Booking joint RTW tickets: 1 'award' and 1 'oneworld explorer'

[Scarlett]

Last week I completed the process for booking around the world flights for my spouse and I (and by then a one and a half year old) for Sept/Oct next year and in J. This post is to list some of the things that worked for me and those that created frustrations in case others are doing or considering doing likewise.

So, the basics:

- One ticket was a QF points award ticket which had a base cost of 280K QFF points.
- I had about 230K points and mrs had 100K so we family transferred 50K of her points to my account to make the booking happen.
- Our infant was booked on her ticket as it didn't cost any extra points, but did cost fees and charges. If booked with a paid ticket it would have cost 10% of adult fare.
- The other ticket was a DONE4 oneworld ticket.
- We are starting and finishing the RTW booking in South Africa due to the significant price difference (cheaper) than an equivalent ticket from Australia. This also has the added benefit of giving us time to holiday in Sth Africa as part of the trip.
- The basic routing of the journey is as follows but both tickets ended up being slightly different (I'll describe that in detail later):

1. CPT - LHR - AMM (BA / RJ - the stopover in LHR is about 10 hrs which is enough time to catch up with freinds for lunch)
2. AMM - AMS - HEL (RJ / AY)
3. HEL - MAN (AY - what a godsend, a direct flight that allows us to avoid LHR)
4. MAN - JFK - YYZ - MIA (AA - 22hr transit in YYZ to go see Niagra Falls)
5. (ground segment)
6. LAS - LAX - NRT (AA)
7. NRT - HKG - JNB (CX)

The QF award ticket was booked first, as award availability was likely to be more difficult to sort out than D class availability. There was also the issue that the QF award booking tool (using multi-city option) proved to be a limiting factor and was very frustrating to use to check on different segments or to make small changes to the overall trip when it inevitably spat out an error when I'd tried to select the different flights. The oneworld online tool was much easier and user-friendly for the DONE4 and so I had much more confidence in those flights being available and meeting our plans.

I planned out the basics for the journey using the oneworld timetable and the RTW online booking tool and then cross-checked those flights with the QF award engine. Also used Flight Stats and Mileage Monkey websites for planning, but had virtually no visibility of the necessary U class flights needed for the QF award bookings in business class. In the end I paid the $60 fee to book via the phone. The QF premium staff I spoke to over about three seperate calls were all knowledgeable about the booking and made it easy enough but seemed to be a bit like just going through the motions rather than trying to help me out with different options. Maybe I sounded like I knew what I wanted and so they didn't need to offer advice? End result was practical and efficient booking.

The cost of fees and charges for the award booking had to be sent to Sth Africa to work out in ZAR and with conversion ended up being about AUD1500 for my missus and AUD600 for our infant.

Next post I'll cover some award specifics...

 

[fersea]

Interested in hearing your experiences.

 

[Scarlett]

The award flight booking differs a little in routing in that there was no availability when I made the booking for the MAN - JFK leg. So instead SWMBO and yardie are flying MAN - LHR - YYZ. We depart MAN about an hour apart and arrive in YYZ about 90min apart. Interestingly, the trans-atlantic flight is on a BA 767: was surprised to see them still flying what I'd consider long haul with that type. At least from the BA site it looks like a decent cabin/seat config.

Other points about the award booking:

- The AY flights would only show economy availability online but the agent could book them in U (award business seat) class.
- The QF online tool would never allow the booking to be completed, consistently throwing up a meaningless error message.
- The AA flights had not all been released (330 days rule) so some sectors when initially booked were given dummy bookings, which were then changed when I rang back after the AA flights had been released.
- Even though it's a business class RTW award booking, the AA domestic flights only have 'first' and 'coach' availability so QF awards book into Coach. If you try to book into First for any segment the entire cost of the ticket jumps to 480K points. As it is, our final itinerary only includes one flight where this is the case, but seems pretty poor form from QF not to accept that domestic AA flights should be booked into 'first' rather than coach for a business ticket, especially given that AA domestic first is essentially the same as QF domestic J. (Oneworld recognises this fact and DONE4 books into first in A class on AA flights without a D class).
- The routing for flight segment 4 above has a finish in MIA, but my DONE4 is then booked on to MCO. There is no current award availability for a connecting flight in coach, only first. So, we'll probably just pay for that ticket seperately if no economy award seats are released.
- Taxes, fees, fuel fines and 'assisted booking fee' were all fine to be paid with Aus credit card.
- Interestingly, because I made the booking, it now appears under 'my bookings' on the QFF website even though I'm not one of the travellers. I have been able to select some of the seats for my missus and was able to have the remainder requested following a phone call.
- Just checked the e-ticket and the fees / charges / fuel fines are actually 14870ZAR for the adult ticket, so closer to AUD1650.

Next post I'll cover the much more difficult process of booking the DONE4 (and frustratingly so, seeing as I thought it'd be the easier booking...)

 

[Grooba]

Thanks for posting your experiences Scarlett. It is certainly very interesting to hear the ups and downs of how others go about booking complex and/or interesting itineraries.

 

[medhead]

With the AA first situation, there is the flip side where people get first class points and status credits on AA flights.

Enjoying your thread.

 

[shellthom]

I am very interested to hear the Done4 ex JNB dramas as I am looking to do this myself late 2013 early 2014... so your insight will be fantastic as I am not far away from starting this process myself.

 

[Scarlett]

So, onto the drama of booking the DONE4.

I had been playing around with the oneworld online tool oneworld planner and did have a fully completed trip saved on that system. It confirmed that the itinerary was correct ("fully validated" is the term it uses) and met all of the rules, as did Mileage Monkey. So after completing the award booking and confirming that I could get all the flights I wanted, or making slight adjustments to still meet the intent of the trip, I figured it would just be a case of hitting book now and progressing through the payment stage.

As a side note, my original itinerary, and the one shown above for the award booking had only used 14 of the 16 allowable flights. I wasn't going to waste a couple so without detracting from the actual holiday too much, this was the final DONE4 itinerary:

CPT - LHR - AMM
AMM - AMS - HEL
HEL - MAN
MAN - JFK - YYZ - MIA - MCO
MCO - ORD - MCO
(ground segment)
LAS - LAX - NRT
NRT - HKG - JNB

The differences between this booking and the award ticket was that I have to leave 'Europe' with my flight from MAN as I had reached the max number of segments within that continent (four). So my missus will travel via LHR on BA and I'll go direct trans-atlantic on AA. We'll still meet up again in YYZ. We managed to get the timings such that we arrive into YYZ in the late afternoon, can drive to Niagra and view the falls at night, spend the night there and then see them again in the morning, then drive back to YYZ and be going again inside 24hrs meaning no stopover counted.

The other difference was finding a way to use the 15th and 16th flight segments. I've done this by arriving into MCO in the evening and then effectively adding my own little status run MCO - ORD - MCO the next day. This meant that it was again inside the 24hr window and therefore didn't add an additional stopover as we already have the limit of five (AMM, HEL, MAN, MCO and NRT). This was where the AA no business class works in my favour as a DONE4 books into first class (A fare bucket). So I'll be able to get a bonus 180 SC for a half day interruption to my holiday, which is fair enough!

The online tool generates a fare of: 48,040ZAR base fare plus 18,977ZAR in taxes and fees. I was actually happy enought to pay that and would have done if the tool had allowed me. If you want to see what that equates to in another currency, type "what is 67017ZAR in xx_?" into the main google query bar and it will tell you (where xx_ is the currency of your choice: AUD, EUR, USD etc) So currently that is about 7500AUD. The taxes and fees component is significant because the ticketing carrier would be BA (first flight CPT - LHR is on BA) for the entire journey and as we all know BA and QF have the highest taxes / fees / fuel fines element in their tickets. But if I had tried to make a similar itinerary from Australia then the fare would have been closer to 12-13000AUD hence why booking from Sth Africa is much more competitive. Plus, it has the added bonus that we'll fly from Aus to Sth Africa (on our own coin admittedly) and be able to effectively have additional stopovers in CPT and then JNB as part of the holiday. (think game parks, Mandela museum, Sun City golf courses...)

But, the online tool just wouldn't play ball. I enter my details at step 4 of the booking process and then click continue and it would think for about 30 seconds and spit out the following error: "We are having difficulty processing your request at this time. We recommend that you wait a few minutes and try again. We apologize for this inconvenience." So I tried again and again over the space of two days and still received the same error. In fact I just tried again now and a fortnight after my original attempts it still generates the same error if I try to make my booking online. This is a pointless error because it is obviously having a problem with the flights as selected, but doesn't tell me that. I'm sure I could have gone through an iterative process of changing flights to work out where the problem is (starting and ending at different cities; domestic AA flights; CX flights; AY flights??? who knows) but that's oneworlds problem to solve not mine. So it meant that once again I had to use a person to make the bookings for me and that meant spending time on the phone explaining exactly which flights I wanted.

I chose to call AA in Sth Africa to make the booking as I wanted it to be ticketed at the same ZAR price. I'm not sure QF would have done it for me as there are no QF flights on the itinerary, plus I suspect they'd have wanted to charge me the ex-Aus price for a DONE4. I also didn't call BA as I wanted to see if the AA price was going to be cheaper with lesser fees, taxes, fines...

The serviceable (rather than truely helpful) chap I spoke to in Sth Africa made the bookings I was after and generated a PNR for me. It took about 30 minutes on the phone all up I guess. However, he could only see L (economy) class availability on one the RJ legs rather than D so I was going to have to put up with that. He stated that the fare would have to be sent to someone else to calculate the taxes and charges and I should call back in two days. The flights would be held on the PNR for 5 days before they'd auto-cancel. He could also tell that I was calling from outside Sth Africa and probably picked my Aus accent and did say that the price charged would be the ex-Aus price. Not happy with that outcome, but at least I had the flights I wanted booked and still had other options up my sleeve.

I checked online at AA.com a day and a half later and the booking had been priced and pleasingly, it had been priced in ZAR at the Sth African rate and a little cheaper than BA's cost from the online booking tool. So as it was within Aus office hours I called the Aus based AA number (which I'm pretty certain is routed to Fiji...) and spoke to someone there who confirmed the flights were booked and the price, but wouldn't allow me to pay through them. They were quite categorical that I had to pay through the 'travel agent' I had made the booking through, even though I had called the AA number for Sth Africa for the original booking. The other bonus of this call was that they confirmed there was indeed D availability for the RJ flight which was going to have to be in economy and amended the booking. So when the Sth African desk opened later that day I called them back to pay for the ticket. But instead I was again told that it would have to be resent to ticketing for taxes / charges calculation because of the change from L to D on one of the 16 flights!!! So call back again in two more days.

At this point I was just cursing oneworld loudly. I was trying to give them thousands of dollars and it appeared they were making it as difficult as possible to take my money off me!

After a day the online booking was again showing a confirmed booking but this time it was priced in USD, but at an equivalent price as it had been when in ZAR so all good. I again ring AA in Sth Africa and hoorah, the much more helpful lady tells me that I can pay for my ticket. But then she quotes me a price of 115K ZAR or something like that. So I tell her that is plainly wrong as the original quote online was circa 68K ZAR and that my online booking was showing a balance of $7K (but no currency listed anywhere). I'm pretty exasperated at this point as I'm expecting to be told to call back again in 2 days, but, being a helpful person, she actually goes through and spends the next 30min with me on the phone actually calculating again what the fare should be including going through all of the flights and adding up the taxes and charges. She then double checks her work or has a collegue double check her figures.

End result is I pay for the flights during that call and all is finalised. DONE4 base fare ex-SA is 48040ZAR. Tick. Taxes and charges are calculated in USD and come to $1610. I'm told that I'll have to pay the whole balance in USD but that's no problem and it goes through on my Aus credit card fine.
Total fare: 7053USD

Things I've learnt:

- Online booking tools are not robust.
- Different agents will give you different answers.
- QF taxes and charges for the 12 flight segment award booking were approx AUD1650.
- AA taxes and charges for the 15 flight segment DONE4 booking were approx AUD1530.
- That's two weeks of my life I'm not getting back! Actually, the planning / booking process is a little enjoyable in an analytical problem solving way, plus the process of sorting out the holiday outline lets me see things and generate ideas for other holidays in the future.

Sorry for the chapter of 'War and Peace' here, but I'm sure others will be able to draw some benefit from it. Plus I'd be interested to hear of any thoughts from others about better ways of doing what I did.

Happy travels, and Merry Xmas.

 

[Cynicor]

Ticketing a xONEx via AA in JNB/SA -

1. Put together itinerary via online tool. Get dates, flight numbers etc. It will not allow you to book 9/10 times.
2. Call AA RTW desk (800-247-3247 IIRC) to create an itinerary based on what you have and they will send it to pricing.
3. Email/call Mindpearl SA (aasa@mindpearl.com)to pay- you will have a ref number by this stage. Fill in form (if via email) and you are sorted.

Very, very simple if you follow this path and saves numerous phone calls to different timezones. Being in WA I just got up at my usual hour, pulled up Skype on the ipad and called the US toll-free number for AA RTW Desk. They are extremely helpful people, and it tends to avoid the "higher fare of departure or ticketing country" rule, as they don't know where you are. They also have a bit of experience in these fares and availability etc.


Just did a quick google- note a flyertalk post stating the email no longer works? Anyone have any updates?

 

[Scarlett]

I suspect that the AA number I was calling in Sth Africa (+27214406440) was indeed Mindpearl. So I return to the second thing I learnt above which is that different agents will give different results: it was indeed very simple third time round...

 

[fersea]

Just out of interest why are you starting/ending out of south Africa. Yes I understand it is cheaper but generally it is one of the more expensive places to get to (for paid not so much for points). Is it a cheaper option than say NZ or Asia?

 

[Scarlett]

A couple of reasons but the most important is that I've been to the land of the long flat vowel previously and also some Asian destinations, so Sth Africa is new and allows me to visit both CPT and JNB and surrounds.

Plus, as you've identified, cost, viz:

DONE4 (base fare in USD)

Aus - 12629
SIN - 11970
AKL - 10288
KUL - 11209

Sth Africa - 6053

Not really a comparison is it?

 

[fersea]

A couple of reasons but the most important is that I've been to the land of the long flat vowel previously and also some Asian destinations, so Sth Africa is new and allows me to visit both CPT and JNB and surrounds.

Plus, as you've identified, cost, viz:

DONE4 (base fare in USD)

Aus - 12629
SIN - 11970
AKL - 10288
KUL - 11209

Sth Africa - 6053

Not really a comparison is it?

Thats unbelievable. Less than 50%

 

[pmk]

CYNICOR mentioned that google search had shown that the email address for Mindpearl in SA may no longer be valid. I could not find the google reference referring to this. Am VERY interested to know if it is still valid. I used AASA @ Mindpearl.com ( no blanks) to send Cindy an email about a week ago and have had no reply which is unusual ....... but it is holiday time.

Am about to book another RTW as a DONE4 Ex SA. Like CYNICOR I found the first booking very straight forward, particularly after advice from Danger and Serfty. I just prepared a valid itinerary using OneWorld planning tool and forwarded it to Mindpearl for action. No phone calls at all.

We have our ticket to Johannesburg as the final segments from the 2012 RTW DONE 5, so the merry go round can start again without even the cost of a positioning flight

for us the biggest advantages about commencing our trip from SA are:

1. Price, unbelievably cheap for 16 segments in business, almost half the cost ex Australia
2. We are able to break it into 2 holidays, one overseas and one more local as we break the trip in Melbourne (home)
3. Unlike with ticketing from NZ we can have visit upto 5 locations in Australia or the south Pacific. This forms holiday number two.
4. We had week in SA in July 2012 and the 5 day visit to Kruger was sensational. Waking very early in morning due to body clock was perfect for early safaris
5. We are able to be ticketed by AA which is much cheaper for taxes
6. The journey can be configured with all travel westwards our preferred direction
7. This time we will avoid Asia altogether so it's is even less expensive as now only a DONE 4
8. South Africa works just like an Asian stopover and so no 24 hour plus flights
9. Easily earn enough from these flights to re qualify as platinum
10. Date and time changes can be made relatively easily (though allow a good half hour on the phone) by ringing the Brisbane AA office which is re routed to Fiji. We changed our return ticket to 5 June 2013 to be ready to start the next trip

So for us it is a no brainier. But am very keen to know if the Mindpearl email address in SA, Capetown I think, is still valid.

Happy Christmas to all

 

[fersea]

You have convinced me of the benefits of flying from south Africa!!

 

[Cynicor]

Even better- AONE 4 Is also cheaper than a DONE4 from AU, or was last time I booked one.

 

[Durin's Bane]

Thanks for the information Scarlett. I am still yet to do one of these, but threads like this help greatly!

 

[Kerrodt]

I'm thinking of doing a RTW trip in 2013 and I came across this post. It confirmed my view that there are a few good idea/tricks/traps here for first time RTW travelers.

Can anyone point me to a post on AFF that sets out the basics for researching, investigating, pricing and booking a RTW ticket. Clearly, the "how to's" of the Sth African cost benefit are a necessity as it seems obvious to start fom there.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Cynicor]

There's a few around, search terms you might try would be XONEX and DONE. This is because ONE is the term for a oneworld explorer fare, the last number refers to the number of continents and the first letter is the class, on a discount basis. L for economy, D for business and A for first.

S. Africa does not really offer a great discount over the ex NZ price if you want to travel in economy, for the cost required to get there.

 

[tuapekastar]

I'm thinking of doing a RTW trip in 2013 and I came across this post. It confirmed my view that there are a few good idea/tricks/traps here for first time RTW travelers.

Can anyone point me to a post on AFF that sets out the basics for researching, investigating, pricing and booking a RTW ticket. Clearly, the "how to's" of the Sth African cost benefit are a necessity as it seems obvious to start fom there.

Thanks in advance!

I don't think there is any totally 'right' way. Scarlett's posts provide great detail and Cynicor's Post #8 in this thread sums it up concisely. I'll try and post something in-between. I have booked a couple (one in Y, one in J) and this is what I did for the second one, which was in J, and ex-AKL. Substitute S Africa where appropriate.

1. Work out where you want your departure point to be (as Cynicor stated, Sth Africa is a great starting point for premium cabin fares, but the base economy fare is only ~AUD600 cheaper than ex-AKL. Factor in positioning costs and it may not be worth it. At the time an ex-AKL suited me.

2. Grab a copy of the fare rules (go to Home - oneworld and follow your nose) - there is a basic summary and also a detailed rule sheet available, and make yourself reasonably familiar at least with the basics, problems can be resolved as you encounter them.

3. Use a tool (the best IMO is Mileage Monkey) - the Oneworld Explorer Validator section - to plan and check the validity of your routing (and the SCs you would get) - it is not without the odd flaw but is generally on the money.

4. Once you confirm the routing and dates you want, you need to check availability of the appropriate fare bucket/no. of seats want. I use a paid subscription to Expert Flyer. There used to be five day free trial, not sure this is still the case. I think there are a couple of free sites where availability can be checked but not sure what they are (there is also the OW booking tool on their website which I found clunky for trying to book, but it may be OK just to check seat class availability). Someone else may be able to chime in with the other sites. You'll need A class for First, D class for business and L class for economy.

5. When availability is confirmed ring the AA Around The World desk (number in a previous post in this thread), tell them you have your routing/dates, and ask how they want it delivered (as with any people some do things differently). Eight minutes is the best I've heard for a DONE4 to be booked (mine took around 15 to 20) - they usually know their stuff. They do the booking then send it off to the pricing desk for, well, pricing. You ring back a day or two later (quoting the ref number you were given) to check the pricing, which will be base fare plus taxes and surcharges.

6. If happy, call AA NZ phone number (don't have it to hand) and ask for it to be ticketed.* They will ticket it, take your CC payment, and you should receive an e-ticket receipt via e-mail and that's it!

*As with many things in the airline biz, there can be issues. My only issue this time was the first agent (not AA ATW desk, but the AA NZ person) wanting to charge me the ex-Australia price because I'm based here. My argument, after I told him not to do anything at the time, when I rang back the following week was going to be that because I rang the AA NZ number to ticket it, I was purchasing it in NZ, not Australia. Anyway, when I rang back I got a different agent who immediately ticketed it no problems or questions asked. It relates to this fare rule:

When travel originates in a country for which a specific local currency fares is published and the ticket is sold in another country, the fare will be that published for the country of origin converted to the currency of the country of sale at the bank selling rate. The resultant fare must not be lower than from the country of sale.
Exception: Not applicable when BOTH travel originates and sales are made within the European Common Aviation Area (ECAA)/Switzerland.


Generally it can be got around, but there are never guarantees.

Base cost used to be freely available via OW, but the only place I know you can get them now is via a paid sub to Expert Flyer (and I guess KVS, another paid service). For the record a few current base prices are, all in AUD:

ex South Africa
LONE4 $2611, DONE4 $5749

ex Australia
LONE4 $3899, DONE4 $11999

ex New Zealand
LONE4 $3205, DONE4 $10347

When comparing, remember to take into account positioning flights cost (FF points can help here), necessary accommodation as a result, and possible CC currency conversion fees.