When prepapring a Round the World trip, the time you buy your tickets is the no U-turn point: now it’s for sure! we’re going to! Before having the e-tickets in hands, all the puzzle of finding an itinerary where budget and wishes get along is, in fact, a pleasure – for those who love being on the loop of every bit of their trip.
No one is obliged to organise the whole trip by himself. Although, if you decide to do so you are going to have control of a part of your trip which would stay foggy otherwise: how does a Round the World ticket work. The air companies are grouped into alliances: the one with the most destinations is StarAlliance; but it is not the market leader, this place is taken by OneWorld – pioneer in the Round the World deals; in third position, SkyTeam, which has some good flights, but its deals for turning the world are not very attractive.
The formula of a Round the World ticket is the same for all alliances: you must cross the Pacific and the Atlantic without going in a reverse way – you must go East-to-West or West-to-East all the time – until reaching your departure city. The ticket is valide for one year and it can be based on miles or on segments of travel: the journey between two cities, by plane or not.Ce dernier est devenu le forfait le plus recherché, spécialement, chez OneWorld. Il permet pour ceux qui veulent faire un Tour du Monde « rapide » de traverser la planète pour environ 2.000 €. The last has become the most popular formula, specially with OneWorld. It allows those who want to do a « quick » RTW trip, to traverse the planet for around 2.000 euros. The tickets based on miles – available in the three alliances – have a maximum of stopovers, but the price is chosen regarding the amount of miles travelled: up to 29.000, 34.000 or 39.000. It’s important to remind you that all segments made overground will count in the mileage of the ticket. For instance, if you land in LA and you decide to cross US by car to take your flight to Europe in New York, the formula RTW will draw a straight line between the cities and add the distance into the sum of your ticket.
If you want to do all independently, OneWorld and StarAlliance offer softwares linked to their database which uptodated flights information from all the partners companies. It’s a great exercise of geography! There’s an interactive map where you can draw your itinerary and for each stopover you can choose a flight accordingly. A good tip is the hubs, the cities used as main connections: London, Frankfurt, Dubai, Hong Kong, among others. Sometimes, we get stuck in a city which seems impossible to link to our next destination: if you pass by a hub city, you may get trough then. Be aware that it won’t be at first go you’ll match a perfect itinerary, but after a few tries. Once the itinerary is done, the software will propose contacting an air companie member for purchasing the ticket. You’ll problably exchange lot of emails before giving credit card details.
If this method doesn’t suit you or you can’t work it out, don’t worry. There’s plenty of travel agencies specialised in Round the World – have a look on the internet.
Extra flights
Sometimes, even working a lot the itinerary we can’t get – within a Round the World deal – to a suitable journey. The solution, in this case, is to add on a couple of extra flights. Be careful, if you have saved money buying a Round the World ticket it wasn’t to spend all the rest with that. The air alliances offer many pass (Asia, Africa, Europe, Pacific, half-RTW) which can be add to the primary coupon. The best deal, though, is searching through the low-cost companies – they are everywhere – the flights needed to link cities still appart. Little example, instead of buying an AsiaPass with StarAlliance for 1.100 euros we have found with AirAsia – the biggest low-cost in Asia – the two flights we needed for 180 euros.
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