, returning in June.
I am planning to use miles for an award ticket for both of us. I have been accruing miles thorugh united, chase credit cards and lufthansa. Since these are all star alliance airlines can I combine them all for a RTW award ticket? (hopefully!)

We are planning to make many stops as well as travel overland. Starting in Charleston, SC (CHS) then travelling to central america, south america, australia, bali, thailand, cape town, turkey, europe, iceland and then back home. Open to where we land in each area as we will be traveling around anyway.

I know this is a hefty itinerary. Am just curious as to how difficult this is going to be for me to book myself and if this would consist of backtracking or over the 39,000 limit etc. I have plugged it into the Star Alliance RTW planner and it's quite a puzzle that I'm having a little trouble understanding.

Im very new to the whole travel hacking world, only discovered all of this since november 2013. I've already accrued 150,000+ miles through various avenues since then, so catching on somewhat but still feel very overwhelmed. I had no idea there was this whole other world. I feel as if I've scratched the surface and opened up Pandora's box! Lol
I have a huge appreciation now for this whole culture of people!

We plan to buy tickets to the places that won't be available on the RTW award ticket that are MUST haves. Hopefully can arrange for those to be cheap tickets. Any advice on all of this would be great.

I'm considering the idea of hiring a travel hacker to book both of our award tickets as it seems a bit difficult to get what you want.
Is there anyone here who knows of a good referral I could chat with?

Trying to learn as much as I can along the way but open to paying a reasonable fee for quality service.

Thanks for reading!

Happy Travels!
Kam

cloudybw

I booked two RTW trips myself, one westbound and one eastbound. I ended up with flying 55,000+ miles with 8 long-hauls over 4,000 miles, all in business class on the eastbound RTW Unlike Star revenue RTW ticket, UA RTW award has no preset milage limit@:-)

I have to point out, however, 150,000 miles is not enough for even one person in coach on United... After the award chart increase a few days ago, now it costs 200K/person to travel in coach, 350K in business and a whopping 450K in first How I miss the old 180K/220K/260K rates in Y/C/F back in those CO dates before March 2011:-:

My advice? Build up your mileage balance to at least 400K before thinking about booking two RTW award tickets.

kamelia52

Thanks for the input, Im jealous of your travels I'm def aware that I need 400k miles for the 2 award tix. We arent planning to go until Jan or so next year. Was just saying this is what I've earned on my own so far in 2 months (150k) and the other person has about 100k so we just need about another 150k to book which seems pretty easy to do with good credit. Im happy to go in coach. Good to know about the no milage limit for the RTW award tickets! will be milking that for sure.

sbm12

Yes and no. The UA and Chase points can be combined. The Lufthansa points cannot be combined with the other two.

A RTW award itinerary is limited to only 6 stops. You have more than that. Pare it down. You are also limited to only 16 segments including surface sectors (e.g. if fly in to Bali and out of Thailand and get yourself between the two on your own you still count one segment for DPS-BKK).

Each stop must be further in the direction of travel than the prior stop. Even within the same continent. No exceptions.

kamelia52

Good to know, thank you! Its such a puzzle.

yeldarby

I'm starting to plan my year-long RTW trip on United using miles. I've been trying to figure out what the rules are for the award ticket but most of the information I've been able to find seems out of date or from unreliable sources.

I've seen this ticket mentioned here for 200k miles on economy: http://www.united.com/web/en-US/apps...avel.aspx?RW=1

It is also in their awards chart but I can't find the rules for such a ticket. Specifically how many segments/miles/continents/stopovers/open-jaws/etc do you get on this ticket? Are there change fees if you decide to change dates (but not cities) later (no status)?

I've played around with a few itineraries on the *A trip planner here http://www.staralliance.com/en/fares...world-fare-tc/ but I'm not sure what exactly my limitations are for an awards ticket on UA.

My basic desired itinerary is to leave from the US in September, spend a month in South America, 3 months in Southeast Asia, 1 month in China, 1 month in India, and 3 months in Europe before returning to the US.

I am pretty sure this won't all be doable on a single RTW awards ticket so I'm trying to figure out where to use as a "home-base" for each region and where I should use open-jaw(s) (if allowed?).

Anyone have more details on this ticket?

Ocn Vw 1K

yeldarby, welcome to FlyerTalk! As other members have posed questions about RTW paid and award travel, I've joined your post within this thread so that you can see some other questions and solutions and so that others can join the discussion. Ocn Vw 1K, Moderator.

sbm12

Start here:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/conti...ard-rules.html

The RTW award rates are not great in some circumstances. Make sure it is the better deal for you than judicious use of stopovers and such on "normal" award tickets.

Of particular note is that you must travel in the same direction for each of the (up to) 6 stops. So if you start from the US and go to South America then you would need to continue heading east rather than going west to Asia.

Plusflyer

The RTW award ticket for 200k miles in economy is not a very good value, in my opinion. Your US-S.America-SE Asia-China-India-Europe-US itinerary can be booked as a series of one ways for 212.5 k miles. When you book it as a series of round trips, you can add stopovers and reduce it further, particularly if you can modify the sequence. For instance, US-S.America-SE Asia open-jaw round trip can have a free stopover in Europe for only 80 k miles. Then, SE Asia-China(stopover)-India/India-US can be booked for 77.5 k miles. Total 157.5 k miles. You can probably optimize it further by checking which region combinations are the cheapest and checking the ticket rules to see which regions you can traverse and have stopovers. The only disadvantage to combining the awards compared to RTW I can think of is that if you have no or low United status, redeposit of miles or major changes in the ticket will require multiple fees. Also, if United removed stopovers from awards (there is some risk based on Delta moves) in the future, changes to such itinerary might be difficult.

CIT85

I am planning a RTW *A trip in Business Class.
I will be traveling BKK-BRU for one segment. There are a lot of options. The ones I'm considering are:
1. TG, BKK-BRU
2. TG/LH, BKK-FRA-BRU
3. LX/LX, BKK-ZRH-BRU
4. OS/OS, BKK-VIE-BRU
5. TK/TK, BKK-IST-BRU

Options 1 & 2 allows for 30 min. massage at Royal Orchid Spa in BKK.
Option 2 is A380
Option 3 allows me o try LX C
Options 5 allows me to try TK C and IST TK Lounge.

I am open to suggestions on best experience, even if I have to connect and take longer.