Hello all,
I’m planning a RTW trip for 2022, split into two holidays.
In May/June 2022 half the trip to Europe before returning to Australia, the second half to the USA in Sept 2022. Three of us traveling business class. We are based in Adelaide.
I’m starting with a positioning flight in Honolulu to keep under the 35K miles. I’d like to avoid Hong Kong as a starting/positioning point due to the unrest there currently (unless you think I’m being too cautious) with a slightly different itinerary.
Stopover cities in capitals. I’ve also included the likely layover cities to be as accurate as possible to calculate the mileage.
Gcmap has the below route coming in at 34,517 miles:
hnl-jfk-LHR-FCO-doh-ADL-bne-sfo-SLC-JFK-hnl
My understanding of the rules is that the backtracking at the end of the USA trip (jfk to hnl) to complete the itinerary will not violate the RTW rules.
Would this be correct?
Any other advice would be appreciated.
From the way things are looking, Hong Kong actually doesn’t seem to be too bad now and I think a bit easier to position from Adelaide but that’s up to your risk tolerance.
Your routing seems fine, main thing would be finding 3 Business class spaces for all of your flights. Most concerning would be the returning to Australia from Europe. That’ll be something to look out for and possibly allow some more flexibility in routing. Same goes for getting to America, but otherwise all of the other flights seem relatively easy to score enough seats for all of you.
I’ve redeemed three Zone 10 awards, four seats in Y each time. I expect things will be different as the carriers recover post-COVID. Pre-COVID, I used to run test itineraries a full year in advance of travel, to learn what routing may become available. We travelled to Europe, USA/Canada/Hawaii and Asia ex-BNE around the Xmas/New Year season. Routing and capacity varied year to year. I suggest allowing some extra points to make itinerary changes leading up to your departure (e.g anything via OGG or HNL). Repeat transits through the same airport used to be permitted, but I can’t recall needing to transit through a stopover. I’d expect ADL/SLC may be hard to redeem - unless you’ve seen availability in the past?
