Burnt all my points

[froggerADL]

Interesting routing.

What did you think of MH F ?
Which lounge at QF F pax use at DFW ? Anything decent ?
Did BA CCR meet your expectations ?

I am trying to find a routing which maximises F travel and also gives access to the best lounges and have so far come up with the following.

MEL-SYD-NRT QF J then JL 77W F (QF SYD F),
HND-HKG CX 774 F, HKG-LAX CX 77W F (CX Pier),
LAX-LHR BA 388 F(QF LAX F),
LHR-DOH-DXB QR 388 F then QR A321 F, (QR LHR lounge then Al-Safwa lounge)
DXB-MEL QF 388 F (EK DXB F)

With stops in Japan, LA, London, Dubai, and Bangkok.
Comes in at just under 32k miles.
Five of the best OW F products (JL, CX, BA, QR and QF)
Probably four of the best OW lounges (Al-safwa probably, QF SYD & LAX F, CX Pier) + the EK DXB lounge and highly regarded QR lounge at LHR.

I am aware that award seats are tough to get on the LHR-DOH QR leg and also the BA leg but I think for one pax it can be accomplished.

What a life.

I haven't done the F trip yet. It starts in mid December, ending in early January. With regard to MH, I'm particularly looking forward to the legendary Satay!

We seem to have remarkably similar requirements for an F RTW!

I only booked this last month so I was a bit limited in what I could do. I wanted to maximize the long haul F segments, on preferred airlines and aircraft types, and visit somewhere new. I was least successful with that last point, with Tokyo the only place I haven't been before. I also wanted to maximise day flights. No point in sleeping my way through the experience. The only night flight is DFW-SYD and that is 17 hours so plenty of awake time there.

I would have much preferred to do LHR-SFO rather than IAD on the BA A380 but there was no availability. I also wanted to try QR, but again, no availability.

I used the BA site to find available flights but there was no way I could get back to Australia in the first or second week of January. I asked nicely if an F seat could be released from DFW-SYD on a specific date and it was done instantly.

Nizar, I think you have designed pretty much the perfect trip with the variety of airlines and lounges. I hope you are able to put it all together.

Edit:
Oh, and interestingly, I wouldn't've been able to book a OW reward at the time I did in J. There was much better availability in F. For example, JL SYD-NRT is wide open in F but no J.

And thanks to everyone at AFF. I couldn't have done it without you!

 

[froggerADL]

How come all these F / J flts are only 30K points - why so cheap ?

Sorry, 30,000 miles is the total distance, so I failed to max it out at 35,000 miles.

It cost 420,000 QFF points + ~$1700.

 

[get me outta here]

Oh, I get it!

Sorry, 30,000 miles is the total distance, so I failed to max it out at 35,000 miles.

It cost 420,000 QFF points + ~$1700.

 

[Kangol]

Four long hauls in F on JL, MH, BA, and QF plus 5 hours on CX. Total of about 54 hours F flying time.

QF ADL-SYD J B737-800
JL SYD-NRT F B777-300ER
CX HND-HKG-KUL F/J B747/A330-300
MH KUL-LHR F A380
BA LHR-IAD F A380
AA IAD-DFW F MD80
QF DFW-SYD-ADL F/J A380/B737-800

Just under $1700 taxes and charges. A fair bit of that goes to the British government but I want to try the LHR Concorde Room and the BA A380.

It's only 30,000 miles total.

Thanks. I am yet to see a 420k F award that pushes the limits of the 35k mile allowance with maximising all long haul F segments but I hopefully should be able to get one booked by the end of the year.
I potentially had an option with 4x QF transpacific F segments before the US/AA merger but I missed out:
http://www.australianfrequentflyer....ward-140k-280k-420k-8228-245.html#post1291527

This is the next best thing I can come up with, with SYD-SFO in J, boo...
Great Circle Mapper

 

[immature]

I really love this idea. How much hard work is it to put the itinerary together and what happens if you are unable to continue on after the 11 month stopover? Can you reschedule those flights or is it lost?

It wasn't difficult to work out which flights I wanted, just used gcmap to make sure that the mileage fit under the 35k limit. What was difficult though was to make the bookings as soon as they were released - made all of the bookings at just under a year in advance of the flight date. The ones that gave me trouble were the QF ones - especially the last leg LAX-SYD. I had to settle for a Tuesday flight arriving back in Australia on Thursday, which cut our trip short by a few days. I was hoping to get a Thursday flight, but J award seats never seemed to be released so gave up on this.

The other difficult thing was that I had to make sure the second half of the trip (after 11 month stopover) was booked in before the first leg of the itinerary was flown. I think I ended up booking the second half of the trip in the week before the first leg, was a little bit worried that seats would not be released in time but was all good in the end.

Lastly, as Jimmy posted, I think once travel starts on the itinerary you can make changes to the future flight bookings as long as the airline does not require a ticket reissue. I did want to change one of our JL flights (same date but different flight number), but this wasn't possible as it would require the ticket to be reissued unfortunately.

Thanks deejo and immature, I'm going to take a good look at this way of doing it. What were the 'categories' of flights and the point requirements of both your bookings?

As others have mentioned, you should take a good read of the oneworld award thread - very useful information in there to help you.

My booking was for these flights:
QF J MEL-xDXB-LHR
CX J LHR-xHKG-SIN
JL J SIN-NRT
JL J NRT-LAX
QF J LAX-xSYD-MEL

Points requirement was 280k x 2 for the 2 of us, plus a few change fees to add flights as they became available (3.5k points x 2 each time I made a change). Taxes were reasonably high (~$1.5k from memory), but I believe that we could have reduced that if we didn't use LHR.

Hope that helps!