Questions and Answers

Hi Lucky,

Firstly, thanks for all the incredible advice and information you’ve shared over the years!!!

My wife and I started researching RTW’s a couple of years ago largely inspired by your many adventures, and we started saving towards it, sourcing out the best/longest A380 routes, figuring which airlines fly 1st class to where and when, and are now finally embarking on our 1st RTW- All we’re waiting for are the visa’s to come through, as we’re Canadian PR’s, but still South African citizens.

Please forgive the long itinerary below. I copied and pasted straight from the Oneworld Itinerary, and tried to cutout as much unnecessary info as possible, without cutting out the important stuff.

My question/s are:
– Based on the following itinerary, we are leaning towards earning miles for this entire trip on AA. Do you think that that’s a wise decision?

– We tried our best to include as many 1st class flights as possible, specifically A380 1st class. If you have any ideas, suggestions, recommendations, changes that you think we should make, I would greatly appreciate your advice. We are flexible with our dates and routes.

[LIST=1]
[*]Vancouver (YVR) 22:50 to New York (JFK) 07:00
Cathay Pacific Airways CX88*
[LIST]
[*]Aircraft: Boeing 777-300ER- Booking Class: First
[/LIST]

[*]New York (JFK)16:05 to Dallas/Ft. Worth (DFW) 19:09
American Airlines AA1223
[LIST]
[*]Aircraft: Boeing 737-800 Passenger- Booking Class: First
[/LIST]

[*]Los Angeles (US) 14:45 to Dallas/Ft. Worth (DFW) 16:06
American Airlines- AA2460
[LIST]
[*]Aircraft: Airbus A321 (shark lets)- Booking Class: First
[/LIST]

[*]4. Los Angeles (LAX) 22:15 to Melbourne (MEL) 07:00
Qantas QF94
[LIST]
[*]Aircraft: Airbus A380-800 Passenger- Booking Class: First
[/LIST]

[*]Melbourne (AU) 16:00 to Sydney (SYD) 17:25
Qantas QF446
Aircraft: Boeing 737-800 (winglets) Passenger/BBJ2- Booking Class: Business

[*]Sydney (SYD)15:30 to Singapore (SIN) 21:45
British Airways-BA16
[LIST]
[*]Aircraft: Boeing 777- Booking Class: First
[/LIST]

[*]Singapore (SG) – Hong Kong (HK)

Surface Sector [URL=’https://rtw.oneworld.com/rtw/#’]info[/URL]
You have chosen to make this leg of your itinerary by another means of transport.
[*]Hong Kong (HK) 09:20 to Jakarta (CGK) 13:10
Cathay Pacific Airways
CX777
[LIST]
[*]Aircraft: Boeing 777-300ER
[*]Booking Class: First
[/LIST]
[*]
Jakarta (CGK) 21:55 to Tokyo (NRT) 07:25
JALJL726
[LIST]
[*]Aircraft: Boeing 777-300ER- Booking Class: First
[/LIST]

[*]Tokyo (NRT) 16:55 to Hong Kong (HKG) 20:40
Cathay Pacific Airways- CX521
[LIST]
[*]Aircraft: Boeing 777-300ER- Booking Class: First
[/LIST]

[*]Hong Kong (HKG) 15:55 to Bangkok (BKK) 17:45
Cathay Pacific Airways CX701
[LIST]
[*]Aircraft: Boeing 777-300ER- Booking Class: First
[/LIST]

[*]Bangkok (BKK) 02:05 to Doha (DOH) 05:15
Qatar Airways QR837
[LIST]
[*]Aircraft: Airbus A380-800 Passenger- Booking Class: First
[/LIST]

[*]Doha (DOH) 21:00 to Dubai (DXB) 23:10
Qatar Airways QR1014
[LIST]
[*]Aircraft: Airbus A330-300- Booking Class: First
[/LIST]
Dubai (DXB) 02:10 to London (LHR) 06:55
Qantas QF1
[LIST]
[*]Aircraft: Airbus A380-800 Passenger- Booking Class: First
[/LIST]

[*]London (LHR) 17:20 to Vancouver (YVR)
18:50
British Airways BA85
[LIST]
[*]Aircraft: Airbus A380-800 Passenger- Booking Class: First
[/LIST]
[/LIST]

Thank you again and I greatly appreciate you taking the time to look at this!

Out of curiosity, what is the cost to book these flights all in First?

If you’re booking on AA, remember that earning miles is changing to a revenue based program which may impact the number of miles earned.

How long will your trip be?

That trip sounds amazing. Did you book the entire trip with just miles and points?

Sounds great!
If you allow me, since you are flying JFK-DFW-LAX-MEL, I would strongly recommend you to fly JFK-LAX with the Qantas B747 business class. From what Lucky reviewed, it seemed to be a good way, plus this is a pretty exclusive flight, since it is only available to passengers travelling from/to Australia.

Have fun 😉

[QUOTE=”Cole, post: 14014, member: 1430″]That trip sounds amazing. Did you book the entire trip with just miles and points?[/QUOTE]
Hey Cole. We’re paying cash for this trip. However, we’re hoping to build up a good amount of miles thereafter, and jump start into points/miles flying.

[QUOTE=”Ben Holz, post: 14021, member: 1601″]Sounds great!
If you allow me, since you are flying JFK-DFW-LAX-MEL, I would strongly recommend you to fly JFK-LAX with the Qantas B747 business class. From what Lucky reviewed, it seemed to be a good way, plus this is a pretty exclusive flight, since it is only available to passengers travelling from/to Australia.

Have fun ;)[/QUOTE]
Hey Ben. Thanks for the advice.

It would have been good to do that but oneworld doesn’t allow that flight between 2 major cities, since we’re starting in Canada. So Vancouver to NYC is a major flight, and it cannot be B2B with another, such as JFK-LAX. Hence I had to do Dallas, then LAX.

I’ll definitely check that out on another trip when we fly out of US and not Canada.

[QUOTE=”David W, post: 14003, member: 29″]Out of curiosity, what is the cost to book these flights all in First?

If you’re booking on AA, remember that earning miles is changing to a revenue based program which may impact the number of miles earned.

How long will your trip be?[/QUOTE]
Hey David,

Thanks for the advice. I will certainly look into that.

Interestingly enough, it was not too expensive (approximately USD 12,500 pp), considering that when I priced these flights out individually, the RTW worked out to be 25% of what I would have paid had I bought these flights separately.

Also, flying out of Canada was considerably cheaper than US.

Oneworld seems a lot more economical than Star, although they have some great airlines.