How best to plan my Qantas oneworld RTW itinerary?

Flights & Airfares
#1

Hi Point Hacks brains trust.

I’m in the early stages of planning a trip for September/October 2020, and would like your thoughts as to the best way to book the flights (using QFF points) and in what particular order we should go:

We wish to go to Boston, Quebec, Montreal, Edinburgh, The Hague and Paris as our key stops.

And yes, we can do internal travel (ie: Boston > Quebec > Montreal; and The Hague > Paris) by train (as that’s my preference).

So . . . would this be classified as a RTW trip? Or would it not?

Look forward to hearing your thoughts and advice.

My thanks, Claire

#2

Your overall trip would definitely fit in as a round the world trip. However, if you are planning to book this as a Oneworld Round the World award using Qantas points, I’d recommend a stop in Asia or the Middle East on the way back from Europe because your current trip is quite short and you’ll be charged the same amount of points no matter how much under the RTW limit you are.

For your cities, I would fly from Australia to a city on the east coast (boston or new york) and then purchase domestic flights or train tickets to travel to Canada. Then from a city in the east coast, fly to a city in Europe (hopefully somewhere you plan to visit like Paris or Edinburgh). Then you can make your way back to Australia and maybe a stop over in Asia along the way. I think you’ve got this whole RTW trip planning down pat.

1 Like
#3

Hi Claire
Your distance is probably ok and under the 35,000 miles cap. but just make sure that you dont use any none Oneworld airlines, like Emirates, which would invalidate the rtw ticket. Also be mindful of the 5 stopover limit. I just booked one of these with 34,300 miles and 5 stops, but is was hard to get it all in. Use gcmap.com to test the distances including any land segments. You still need to include the distance Boston -> Montreal if you fly into Boston and out of Montreal.
As soon as you put in the second non-Qantas, oneworld airline into your booking the system will automatically switch to the Oneworld rates.
Because of the limited availability of award seats, I put the flights in as soon as they come available. For a long trip, you dont want to wait 6 or 8 weeks from when the first and last flights come up. Doing this gets you the flights you want, but incurs 5k pp points per change fee, So I usually allow another 15-20k points on top of the 318k pp for the trip for changes. However, bear in mind, that till Jan 30, you can make as many changes as you want for free. I think I’ve already changed my trip 3 times and have another 1 or 2 to go, all for no penalty.
Good luck and happy holidays

#4

I like the suggestion to book the flights as soon as they appear, I had wondered this myself. If you wait until your last leg is available to book the whole thing you risk the award seats being gone on the earlier legs. I’m guessing you just have to anticipate that the extra value of the RTW Oneworld fare isn’t lost in change point fees.

#5

Yep. It really depends on how many changes and how many people on the booking. In my case it’s just 2 people, so 10k per change. You cant have more than 5 stopovers anyway, so theoretically, that means a maximum of 50k per booking, (the initial booking is free). But you can usually roll a couple of changes into one actual change. I usually jump on the hard to get sectors as soon as they open, but easier ones can be left until there’s 2 or 3 available. Any number of changes can be done in one transaction for the same fee.
Even including the change fees, it’s still a lot cheaper than adding up all the individual sectors, as long as you’re doing a trip that’s a bit more complicated than just a straight return.