My DONE4 (oneworld RTW) booking experience

[skylabsea]

Long time lurker here, wanted to share the process of planning and booking a oneworld round the world ticket to help others as it can be complex.

The background is I'm moving to HKG soon, and yearly HKG-MEL-HKG trips back home is going to be on the table.
After a bit of research here and on FlyerTalk, there seems to be a way to (ab)use DONE4 fares to get some cheap flights tacked onto HKG-MEL-HKG
D fares are also much easier to find than U reward seats, plus give a ton of status / miles.
(disclaimer: don't attempt this without fully reading and understanding the rules, current rules link)

Planning
General plan + picking a start point
The rules allows for up to 4 (6 in NA) segments within a continent, and 2 intercontinental departure/arrival pairs for the northern hemisphere continents (special rules apply for EU/ME). What this effectively means is that you can break your ticket into:

• 2 (3 for NA) return flights to cities inside the continent,
• 1 return flight to the corresponding southern hemisphere continent (and segments there if needed), and
• the main RTW portion of the ticket in a loop around the other 2 northern hemisphere continents.

This results in a whopping 4 or 5 trips a year if you're lucky enough to live in a gateway city in the northern hemisphere (HND, HKG, JFK, LAX, DFW, LHR etc.) as you can 'stopover' in the city for months at a time and go back to work.

The caveat is you need to start the xONEx ticket in a different continent, as the ticket limits the origin continent to 2 stopovers. I'll start my trip in EU/ME --
Cairo is known as one of the cheapest origins of DONE4 fares; checking fare information with ExpertFlyer we can see the base fare is US$4571. Considering what I'm about the book, this is a basement bargain price!

Frequent flyer programme considerations
I'm crediting the flights to BA, as I'm still young and only started accumulating status. BA's lifetime oneworld Emerald is much more attainable at 35k tier points vs QF's 70k SC for LTP. I'll also need 4 flights either operated by BA or both operated and marketed by IB to qualify for status in the current membership year. Additionally, as I want to maximise the tier point collection in this trip, I chose flights that are >2000 miles in distance which will result in 140 tier points per segment...

Europe / Middle East
My first choice in routing in this continent goes something like this: CAI-MAD-TLV-xLHR-(SEA/JFK). These are all >2000 miles, plus I can use IB for the first two flights and AA (BA) for the second two flights. This allows me to qualify for the 4 eligible BA flights, and having the transatlantic segment (or transpacific) be AA marketed is one of the requirements of using the AA RTW desk to book this ticket.

Unfortunately for me, the dates I want don't have D fares available for TLV-LHR, so I pick nearby AMM as a replacement for TLV. IB doesn't operate the MAD-AMM leg (it's operated by RJ) so I decide I'm going to fly MAD-LHR-MAD on a separate BA/IB ticket as a side trip to visit some friends and still hit the 4 qualification flights. Note that in the DONE4 from AMM-(SEA/JFK), LHR is a transit -- this avoids the hefty APD tax (close to 200 GBP!) that the UK charges on pax for the privilege of stopping and departing in a premium cabin on long haul.

North America
The biggest limitation in this continent is that only one transcontinental flight is allowed, which limits the number of city pairs >2000 miles. In the current rules, Canadan provinces aren't on the list of east/west coast regions that count as transcon, so I might be able to use YVR/YYZ to get around the limitation. I'm visiting a friend in Seattle though, and SEA-MSY is barely over 2000 miles; so I pick New Orleans as a day trip location.

I settle on LHR-SEA-MSY-SEA-JFK-HKG, with the 16hr nonstop CX flight taking me back to Hong Kong on the last day of the RTW portion of the ticket. I'll then 'stopover' here to go back to work.

Asia
Looking at cities in Asia, only a couple of major airports are >2000 miles away from HKG: I found CTS, DPS, and JKT. I pick two, CTS and DPS, as the two locations in Asia I want to visit this year; HKG-DPS-HKG for one trip and HKG-CTS-HKG for another. For convenience I might just sacrifice 200 tier points and fly into HND rather than CTS in future years.

South West Pacific

Similar to USA, only one transcontinental flight is allowed in Australia. Unfortunately PER-MEL is just under 2000 miles; so looks like for the next few years I'll be doing HKG-PER-SYD-HKG and buying separate SYD-MEL-SYD tickets to get me back home. I'll consider HKG-MEL-AKL-HKG in a few years if it looks like I'm on track for 35k lifetime tier points and I no longer need to maximise every segment.

Positioning flights

For the last segment I need to fly back to the Middle East for this ticket to be legal under the rules. I had wanted to try QR by flying to DOH; the plan was to use this flight as the positioning flight in the following year for a 2nd DONE4 ticket by tacking on a DOH-CAI leg in Y out of pocket. For reasons that I'll discuss later, I had to give up this idea, I switch this out for a CX flight HKG-TLV. TLV-CAI is just over 1hr but for some reason Y tickets are expensive! I'll worry about this next year.

I still need to get from HKG to CAI in order to start the current DONE4 ticket. A quick search on google shows the flights cost ~AU$1k in economy; acceptable but can we do better?
(Image from Roame, random date)
Woah! EK F is available for QFF points on the day (not pictured here) I want to travel. The carrier charge is a bit hefty as always with EK redemptions outside of Aeroplan, but given economy one way is about the same in cash, in my opinion this is an excellent use of 129k points.
As an aside, I think this supports my theory that points are best used away from the home market. There's too much supply of VA/QFF points, yet high demand and low supply of reward seats into/out of Australia. I guess this is the reason why SQ used to be such a great programme for Aussies despite the difficulty acquiring points and the 3 year hard expiry.

In summary

(Great Circle Mapper, useful for tracking distances between airports)
All 16 flights are >2000 miles, so I should get 2260 (15 * 140 + 160 for extra long haul JFK-HKG) tier points, enough for oneworld Emerald.
Total distance of about 49800 miles (twice around the world! I'm glad xONEx don't have distance limits), should net around 70k Avios?

Booking

AA RTW desk
As mentioned earlier, I used the AA code specifically for the transatlantic segment to be able to use the AA RTW desk. Their number is +1 800-247-3247 which is a US toll free number, so you can use Skype to call for free anywhere in the world. Given their operating hours of 7AM to 10PM Dallas (US central) time, late evenings or mornings here in Australia are perfect to call with low wait times.

I had already checked ExpertFlyer for D inventory, and was able to quickly fire off the list of flights I wanted. Be careful, as sometimes they might read back the correct flight, but you check the record locator and it's a different flight, sometimes changing a ticketing point from stopover to transit (and v.v.). You can make/correct changes now, but after you depart the first flight changes to the routing (including changing from stopover to transit) will cost USD125.

Date changes are free (D fares are flexible), so you can put in placeholder dates for flights (except the 1st segment) you intend to take further out (most airline systems only support ticketing ~330days in advance). Then when the dates you actually want are available, move those flights to the new dates.

If you don't pay and ticket the reservation within a set amount of time, some flights may fall off the reservation. This happened to me with the Alaska Airlines flights -- I took longer because I wanted to optimise the taxes and carrier surcharges. These additional fees on top of the base fare are priced by the rates desk, a separate desk from the RTW desk that also verifies the routing is legal at the same time.

Taxes and carrier charges
Looking at others who have posted about DONE tickets, they've mentioned the taxes and surcharges come out to be around 10% to 15% of the total price. The first time my ticket was priced at US$1000 carrier fees + US$621 taxes on top of the US$4571 base fare.. this is about 25%! Certain airlines have higher surcharges than others; previous discussions on FT suggest to avoid IB, BA, QF, RJ, and QR if possible. Unfortunately the full breakdown isn't given for the carrier surcharges, so you'll have to guess which ones are the culprits.

I guessed that using QF for the SYD-HKG segment (PER-SYD is AA codeshare) and QR for the HKG-DOH segment resulted in the high fees; the SYD-HKG segment was easily switched to CX, but they would not let me use the CX codeshare for the QR operated HKG-DOH segment. So I switched this to HKG-TLV with CX, and these two changes immediately resulted in a US$250 reduction in the carrier fees. Still a bit high and potentially could be reduced by removing IB somehow, but I've had enough on the phone.

You can also ask for the rates desk to price the itinerary in AUD to save on FX conversion fees. My RTW ticket was about AU$9.2k; and with the EK positioning flight the total cost is just over AU$10k+ 129k QFF points.

End

I hope this helps the AFF community. Unfortunately most members are based in Australia, which is subject to one intercontinental departure/arrival for SWP, so the 4 'stopover' trick doesn't really apply . Although I guess you could still squeeze a trip to New Zealand and one more domestic city on top of the RTW

 

[moa999]

Good job and nice work on optimising the +++.
For future trips also consider a visit to ANC.

I've done three DONEs many years ago.

 

[oz_boater]

Thanks for this, very illuminating.
What tool/map did you use to work out the possible routes?

I see 'flightconnections.com' offers a (paid) ability to restrict routes by alliance, but is there another option?

 

[skylabsea]

Thanks for this, very illuminating.
What tool/map did you use to work out the possible routes?

I see 'flightconnections.com' offers a (paid) ability to restrict routes by alliance, but is there another option?

Google flights has an ‘explore’ feature, and you can filter by alliance. I then plugged into gcmap to find distance, and ExpertFlyer to find availability

 

[skylabsea]

Good job and nice work on optimising the +++.
For future trips also consider a visit to ANC.

I've done three DONEs many years ago.

Thanks for the tip! If I read the rules right (one flight into and out of AK, but no restrictions on transcon from AK) ANC opens up interesting possibilities of circumventing the 1x transcon flight rule, e.g. LHR-ORD-ANC-LAX-JFK. I wanted to visit LA but this wasn't possible without giving up some tier points!

 

[oz_boater]

Google flights has an ‘explore’ feature, and you can filter by alliance. I then plugged into gcmap to find distance, and ExpertFlyer to find availability

Thanks for that.
I played with google then took the plunge and signed up for a year of flightconnection at $35 USD

The attraction of the flight connection Pro for me was it
- showed distance for each flight,
- you could limit to Oneworld
- you can also limit by aircraft type (if you are searching 'heavy' metal for the Business Class seats)

But most importantly to me you can 'walk' around the world.

So (I am starting in Japan for this) - start at NRT and click link to HNL - get miles and airlines
Now deselect NRT and it shows you where you can go from HNL - so off to DFW
Now deselect HNL and it shows you where you can go from DFW - so of the JFK
etc

Question about QANTAS codeshare ?
Can they be substituted for the actual flight where they show up? Or are these special rules about when you can use them? I am asking about QF flight numbers for AA flights in particular but I guess the question is more general.

 

[skylabsea]

Thanks for that.
I played with google then took the plunge and signed up for a year of flightconnection at $35 USD

The attraction of the flight connection Pro for me was it
- showed distance for each flight,
- you could limit to Oneworld
- you can also limit by aircraft type (if you are searching 'heavy' metal for the Business Class seats)

But most importantly to me you can 'walk' around the world.

So (I am starting in Japan for this) - start at NRT and click link to HNL - get miles and airlines
Now deselect NRT and it shows you where you can go from HNL - so off to DFW
Now deselect HNL and it shows you where you can go from DFW - so of the JFK
etc

Question about QANTAS codeshare ?
Can they be substituted for the actual flight where they show up? Or are these special rules about when you can use them? I am asking about QF flight numbers for AA flights in particular but I guess the question is more general.

I believe you can use them whenever they show up. For the PER-SYD segment when I gave the departure time, the agent just booked the AA codeshare without asking me about the flight number; think there's a strong preference of the RTW desk to use AA whenever possible.
On the flip side, I had trouble getting them to book CX codeshare on QR metal

 

[dpfarce]

Any help with using the oneworld online tool? It always gets angry if I put an itinerary over 34000 miles, even if it has a green tick for meeting the oneworld explorer DONE4 rules. Better to call AA office?

 

[skylabsea]

Any help with using the oneworld online tool? It always gets angry if I put an itinerary over 34000 miles, even if it has a green tick for meeting the oneworld explorer DONE4 rules. Better to call AA office?

I've had issues with the oneworld online tool because it wouldn't recognise some <24hr cities as transits. I think the tool also picks the first segment airline as the ticketing airline, so you might have difficulties getting the route/dates changed later on if that's a consideration. I would personally go with the AA desk unless you had a good reason not to (e.g. don't want AA codes due to being in the AAdvantage programme which is revenue-based status)

 

[dpfarce]

I've had issues with the oneworld online tool because it wouldn't recognise some <24hr cities as transits. I think the tool also picks the first segment airline as the ticketing airline, so you might have difficulties getting the route/dates changed later on if that's a consideration. I would personally go with the AA desk unless you had a good reason not to (e.g. don't want AA codes due to being in the AAdvantage programme which is revenue-based status)

Is there a way to get an approx (base) price before calling the AA office?

 

[skylabsea]

Is there a way to get an approx (base) price before calling the AA office?

Yes, you can get the base fare if you have access to (paid/trial) ExpertFlyer. Just go to fare information and put in the city of departure in both origin/destination, limit carrier AA, and you’ll see all the xONEx base fare prices.

You can use ITA matrix to get a sense of the taxes, but the ‘YQ’ carrier surcharges get priced by entire itinerary so unless you have access to Sabre autopricer you’re out of luck. Theres a FT xONEx pricing thread where user ernestnywang does have access to Sabre and is willing to help

 

[dpfarce]

Thanks very much. Hopefully have a chance to use this soon!

 

[openseat]

I'm crediting the flights to BA, as I'm still young and only started accumulating status. BA's lifetime oneworld Emerald is much more attainable at 35k tier points vs QF's 70k SC for LTP

I think you've made a great choice.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

I believe you can use them whenever they show up. For the PER-SYD segment when I gave the departure time, the agent just booked the AA codeshare without asking me about the flight number; think there's a strong preference of the RTW desk to use AA whenever possible.
On the flip side, I had trouble getting them to book CX codeshare on QR metal

You could be in trouble with the AA code share for PER-SYD. Unless you are connecting to an AA flight into or out of Australia I believe this might violate cabotage rules, meaning you could be denied boarding in PER. I’d call them to verify this is actually legal. (If not cabotage, because it’s QF metal, there’s some other rule which prevents it. Same reason you can’t use QF codeshares on AA aircraft for domestic USA flights, unless connecting to or from an international Qantas flight.)

 

[skylabsea]

You could be in trouble with the AA code share for PER-SYD. Unless you are connecting to an AA flight into or out of Australia I believe this might violate cabotage rules, meaning you could be denied boarding in PER. I’d call them to verify this is actually legal. (If not cabotage, because it’s QF metal, there’s some other rule which prevents it. Same reason you can’t use QF codeshares on AA aircraft for domestic USA flights, unless connecting to or from an international Qantas flight.)

I totally forgot about cabotage! For some reason it just didn't register for me despite having read about QF illegally selling LAX-JFK. Thanks heaps for pointing this out, I'll give them a ring...

 

[moa999]

Thanks for the tip! If I read the rules right (one flight into and out of AK, but no restrictions on transcon from AK) ANC opens up interesting possibilities of circumventing the 1x transcon flight

Yep. As I read it today.
Many more options these days with Alaskan in oneworld too.

Back in the day AA only flew from DFW and seasonally from ORD.

Just noticed that AS fly ANC-HNL, but that will get caught by the backtrack rule.

But really depends where you want to stopover in the US versus bouncing around for TP/SCs.

 

[Himeno]

Any help with using the oneworld online tool? It always gets angry if I put an itinerary over 34000 miles, even if it has a green tick for meeting the oneworld explorer DONE4 rules. Better to call AA office?

The online booking tool is terrible. It seems that every new version gets worse. It is only useful for the most basic of plans for people who have no idea what they are doing or what is fully possible with such a ticket, and is of no use to anyone looking to maximise use of allowed flight limits and earning the most points you can with such a trip.
It likely has issues with a 34000+ mile itinerary because it is also trying to apply the rules for xGLOBnn's in addition to xONEn's.

It is better to go through a travel agent (or the AA RTW desk) to sort out anything more complex then a 3 or 4 stop itinerary.

The last time I was able to get the online tool to work was 3 or 4 versions ago, the last time I booked an LONE4 in 2009. The tool let me book a QF coded AS LAX-PDX flight (which it wasn't allowed to do because AS weren't a oneworld member in 2009).

 

[Himeno]

Thanks for the tip! If I read the rules right (one flight into and out of AK, but no restrictions on transcon from AK) ANC opens up interesting possibilities of circumventing the 1x transcon flight rule, e.g. LHR-ORD-ANC-LAX-JFK. I wanted to visit LA but this wasn't possible without giving up some tier points!

Yep, you're allowed 1 flight from ANC and 1 flight to ANC, in addition to the 1 US transcon. I did a DFW-ANC-DFW and a later CA-JFK transcon in my 2nd DONE3 in 2011 and my recent DONE4 in July/Aug.

 

[marki]

Long time lurker here, wanted to share the process of planning and booking a oneworld round the world ticket to help others as it can be complex.

The background is I'm moving to HKG soon, and yearly HKG-MEL-HKG trips back home is going to be on the table.
After a bit of research here and on FlyerTalk, there seems to be a way to (ab)use DONE4 fares to get some cheap flights tacked onto HKG-MEL-HKG
D fares are also much easier to find than U reward seats, plus give a ton of status / miles.
(disclaimer: don't attempt this without fully reading and understanding the rules, current rules link)

Planning
General plan + picking a start point
The rules allows for up to 4 (6 in NA) segments within a continent, and 2 intercontinental departure/arrival pairs for the northern hemisphere continents (special rules apply for EU/ME). What this effectively means is that you can break your ticket into:

• 2 (3 for NA) return flights to cities inside the continent,
• 1 return flight to the corresponding southern hemisphere continent (and segments there if needed), and
• the main RTW portion of the ticket in a loop around the other 2 northern hemisphere continents.

This results in a whopping 4 or 5 trips a year if you're lucky enough to live in a gateway city in the northern hemisphere (HND, HKG, JFK, LAX, DFW, LHR etc.) as you can 'stopover' in the city for months at a time and go back to work.

The caveat is you need to start the xONEx ticket in a different continent, as the ticket limits the origin continent to 2 stopovers. I'll start my trip in EU/ME --
Cairo is known as one of the cheapest origins of DONE4 fares; checking fare information with ExpertFlyer we can see the base fare is US$4571. Considering what I'm about the book, this is a basement bargain price!

Frequent flyer programme considerations
I'm crediting the flights to BA, as I'm still young and only started accumulating status. BA's lifetime oneworld Emerald is much more attainable at 35k tier points vs QF's 70k SC for LTP. I'll also need 4 flights either operated by BA or both operated and marketed by IB to qualify for status in the current membership year. Additionally, as I want to maximise the tier point collection in this trip, I chose flights that are >2000 miles in distance which will result in 140 tier points per segment...

Europe / Middle East
My first choice in routing in this continent goes something like this: CAI-MAD-TLV-xLHR-(SEA/JFK). These are all >2000 miles, plus I can use IB for the first two flights and AA (BA) for the second two flights. This allows me to qualify for the 4 eligible BA flights, and having the transatlantic segment (or transpacific) be AA marketed is one of the requirements of using the AA RTW desk to book this ticket.

Unfortunately for me, the dates I want don't have D fares available for TLV-LHR, so I pick nearby AMM as a replacement for TLV. IB doesn't operate the MAD-AMM leg (it's operated by RJ) so I decide I'm going to fly MAD-LHR-MAD on a separate BA/IB ticket as a side trip to visit some friends and still hit the 4 qualification flights. Note that in the DONE4 from AMM-(SEA/JFK), LHR is a transit -- this avoids the hefty APD tax (close to 200 GBP!) that the UK charges on pax for the privilege of stopping and departing in a premium cabin on long haul.

North America
The biggest limitation in this continent is that only one transcontinental flight is allowed, which limits the number of city pairs >2000 miles. In the current rules, Canadan provinces aren't on the list of east/west coast regions that count as transcon, so I might be able to use YVR/YYZ to get around the limitation. I'm visiting a friend in Seattle though, and SEA-MSY is barely over 2000 miles; so I pick New Orleans as a day trip location.

I settle on LHR-SEA-MSY-SEA-JFK-HKG, with the 16hr nonstop CX flight taking me back to Hong Kong on the last day of the RTW portion of the ticket. I'll then 'stopover' here to go back to work.

Asia
Looking at cities in Asia, only a couple of major airports are >2000 miles away from HKG: I found CTS, DPS, and JKT. I pick two, CTS and DPS, as the two locations in Asia I want to visit this year; HKG-DPS-HKG for one trip and HKG-CTS-HKG for another. For convenience I might just sacrifice 200 tier points and fly into HND rather than CTS in future years.

South West Pacific

Similar to USA, only one transcontinental flight is allowed in Australia. Unfortunately PER-MEL is just under 2000 miles; so looks like for the next few years I'll be doing HKG-PER-SYD-HKG and buying separate SYD-MEL-SYD tickets to get me back home. I'll consider HKG-MEL-AKL-HKG in a few years if it looks like I'm on track for 35k lifetime tier points and I no longer need to maximise every segment.

Positioning flights

For the last segment I need to fly back to the Middle East for this ticket to be legal under the rules. I had wanted to try QR by flying to DOH; the plan was to use this flight as the positioning flight in the following year for a 2nd DONE4 ticket by tacking on a DOH-CAI leg in Y out of pocket. For reasons that I'll discuss later, I had to give up this idea, I switch this out for a CX flight HKG-TLV. TLV-CAI is just over 1hr but for some reason Y tickets are expensive! I'll worry about this next year.

I still need to get from HKG to CAI in order to start the current DONE4 ticket. A quick search on google shows the flights cost ~AU$1k in economy; acceptable but can we do better?View attachment 343856
(Image from Roame, random date)
Woah! EK F is available for QFF points on the day (not pictured here) I want to travel. The carrier charge is a bit hefty as always with EK redemptions outside of Aeroplan, but given economy one way is about the same in cash, in my opinion this is an excellent use of 129k points.
As an aside, I think this supports my theory that points are best used away from the home market. There's too much supply of VA/QFF points, yet high demand and low supply of reward seats into/out of Australia. I guess this is the reason why SQ used to be such a great programme for Aussies despite the difficulty acquiring points and the 3 year hard expiry.

In summary
View attachment 343857
(Great Circle Mapper, useful for tracking distances between airports)
All 16 flights are >2000 miles, so I should get 2260 (15 * 140 + 160 for extra long haul JFK-HKG) tier points, enough for oneworld Emerald.
Total distance of about 49800 miles (twice around the world! I'm glad xONEx don't have distance limits), should net around 70k Avios?

Booking

AA RTW desk
As mentioned earlier, I used the AA code specifically for the transatlantic segment to be able to use the AA RTW desk. Their number is +1 800-247-3247 which is a US toll free number, so you can use Skype to call for free anywhere in the world. Given their operating hours of 7AM to 10PM Dallas (US central) time, late evenings or mornings here in Australia are perfect to call with low wait times.

I had already checked ExpertFlyer for D inventory, and was able to quickly fire off the list of flights I wanted. Be careful, as sometimes they might read back the correct flight, but you check the record locator and it's a different flight, sometimes changing a ticketing point from stopover to transit (and v.v.). You can make/correct changes now, but after you depart the first flight changes to the routing (including changing from stopover to transit) will cost USD125.

Date changes are free (D fares are flexible), so you can put in placeholder dates for flights (except the 1st segment) you intend to take further out (most airline systems only support ticketing ~330days in advance). Then when the dates you actually want are available, move those flights to the new dates.

If you don't pay and ticket the reservation within a set amount of time, some flights may fall off the reservation. This happened to me with the Alaska Airlines flights -- I took longer because I wanted to optimise the taxes and carrier surcharges. These additional fees on top of the base fare are priced by the rates desk, a separate desk from the RTW desk that also verifies the routing is legal at the same time.

Taxes and carrier charges
Looking at others who have posted about DONE tickets, they've mentioned the taxes and surcharges come out to be around 10% to 15% of the total price. The first time my ticket was priced at US$1000 carrier fees + US$621 taxes on top of the US$4571 base fare.. this is about 25%! Certain airlines have higher surcharges than others; previous discussions on FT suggest to avoid IB, BA, QF, RJ, and QR if possible. Unfortunately the full breakdown isn't given for the carrier surcharges, so you'll have to guess which ones are the culprits.

I guessed that using QF for the SYD-HKG segment (PER-SYD is AA codeshare) and QR for the HKG-DOH segment resulted in the high fees; the SYD-HKG segment was easily switched to CX, but they would not let me use the CX codeshare for the QR operated HKG-DOH segment. So I switched this to HKG-TLV with CX, and these two changes immediately resulted in a US$250 reduction in the carrier fees. Still a bit high and potentially could be reduced by removing IB somehow, but I've had enough on the phone.

You can also ask for the rates desk to price the itinerary in AUD to save on FX conversion fees. My RTW ticket was about AU$9.2k; and with the EK positioning flight the total cost is just over AU$10k+ 129k QFF points.

End

I hope this helps the AFF community. Unfortunately most members are based in Australia, which is subject to one intercontinental departure/arrival for SWP, so the 4 'stopover' trick doesn't really apply . Although I guess you could still squeeze a trip to New Zealand and one more domestic city on top of the RTW

Thank you what a joy to read

 

[skylabsea]

Hello from HKG! Some updates:
Changes to AA codes avios earn when crediting to BAEC:
Tickets issued on AA/BA/IB post 18OCT23 will earn avios on fare spend rather than fixed per segment/booking class. For RTW, it seems the calculation of the segment earn is pro-rated on the xONEx fare based on distance / total distance -- given the low $/mile for RTW, this is a horrible development for xONEx fares.
Existing tickets before 18OCT23 will have original earn, but I'll be avoiding these marketing codes going forwards when possible for future DONE4s.

Furthermore, I am concerned IAG is going to convince more oneworld carriers to adopt this model (perhaps AY/QR next?) and even more concerned TP might be next on the chopping block, ruining my one-DONE4-per-year strategy to obtain lifetime BA gold

TLV headache:
I booked the ticket in September 2023; events starting in October 2023 means that the TLV routing has become a bit of a headache for me. Luckly, this HKG-TLV is at the end of the itinerary and my TLV-x/LHR-SEA plan was swapped to AMM as noted in the OP.

My original plan was to buy an EgyptAir TLV-CAI ticket to join onto another ex-CAI DONE4 in 2025, but this has thrown a wrench in my plans since (a) the direct TLV MS CAI stopped running and (b) risk of CX pulling out of HKG-TLV (as they did previously SEP-DEC 2023). At this point I'm considering rerouting to HKG-DOH instead, once I've flown all but that leg.

(potential) Cabotage on PER AA SYD:
I called AA RTW shortly after @MEL_Traveller astutely pointed out that this may constitute cabotage. After some (poor) explaining on my part, the agent finally understood what I meant and assured me since the O&D of the itinerary are outside Australia, we should be good on that front. I'm actually not convinced this is the case, since my interpretation is we'd need x/PER and/or x/SYD transits to be safe.
I initially let this drop as I felt I had done my part and was going to let QF/AA sort out any issues if they arise. In any case, tickets had to be reissued to change the dates as I couldn't put them past the 331 day limit in September. Given the BAEC earn changes, reissuing the ticket on AA code would have resulted in much fewer avios, so I switched it to the QF prime code when calling again recently (see below).

BA cancelling AMM-LHR, impacting x/LHR-SEA
I later realised this segment is BA's Club Europe product rather than club world, so earns at 80TP rather than 140TP. RJ's AMM-LHR is still proper J, but earns at CE rate with BAEC so that there's no incentive for BAEC members to ditch BA on this route

But! I got an email from AA ~10 weeks prior to this flight saying to contact them as my booking has changed, with no other details. Upon inspection it appears that BA has cancelled AMM-LHR on that day, likely at schedule firming by BA.

One or more of your American Airlines flights changed, and we were unable to automatically rebook you.

AMM RJ LHR is scheduled to land 5mins before LHR BA SEA departs - can't change this segment to previous day RJ as that's a transit->stopover ticketing point change (a whopping 5mins over 24hr! would be a waste of a day plus I need 3 nights in Jordan for visa waiver on Jordan pass bundle), and can't do same day due to minimum connection times. I'd want more time than MCT anyway; LHR is notoriously bad for delays + T5 enforces entry with the CONFORMANCE gates -- if you get delayed past T-45min you can't even scan into T5 with your boarding pass!

Alternate routing and calling AA RTW:
The same day AMM-DOH departs 7 hours earlier and I could either do x/DOH-x/LHR to catch my original LHR AA(BA) SEA or I could do AMM-x/DOH-SEA which gets me into Seattle 5hrs earlier than planned.

Both are acceptable options to me since AMM-x/DOH-LHR-SEA is 60TP (DONEx books into first (A) on QR intra-ME two-class flights) + 140TP + 140TP, meaning net gain of 120 TP over original route (80 + 140).
But the second option has DOH-SEA on 77W qsuites ! Same earn of 220TP(60+160) as original route, with ~1.8k fewer avios (assuming I'd be BA silver at that point with 1.3x on AA code); most important thing is I get to avoid BA's (allegedly lacklustre) product in Club World (not suites).

I begin digging on various forums to have a look at procedures for getting routing changes. Out of curiosity I also took a quick glance at the IATA ticketing handbook. Armed with this knowledge I call up AA RTW desk again and gently guide them into providing the AMM-x/DOH-SEA alternate routing, and confirmed that it was a INVOL change with no rerouting charge (US$125) or fare/fee difference applicable. Pending PQR with rates desk, but I'm going to call this success!

Some random closing thoughts:
- My routing for the RTW portion (separate tix in parenthesis) is now (HKG-x/DXB-xCAI)-x/MAD(-BCN)(-CDG)(-LHR-MAD)-AMM-x/DOH-SEA-MSY-SEA-JFK-HKG. The CAI IB(I2) MAD IB BCN and CDG BA LHR BA(IB) MAD flights will bring me to the 4 qualifying flights needed for BAEC
- I no longer have any AA codes in the PNR (even the original itin didn't have any AA metal, and now I've switched out the 3 flights with AA marketing codes); I hope their software can handle being the validating carrier on a PNR/ticket with no flights having their marketing code. It's also amazing that I didn't encounter any resistance on this front, given the original requirement of either TPAC or TATL has to be AA code
- Technically I'd be covered by UK261 since BA is the operating UK-carrier for the cancelled UK-bound flight, so I'd be able to request the reroute to final destination SEA (even on non-partner carriers) under Article 8; but luckily there was no need to bring this up because AA was quite happy to reroute to my most convenient/preferred flights on QR
- Sadly since this occurred >14 days out I can't claim the GBP520 compensation under Article 7. But I'm happy with the result -- would absolutely prefer this now rather than on the day.
- My "transatlantic" and "transpacific" flights look weird - they're actually polar routes .

- I hope I don't get shot down going close to this conflict zone, it has happened before to another oneworld carrier
- Payment of overflight fees is why the AA codeshare got dropped from these flights, even though CX and QR are both AA joint venture partners. I couldn't even book the AA code for these "TATL"/"TPAC" flights if I wanted to due to the sanctions
- I really hope QR doesn't pull the infamous equipment change on me; I'm absolutely excited and looking forward to qsuites!