Oneworld (OW) Round-the-World (RTW)

I've promised myself to write a blog about my RTW travels since 2008, and it is now June 2009 - oops. Anyway it's better late than never, and given it's a long weekend (Queen's Birthday), what better time to start?!


The Idea

...... first came about while I was reading FrequentFlyer. Don't ask me how or when I started reading it (probably it got mentioned on The Age), but I gathered from various posts that "DONE4" is quite a value-for-money way to see the world in style.

Thus begin my lesson in air-travel abbreviations (and fare rules!!!). DONE4 is the fare code for OneWorld Explorer 4 Continents in business class. "D" is one of the many codes for business class ("J" is another), just like "A" is for First and "L" is for Economy ("Y" is another). This means OW offers DONE3, DONE4, DONE5, DONE6; AONE3, AONE4, AONE5, AONE6; and LONE3, LONE4, LONE5, LONE6. If you are wondering why DONE4 and not DONE3, see the Rules section later....

Anyway, it seems such fare is published by the OW alliance, and the price is set based on your departing country. E.g. DONE4 sold in Australia is pegged at AUD$11,199 (plus taxes) and in Japan it's pegged at JPY ¥780,400. For a full listing of each country's fare, see here.

What this means is that depending on the exchange rate, you can get a really good deal. Back in 2007, the Australian dollar is enjoying a fantastic rate (see AUD-JPY history graph here). This means that I could get a DONE4 departing from Japan for AUD$7800 instead of $11,200 - a saving of $3,400, per person!!

Of course, this poses other issues:

i) you have to find someone who'd sell you the fare departing from Japan without you physically being there; and
ii) you have to depart from Japan, which means extra cost to fly there.

This is where community sites like FrequentFlyer and FlyerTalk are invaluable. I've pretty much done all my research on these two forums - thanks guys!



The Who

Luckily, American Airlines (AA) operates a telephone-based RTW sales desk from their Dallas office, and you can pay their Tokyo office by phone using Australian credit card. What this means is that you get to speak to someone in English to book the ticket (usually takes 10+ minutes) rather than trying to speak English with their Japan office which may make mistakes (see my experiences later....).

AA RTW: +1 800 247 3247 Note they only open during business hours (9am-5pm?) Dallas time
AA Tokyo (at Narita Airport): +81 3 4550 2111 option 2 is for English and 3 again to purchase tickets
Remember Skype offers free US-based 1800 calls! :-)



The Rules

Ok all good things have a catch, and DONE4 is no exception. OW has structured it to encourage you to travel on the various airlines in its alliance, while ensuring you don't "abuse" it in large countries such as US and Australia. As a result there are numerous rules on what you can and cannot do, and is usually the confusing part when I need to explain DONE4 to my friends. Here's my brief explanation:

1. Travel needs to be done at a continuous fashion around the globe by continent. This means if I travel from Asia to Europe, I cannot go back to South-West Pacific (SWP), and I have to go onto America. Clockwise or anti-clockwise are both fine, and traversing different countries within the continent is allowed.
   
   
2. However - travelling between southern hemisphere continents needs to also count in the northern hemisphere continents. e.g. If I travel from Australia (in SWP) to South Africa (in Africa), it's deemed as visiting 3 continents, not 2. The implication is that you cannot get a valid xONE3 ticket departing from a southern hemisphere country.
   
   The continents are N. America, S. America, Europe & Middle East (EMA), Africa, Asia, and South-West Pacific (SWP).
   
   
3. You have 16 "segments" to use, with a restriction of maximum segments for each continent. Without going into the details, all continents can have 4 segments except N. America which can have 6. Note that this restriction is for traversing within the continent, inter-continent segment does not count toward it.
   
   
4. You have to return to the same airport that you departed from. E.g. if you live in New York and departs from JFK, you cannot return via Newark. Also, once departed the country of origin, you cannot return there until the end.
   
   
5. Unlike other RTW ticket, xONEx is not limited by mileage. This means within a particular continent you can traverse to you hearts content. However - within large countries (e.g. US and Australia), you can only traverse between east and west once. e.g. while in N. America, you cannot fly from LA to New York and then San Francisco.
   

More Rules

Apart from seeing more of the world, one of my goals is to maximise my Qantas Frequent Flyer (QF) Status Credit (SC) to attain the Platinum status (aka OW Emerald). The benefits of Platinum status may or may be of use to you, in which case feel free to design the route as you like and skip this part. Otherwise, keep reading on how to maximise your QF SC....

• AA domestic Business class are classed as First. This means the SCs earned while flying within US are usually at First instead of Business class. This also means you can earn more SCs when flying in US, and therefore I've "spent" more segments there.
  
  
• Although you cannot traverse between east and west in large countries, you can do so in EMA. This means if you do a side trip to Dubai while in Europe, you'll get quite a bit of SCs. Another good one is Alaska, which was not on the list of restricted east-west traversing in US.
  

Now before you break into a sweat and say to yourself "Screw this - it's all to hard" (well I certainly felt like it), there's an excellent resource that helps you validate the oneworld rules and calculate the SC! The lifesaver is MileageMonkey. I could not have managed to design my itinerary without it.

Another useful resources are the OneWorld Route Map (on-line only) and OneWorld Timetable (downloadable app). These helped me determine what are valid routes and the flight times - so I won't have to get up at 4am trying to catch a flight... (well that did end up happening anyway but more due to snow storm which made access to airport hell.... more of that tale later...I think).



The Codes

As I try out different route on MileageMonkey and the OneWorld Timetable, I got more and more familiar with the airport codes - and you'd find I'll be using these codes throughout the blog. Here they are for reference:

NRT (Narita, Tokyo), TPE (Taipei), HKG (Hong Kong), CDG (Paris), AMM (Amman), BUD (Budapest), MAD (Madrid), ORD (Chicago), MCO (Orlando), JFK (New York), LAX (Los Angeles), MEL (Melbourne), AKL (Auckland)



The Route

Apart from maximising my QF SC, I also have other considerations that heavily influenced this itinerary:

• visit family in Taipei (yes, twice)
  
• try the new airbus A380 (LAX-MEL)
  
• visit Petra instead of shopping in Dubai
• visit Disney World and New York
  

So after much ado, I've finally settled on the following route:

• NRT-TPE-HKG-CDG-AMM-BUD-MAD-ORD-MCO-JFK-LAX-MEL-AKL-MEL-HKG-TPE-NRT

Here's the hidden benefit of departing from Japan (apart from the cheaper fare). Because I live in Melbourne, I could actually get 3 trips from this DONE4:

• NRT-TPE-HKG-CDG-AMM-BUD-MAD-ORD-MCO-JFK-LAX-MEL
• MEL-AKL-MEL
• MEL-HKG-TPE-NRT

It would not be possible for me to break it up like this if I had purchased it from Australia, as the rule dictates I cannot return to the departing country until the end.

As I usually fly back to TPE once a year (costs around $1350 in Y), and that I planned to visit New York (costs around $1700 in Y at the end of the year), DONE4 seems to be a fantastic deal as all segments are in Business and it also throws in a trip to New Zealand!

The main catch, as I explain to others, is that you need to commit the initial time that goes around the globe. It took us 8 weeks to do the first part.



The Execution

Here's the rough flow of how I did my first DONE4:

Determine the route. This required me to understand roughly what are the rules, and also decide what I wanted to see. This took the longest time but by the end of this I had a spreadsheet with the complete route (validated with MileMonkey), how long I'd spend at each location, and what time are the flights (checked with OneWorld timetable).

Note that you don't have to have all of the dates. You can buy a DONE4 with only the initial leg, and then just change the dates without penalty later as you figure out when, even after the journey has started. However, there is a penalty of US$125 if you have to change the route, plus other change due to taxes and exchange rates.

Book the ticket. I called AA ATW and spend around 15 minutes going through the itinerary. Once that's done, they will get it quoted (for the taxes, as the main ticket price is fixed). It usually takes 1-2 days to quote it. I'd recommend after call to AA ATW, you immediate check the itinerary online via the AA web site. This is because the agent may make a mistake, and you can call back immediately to correct it rather than finding that out later and then change it and having it re-quoted. Like any e-ticket, correct name spelling is extremely important - remember you don't have paper tickets anymore and only have your passport to prove who you are!!

Purchase the fare. Once the ticket is quoted, I had 30 days to pay the fare. This is a good time to check the exchange rate and find a good day to pay. Payment via AA NRT is quick - around 5 minutes, and the ticket is issued on the day.

Changes after ticket issue. I had to change the itinerary after ticket issue, and had major problem (see my future blog when I'm in Budapest). Anyway I'd strongly recommend that you get an email receipt for any ticket change/re-issue, and that email contains the 13-digit e-ticket number. Any other email only represents a booking change, not ticket change.

That's it! Now I go onto TripAdvisor to check out accommodation....