My wife and I are looking to book RTW tickets in business class in July/August 2024. Our itinerary is Melbourne-Tokyo, Tokyo-London, London-New York, Washing DC-Vegas, Los Angeles-Melbourne. Dates are pretty flexible, but ideally want to be in Tokyo for about a week in early July. About a month in London/UK and then a couple of weeks in the USA.
Alternatively, we can do it in reverse with the USA to UK to Japan (still ending up in Japan for early July) from mid May to July 2024. Los Angeles is not essential and we are happy to fly into Dallas instead.
At the moment, I’m having trouble finding business class seats to suit. There are some Jetstar or China Airways flights available but this rules us out of the 318k RTW cap. Does anyone have any suggestions or should I wait to see if flights become available over the coming months?
The key with RTW trip planning is flexibility. You might not be able to fly into Tokyo straight away so consider going in the general direction of the continent.
At this point some leads for award space I see around July/August next year is:
Australia - Asia:
Mostly Malaysian Airlines flying into KL with a few smatterings of Colombo from Sri Lanka airlines.
Asia - Europe:
British Airways is usually generous and I see quite a few seats in Business departing out of Asia. There are a few from Tokyo, a lot from India and also a few from China. If not set on London, consider searching other European gateways also like Helsinki, Madrid, etc.
Your transatlantic flights should be no problem. US domestic is a bit tougher, you might have to take a few connections or end up in a weird itinerary.
America - Australia
Thats the tougher one. It’s basically either American or Qantas. See if you can find it, otherwise, it’s a waiting game if it ever pops up.
Thanks for the response and advice. Just another question though, for the RTW capped price, do all legs have to be booked together, or can I book the first few legs and add to the booking as more flights become available?
Cheers
You can (generally will have to) add more flights at a later stage for a change fee (5-6k points per passenger each time). The point costs for the itinerary will be capped at 318k if you remain within the RTW rules. The taxes and surcharges will naturally increase as you add more flights.
Great. Thanks. I’ve just booked all legs except for Lhr to Melbourne. How do I go about adding that leg to my RTW trip so it’s capped? There doesn’t seem to be an option on what I’ve already booked to add another leg.
TIA