Part 1: Transportation
If you’ve landed here, I’m sure you’re wondering how this itinerary was done, how you can perhaps replicate it or tweak it to fit your goals. Well you’re in the right place! There are other sites that share a list of possibilities of “how to get to X” that you can Google. I’m only going to go through how I booked our ANA RTW itinerary, some of my reasoning, what happened if it diverged from the original plan, and how I would have done things differently. This all may seem daunting, but considering I was able to pull this off with only a 1-month lead time, your itinerary’s gonna look much nicer (and hopefully mostly in Business class, or First, if that’s how you like to roll!).
Here was our itinerary (ANA RTW redemptions in bold):
- Washington, DC (IAD) – Lisbon, Portugal (LIS) – Marrakech, Morocco (RAK) on TAP Air Portugal (business)
- RAK – Vienna, Austria (VIE) on Austrian Air (business)
- VIE – Prague, Czech Republic (PRG) on OBB rail
- PRG – Frankfurt, Germany (FRA) – Cologne, Germany (QKL) on Lufthansa (economy cash flight) & Lufthansa Express Rail bundle
- Cologne, Germany – Lyon, France on Deutche Bahn rail
- Lyon, France – Paris, France – London, UK on SCNF and Eurostar* originally, but became Lyon – London on British Airways (econ cash)
- London Heathrow, UK (LHR) – Hyderabad, India (HYD) on Air India (economy cash) and HYD – Singapore (SIN) – Kuala Lumpur (KUL)** on Singapore Air (business) originally (drama details elsewhere to follow), but became LHR – SIN on Singapore Air (econ cash) and SIN – KUL on Singapore Air (business)
- KUL – SIN – Saigon, Vietnam (SGN) on Singapore Air (business)
- SGN – Bangkok, Thailand (BKK) on Vietnam Airlines/Pacific Airlines (econ cash)
- BKK – Sydney, Australia (SYD) on Thai Airways (econ)
- SYD – Auckland, New Zealand (AKL) on Air New Zealand (econ)
- AKL – LAX on Air New Zealand (econ)
ANA RTW Rules
Here are the rules for ANA’s RTW (Round-The-World) program from the ANA website that your self-pieced itinerary will need to follow (my comments in bold):
- For Round the World itineraries, the required mileage is calculated according to the total basic sector mileage for the entire itinerary. (Calculations exclude ground transportation sectors.) Required mileage is also determined for the highest class traveled, even if it’s just for one flight segment.
- Flights must be used to cross both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans once.
- The flight direction of the itinerary must be east-to-west or west-to-east. Backtracking is not permitted. Backtracking is sometimes permitted depending on the ANA travel agent you’re working with; it’s typically OK if a) you’re backtracking within the same continent/region and b) you need to get to a Star Alliance hub.
- Up to 8 stopovers are permitted between the departure point and the final return point. (Up to 3 stopovers are permitted within Europe and up to 4 stopovers are permitted within Japan.)
- The departure date of the final international flight to return to the country of departure must be at least 10 days after the departure of the first international flight on the itinerary. There must be 10 to 365 days between your first and last international flights.
Example: When departing Japan on October 1, it will be October 1 + 10 days = October 11. So the return flight to Japan has to be after October 11. - In addition to a maximum of 12 flight sectors, the itinerary may also include a maximum of 4 ground transport sectors (including travel between different airports in the same city). Note: each flight segment counts as a “flight sector”, so getting direct flights to your destinations is ideal.
Step 1: Accumulate enough AmEx points
First and foremost, you need enough points! AmEx points transfer 1:1 to ANA, but only transfer to ANA once you’ve made sure all the seats you want are actually available. Head over to my recommendations on when and which credit cards to get based on your timeline. Check the chart below for required miles based on distance and class. This is directly from ANA.
| Itinerary Mileage*1 | Economy Class | Business Class | First Class |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4,001 to 7,000 | 38,000 | 63,000 | 90,000 |
| 7,001 to 9,000 | 43,000 | 68,000 | 100,000 |
| 9,001 to 11,000 | 55,000 | 85,000 | 120,000 |
| 11,001 to 14,000 | 60,000 | 90,000 | 140,000 |
| 14,001 to 18,000 | 65,000 | 105,000 | 160,000 |
| 18,001 to 20,000 | 75,000 | 115,000 | 180,000 |
| 20,001 to 22,000 | 85,000 | 125,000 | 200,000 |
| 22,001 to 25,000 | 100,000 | 145,000 | 220,000 |
| 25,001 to 29,000 | 120,000 | 170,000 | 260,000 |
| 29,001 to 34,000 | 140,000 | 200,000 | 300,000 |
| 34,001 to 39,000 | 160,000 | 220,000 | 340,000 |
| 39,001 to 44,000 | 180,000 | 270,000 | 390,000 |
| 44,001 to 50,000 | 200,000 | 300,000 | 450,000 |
Our bolded itinerary cost us 125,000 AmEx points + $547 per person, and would have cost slightly more in both points and dollars if we had been able to include the London to Kuala Lumpur segment in the ANA RTW booking (making it an even better deal since we wouldn’t have had to book it separately with less favorable redemption methods), but again that’s where planning early helps.
Step 2: Set up an ANA account
Make an ANA account if you don’t already have one – you can do that here. If you’re planning to book together for another family member, make sure you add them as part of your family account here ASAP. You will need 1,000 ANA points to perform this function. It can take up to 2 weeks for ANA to confirm the addition, and they may request proof of relationship, etc. Once part of your account family, you can also pool your points together!
Step 3: Choose your flights
A) Know which airlines you’re willing to fly
Not all airlines (and business class products) are created equal. The amount of “fuel surcharges” AKA additional fees + taxes tacked on to the points redemption vary largely depending on the airline and origin/destination of flight departure. There can be many different things to consider here as suggested by ThePointsGuy, but I would just keep it simple with these criteria by FrequentMiler, recreated below. Green = little/no fees, orange = moderate fees, red = high fees:
- Aegean Airlines
- Air Canada
- Air China
- Air New Zealand
- Avianca
- Copa Airlines
- EVA Air
- Scandinavian Airlines
- TAP Air Portugal
- United Airlines (none to moderate fees)
- ANA
- Asiana Airlines
- Ethiopian Airlines
- LOT Polish
- Singapore Airlines
- Turkish Airlines
- Austrian Airlines
- Lufthansa Airlines
- Swiss Air
B) Determine the long-haul flights of your trip
I found that the easiest way to scope out availability for seats (i.e. business class, my preferred way to redeem points) in Star Alliance is through the United website since it shows you availability for 1 month at a time. I recommend staying logged out of your United account if you have one because logging in grants you access to additional seats that are not actually accessible by ANA agents to book.
You should be looking for Saver Awards in Economy (X) or Business (I), which you can see denoted at the bottom of the below image. These are the only ones you can book through ANA and most other partner airlines. Note that the miles shown are the cost with United miles, and not with the ANA program.
C) Determine the short-haul flights
Continue searching for the shorter flights between the long-hauls with the same priorities as above.
D) Check for lie-flat seats
You’ll also want to make sure that the aircraft you’re flying on actually has real business class lie-flat seats. Otherwise you’re just getting a slightly larger economy seat with better service. You can search the airline and flight number (e.g. TAP 234) and go to Flightaware to find the aircraft type as shown below:
Then go to Seatguru (as in this example) or something similar to match the aircraft. It’s not always super straightforward since Seatguru’s database isn’t all-encompassing, but should get you close enough. If there’s any doubt you could check if the airline’s site has seat maps to compare/confirm.
E) Run it through ANA and call the agent
Time to check your work on the ANA website to make sure that it’s an itinerary that’s actually bookable by ANA! Not an absolutely necessary step, but may save you some time in the grand scheme of things. If you choose not to do this, make sure to have a few backup flight options in mind to feed the agent when you call. You should have your AmEx points transferred to your ANA account by this time, or at least initiated the transfer. Log in to your ANA account, select “Flight awards”, then “Award reservation”, and select “Multiple cities”. Input all the flight segments and corresponding dates you found on the United website. To confirm space in your desired class for each segment, you should see the following (business class in my example):
Once you’re done checking comes the exciting part – picking up your phone to call the agent. You’ll give the agent the flight details of each of your segments and desired seat class. There’s unfortunately no way to book this itinerary online. The listed U.S. number is 1-800-235-9262 and you’re bound to hit some degree of hold time; I’ve had to wait 30-45 minutes in my experience. It’s reportedly best to call at 6am PST, which I’ve yet to personally try.
Step 4: Potential for changes
Hopefully by this point you’ve confirmed with your itinerary with the ANA agent! Just a few additional things. If you don’t want to confirm and pay just yet, you may be allowed to place the itinerary (and seats) on hold for up to 72 hours depending on the airlines within your itinerary. You’re welcome to return within that period with any changes you want. Even after you’ve confirmed, you can still make some limited changes:
- Change the date/time as long as you keep the exact same carrier/origin/destination/route for a particular segment without charge.
- Upgrade a flight segment to a higher class as long as the RTW class that you originally booked is that level or higher (e.g. if you booked at the first class level but there were only economy seats on a particular segment, you can call to upgrade to business or first if space opens up) for no additional points if such a seat becomes available. This may slightly alter taxes/fees.
Step 5: Make it to every flight. Enjoy your trip!
Since all the flights are on one itinerary/ticket, missing one flight does customarily cancel all the subsequent flights. So make extra time before the flights, enjoy the automatic lounge access your business/first class tickets give at each airport, and enjoy the journey to your destinations almost as much as the destinations themselves :).
Brief comments about Business class products:
TAP Air Portugal – Comfortable and private lie-flat seats. Food was decent.
Austrian Air – Unfortunately didn’t get to experience the true business class cabin seat as I missed the seat map details. Great service and solid food (courtesy of Demel, a Viennese cafe famous for its sachertorte cake) though!
Singapore Air – Top of class service and hard product. Their truly impressive service extends even into the economy cabin.
Fumbles
*First big oops of the trip – I didn’t realize I booked the rail from Lyon – Paris – London on the completely wrong day so we had to book the direct flight to LHR the day before. Anyone looking for a discounted Eurostar e-voucher? Don’t book in the middle of the night on a phone in a different language and then ignore the confirmation emails in French. DON’T BE ME.
**Big oops to learn from. As you saw, the original route from London to Kuala Lumpur was meant to be LHR – HYD by cash/external redemption and HYD – Singapore (SIN) – Kuala Lumpur (KUL) on Singapore Air (business). The entire LHR – HYD – SIN – KUL route was actually shown as a possible route on United.com but was not visible nor bookable by the ANA agent (sometimes airline partners see availability that they can’t book, which is minimized with the above steps). So I let the agent book the segments in bold and later booked the LHR – HYD segment separately.
After confirming the RTW itinerary, I discovered that United wasn’t able to book the LHR – HYD segment either because there was only one available seat instead of the two I was searching for. No biggie, I booked the one in business and bought the same flight on Air India in economy with cash. Problem solved, or so I thought. I checked the visa situation in India and because we would be in the same airport for the 1 hour layover, determined that it was not necessary.
There we were that bleary-eyed morning at the London Heathrow airport 3 hours before departure when the Air India agent at the check-in counter told us we couldn’t board without a visa, and that visa authorization usually takes weeks. Our options were to find a way to our next ANA RTW flight segment or book a flight straight home, since not showing up for your flight invalidates the rest of your itinerary, as is the case with any itineraries on a single ticket. There were at least 12 of us who booked that flight in a similar situation. I felt my heart drop through my diaphragm like a lead weight. Long story shorter, we tried to keep it together as we sought solutions for the following 4 hours, ultimately purchasing waitlisted seats on Singapore Air through the kindness of their agents to help us and barely making it on board. The ANA agent (for whom we stayed on hold for 40 minutes) also got our itineraries updated to skip HYD as an exception. And thus, the adventure continued!
I hope that this was an adequate overview to walk you through booking your very own ANA RTW itinerary. Head on over to Part 2: Accommodations for a review of our stays. See how we did with redemptions!
