1

RTW tickets (the alliance kind) carry different prices depending on where you begin and end the trip. Sometimes these differences can be great enough that it's cheaper to fly to some other city as a start point, even taking into account the cost of getting to the start city (and back following the RTW.)

For your base route, you can use either Oneworld's RTW products (they have 2) or Star Alliance's. Star's RTWs are priced according to maximum mileage tiers; your current proposed route would put you just over 29,000 miles, so you'd need to purchase the 34,000 mile ticket (the next highest tier.) You could stay (just) under the 29,000 mile level by amending your route so that you go to Japan before Korea, thus: LHR-NRT-ICN-BKK-SYD-AKL-HNL-IAH-MIA-EWR-LHR. Bought in the UK, the base price for this trip would be GBP 2417 plus taxes and fuel surcharges, so probably ca. GBP 2800 when all is said and done.

If you went to the next mileage tier, 34,000, you could hit all your "wish list" destinations as well, thus: LHR-ICN-NRT-MNL-BKK-DPS-SIN-SYD-AKL-HNL-IAH-MIA-EWR-LHR. (Note I assumed "Indonesia" meant Bali and not Jakarta; it doesn't matter much in terms of mileage.) For this tier, the price would be GBP 2917 plus tax and fuel surcharges, so probably ca. GBP 3400 all in.

Could you do side trips to Indonesia and/or Manila "outside" the RTW and come away cheaper than the second/higher RTW ticket price? Probably; there are plenty of discount airlines based in places like Bangkok and Singapore.

Oneworld has a mileage-based RTW product similar to Star's (above) but it's actually more limited in that in addition to maximum mileage tiers, it also limits the number of segments you can fly within each "region" (generally, continents) to four, except six in North America. Your "base route" would need to be altered slightly to fit the eligible routes (Japan before Korea, routing through Hong Kong to Bangkok and through Fiji en route to Hawaii) but is still doable under 29,000 miles - LHR-NRT-ICN-HKG-BKK-SYD-AKL-NAN-HNL-LAX-MIA-LHR. Base price for this ticket starting in the UK would be GBP 2131 plus taxes and fees, so probably GBP 2500 more or less, so somewhat cheaper than the cheapest Star ticket.

Going to the next higher (34,000 mile) Global Explorer ticket would allow you to add one additional Asian flight segment without worrying about the mileage, but the four-flight-per-continent limit would still be in force (LHR-ICN-NRT-MNL-HKG-BKK-SYD-AKL-NAN-HNL-LAX-MIA-LHR.) Since the base price for the extra mileage allowance increases by GBP 500, it doesn't strike me as worth it (although it would still be well below the equivalent Star Alliance 34,000 mile price.)

Oneworld's other RTW product is not mileage-based, but continent based, the Oneworld Explorer. The rules for this ticket are similar, except you're allowed fewer carriers, but there are no mileage limits. The flights-per-continent rule remains, however, so you'd still be short if you wanted to hit all your Asian stopovers. Here's a four-continent route that would be "legal" with the Oneworld Explorer: LHR-ICN-NRT-MNL-HKG-BKK-SYD-AKL-SYD-HNL-LAX-MIA-LHR. Notice the only difference is that rather than stopping in Fiji between NZ and Hawaii you return to Sydney (since the NZ-Fiji-Hawaii legs would be operated by Air Pacific, which is an allowed carrier with the Global Explorer but not the Oneworld Explorer.) The price of this ticket would be GBP 2131 plus taxes and fees (i.e. the same as the "cheaper" Global Explorer.) You'd still need to add side trips to Singapore and/or Indonesia to this ticket but even so you'd still be well under the "higher" Star Alliance ticket cost.

However with the Oneworld Explorer, you could add dramatically to your North America itinerary should you so choose; you'd be allowed a total of six segments; HNL-LAX-MIA would only be using two of those. You could route via Central America or the Caribbean, or visit New York, Vancouver... ? I would certainly recommend not leaving segments you've paid for on the table.

Hope this isn't too confusing.

Look here for a handy summary of RTW fares by country of origin. All in US Dollars, but you can work it out.

2

Good info above...but the easiest way would be to just fly to Indonesia and the Philippines from Malaysia (which you could visit,with Singapore,overland from Thailand or with a short flight from Bangkok).

Airasia and other budget airlines fly around SE Asia for very low prices..no need to include that in a RTW ticket.Just give yourself enough time between Bangkok and Sydney (you will need at least 3 months for a decent look at all that).

3

I don't know anywhere near as much as the extremely informative people above, but I began planning my RTW using the online Star Alliance and One World calculators to get an idea of prices then popped into a branch of STA travel.

Their quote was over £1000 less than the online ones, by taking some cheap internal flights and preserving the RTW miles. Their expertise was brilliant too if you were looking for a bit of guidance. I don't feel I was pressured into buying anything, they encouraged me to go away and think about it too.

N.B. I think the seriously discounted rates only apply to under 26 year olds, but even if you're not, I'd say it was worth popping in/giving them a call.

Anna

4

I agree with #2 cheap air asia flights is the way to go, but you might want to check out skyscanner.com and see if you need a rtw ticket at all.

5

Wow, thank you really appreciate the feedback. I am working at creating the route and pricing it and then price comparing against others including Sta travel and also maybe skyscanners.com.

Gardyloo2 you seem to be an expert...;)

1) The Star alliance (LHR-ICN-NRT-MNL-BKK-DPS-SIN-SYD-AKL-HNL-IAH-MIA-EWR-LHR) 34,000 looks good. For GBP 3400 looks favorite. I see form the calculator that this 31484miles & therefore I would have left 2516 on the table. Would I be able to have Vancouver in the mix or maybe Rio without increasing the price?

2) The Oneworld Exlplorer (: LHR-ICN-NRT-MNL-HKG-BKK-SYD-AKL-SYD-HNL-LAX-MIA-LHR) ticket has left out Indonesia, is that because I would have run out of segments?

3) Any thoughts of how I could use stopovers to see places without burning segments / miles.

Thanks again for your help.

Regards,

Richard

6

1) The Star alliance (LHR-ICN-NRT-MNL-BKK-DPS-SIN-SYD-AKL-HNL-IAH-MIA-EWR-LHR) 34,000 looks good. For GBP 3400 looks favorite. I see form the calculator that this 31484miles & therefore I would have left 2516 on the table. Would I be able to have Vancouver in the mix or maybe Rio without increasing the price?

Vancouver, yes; Rio, no. Adding Vancouver adds just a few miles, Rio adds several thousand. LHR-ICN-NRT-MNL-BKK-DPS-SIN-SYD-AKL-HNL-YVR-IAH-MIA-EWR-LHR

2) The Oneworld Exlplorer (: LHR-ICN-NRT-MNL-HKG-BKK-SYD-AKL-SYD-HNL-LAX-MIA-LHR) ticket has left out Indonesia, is that because I would have run out of segments?

Yes; you're allowed four segments in Asia; adding Indonesia (for example HKG-DPS-HKG) would require two more. However, a return trip between, say, Bangkok and Bali or Jakarta would be very inexpensive using a low-cost Asian airline; the combined cost of the (cheaper) Oneworld ticket and the separate Indonesia return ticket would still probably be hundreds of pounds less than the Star Alliance ticket.

3) Any thoughts of how I could use stopovers to see places without burning segments / miles.

That's the whole key to using RTW tickets; use the RTW as a "backbone" for the expensive flights, use local transportation - low cost flights, buses, trains, thumb - whatever - to fill in the gaps. That allows you to have some spontaneity as well as structure. If you do side trips in conjunction with a stopover on the RTW ticket (say you stop over in Bangkok and make a side trip to Cambodia) try to make the side trip a "loop" back to the same stopover point, so that you don't waste an RTW segment by adding a "surface" segment (fly into Bangkok, fly out of some other city.)

Look at it this way. Say you end up with an RTW ticket (either/any source) that offers 16 flight segments and costs £3200. That's £200 per flight, which is a lot for Bangkok - Phuket, but peanuts for London - Seoul. So use the RTW to pay for flights that would cost more than £200 if bought separately, and buy the cheaper ones outside the RTW if you're getting close to the maximum number of segments or miles the RTW can cover. Remember too to add charges for baggage if you're using low cost airlines; baggage is included in the RTW fares.

Both the Oneworld Explorer and all of the Star Alliance RTWs can be purchased online. Go to http://www.staralliance.com/en/booking/book-and-fly/ for Star RTWs and http://www.oneworld.com/flights/plan-book-online/ for the OWE. Play around with it and you can see what the various prices will be - taxes included. When you get a trip you like, you can ticket it by using a credit card, badda bing.

Use the Great Circle mapping site to add up the mileage, and remember that you're allowed 16 segments, so try not to leave all those flights on the table.

7

Great thanks.

I must say that having spent a further 2 hours I think I am more confused! I understand that Star works on mileage with max number of stopovers, Oneworld on segments and max stopovers. Both slightly confused by the fact that some direct flights might not exist and therefore it may be worth taking advantage of a stopover or this might add unwanted overheads. Is this correct so far, The magic is to route using the stopovers, which requires good knowledge, Gardyloo2 you seem to have.

I investigated 2 of the routes and found the pricing to be a little different than has been suggested, these are as follows in examples A & B:

A) Including Vancouver Star estimated a price of £3,800 for (LHR-ICN-NRT-MNL-BKK-DPS-SIN-SYD-AKL-HNL-YVR-IAH-MIA-EWR-LHR), at less than 34,000 I was expecting a price of around £3,400.

B) The route LHR-NRT-ICN-BKK-SYD-AKL-HNL-IAH-MIA-EWR-LHR is calculated at 28917 m on Great Circle whilst Star seem to add a few more miles on at 29,101 and therefore a price tag of £3,600

I checked the pricing lists out and see they are very complicated and assume that .

Therefore I have 2 questions:

a) Are your price estimates form the price book you mention above and converted to £, or are they listed simply in a website. I have not been able to find them.

b) is there a wizard that will help me to calculate the maximum within a price band, or is the the global circle product?

Thank you once more for helping me up this steep learning curve.

Richard

8

Prices: I get mine from a paid subscription service called Expert Flyer . They only give the base fares, converted to whatever currency you specify in the search. If the exchange rate changes it may take some time for those changes to propagate through their system.

However, the big difference between the "base" price and the one you pay is in taxes and fees. These are based on specific taxes levied by various countries and airports, and - most importantly - fuel surcharges levied by the airlines. Some airlines will attach surcharges to all their flights, with amounts differing according to whatever formula the airlines choose to use - maybe length, maybe length + aircraft type... nobody knows. Not all airlines do this, and not all airlines will "pass through" fuel surcharges assessed by others.

When I "estimate" prices in these threads, I'm generally going on past experience with various ticket types; my rule of thumb is that taxes, surcharges and fees seldom come to less than 10% of the ticket price, and seldom more than 25%, but it's totally a guess. Since every RTW is different - which airports, which airlines, is it a stopover or a transit, etc. - it means the final price is going to be different, based on those taxes and fees.

For example, if you start a trip in the UK or stop over in the UK for more than 24 hours, you have to pay UK Air Passenger Duty on your departure. But if you just transfer flights and are in the UK for less than 24 hours, no APD is charged. That can make a difference of at least £30 - £80 in the tax subtotal. The same thing may or may not apply in other countries/airports visited, and you'll only know the bottom line when you've settled on a specific route (and timing.)

Distance/Mileage: The airlines have their own way of figuring distance. The Great Circle Map website I showed you is not official at all; it's good for rough estimating, but not definitive. If Star Alliance's computations says a route is 200 miles or so farther than the GCM, they're the boss.

Obviously you have to fly where the alliance's airlines go, so connections are usually inevitable. I tried to give you the most direct; nonstops are ideal, but if there isn't one I tried to give you the route with the least mileage. For example there's no Star-operated nonstop flight from Vancouver to Miami. So you have to go via the most direct route with a connection - in this case Houston. Every time you add a connecting flight it consumes another of your 16 segments and adds some miles - a few to a lot because you're not using straight line distance. Remember too that not all routes have daily service. You might need to shift a day or two here or there in order to get the right flights.

Unfortunately, there's no "wizard." I recommend you use the GCM for distances and the Star Alliance timetable (download the desktop timetable, not the PDF from Star Alliance) and see what you can do to tweak the itinerary to get under your maximum mileage.

However, as I mentioned in my earlier post, it's important to note that the prices of RTWs vary according to where you start and end. For example, the base price of a 34,000 mile Star Alliance ticket bought in the UK is £2917. In Germany, the price for the same ticket is £2737 (at the current Euro Sterling exchange.) So right out of the gate you'd save 180 quid. (Of course you'd need to get to and from Germany at the beginning/end, so some of that savings would be eaten.)

However, you wouldn't have to pay UK taxes, and you might find that the fuel surcharges and other fees are less (could be more) by substituting Lufthansa's Frankfurt > Seoul (or Munich > Seoul) flight for Asiana's out of London. Try putting this route: FRA-ICN-NRT-MNL-BKK-DPS-SIN-SYD-AKL-HNL-YVR-IAH-MIA-FRA into the Star booking engine and see what comes out. It might be cheaper (probably will be) and you could continue to tweak the route until you get it right.

A final word about the Oneworld Explorer. You mentioned you'd like to add Rio. With the Star products the additional mileage is something of a deal-breaker. With Oneworld, the mileage doesn't matter, so you can just work with the 16 segments.

Here's a route with a five-continent Oneworld Explorer that you might want to look at: MAD-HEL-ICN-NRT-MNL-HKG-SIN-SYD-AKL-SYD-HNL-DFW-YVR-JFK-MIA-GIG-MAD. This route includes Rio, and by starting in Madrid you avoid both the UK departure tax and British Airways' notorious fuel surcharges. Better yet, the base price starting in Spain is £2407, so over 500 quid cheaper than if starting the Star product in the UK. You would have to add side trips to Bangkok and Indonesia from Singapore (around £250 or less combined using low cost airlines) but chances are the final total would be well under your £3500 original budget.

Check it out with the Oneworld "book and plan" site and see what the bottom line looks like.

Keep working at it - it's not easy but it's rewarding.

9

The deeper I dig the more I see the cleverness of good routing and your logic makes more sense....I have this route:

LHR-ICN-NRT-MNL-BKK-DPS-SIN-SYD-AKL-HNL-YVR-IAH-Mia-EWR-LHR

It comes in at 15/16 seg 13/15 stopovers and 34.050 miles.

I need to lose 50 miles to get it in the £3,800 rather than £4,200 price.

1) I have no real desire for Houston.

2) Chicago would be good.

3) The SIN - Syd routes through BKK at 5,568 (Great Circler suggests it is only 3907m, so we could route without BKK maybe this would get the milage back)

4) There is 1 seg and 2 stop overs on the table ;(

Are the tickets fully flexible on dates once you have booked for FREE (non fees at all) changes subject to flight availability?

10

For alot of reasons rtw flights suck and if your paying anywhere near 4200 i would bet one way flights would be cheaper or dam close and then you have total and complete flexibly. Getting trapped into a set route via rtw flight is a rookie mistake imho. One i fell into on my first big trip and will never use again.

11

LHR-ICN-NRT-MNL-BKK-DPS-SIN-SYD-AKL-HNL-YVR-IAH-Mia-EWR-LHR

It comes in at 15/16 seg 13/15 stopovers and 34.050 miles.

Something's not right; I get 32,256 and 14 segments mi on the GC Mapper for that route, so somewhere in the itinerary you're booking using the Star tool it's adding an intermediate segment which is taking you over the 34,000 mile limit. Look very carefully at the itinerary that is being priced and see if you can spot where the added segment is. It's very possible that it's showing 15 segments because one of the dates you've chosen for some flight doesn't have a nonstop available, so it's routing you via some other point. The online tools do that - you tell them the city pairs and they give you nonstops if available, but if they aren't available they'll route you through some connection point, and won't tell you the impact until you're done.

Here would be the operators for the segments listed above.

LHR-ICN: Asiana
ICN-NRT: Asiana, United or ANA
NRT-MNL: ANA
MNL-BKK: Thai
BKK-DPS: Thai
DPS-SIN: Singapore
SIN-SYD: Singapore
SYD-AKL: Air NZ
AKL-HNL: Air NZ
HNL-YVR: Air Canada
YVR-IAH/ORD: United (You could swap Chicago for Houston with trivial impact on the mileage.)
IAH/ORD-MIA: United
MIA-EWR: United
EWR-LHR: United

Check those carriers against the ones you have.

Changes: Date/airline/time changes are free, itinerary changes cost US$125 (one or multiple changes at one time.)

Read the fare rules. This is very important.

12

Unless I've misread your dates, you're only spending 16 days in Australia?

13

@GARDYLOO2

Hmm.... I checked all flights they all match except SIN - SYD (checking every day) the only route available is:

SIN-BKK Thai, Singapore
BKK-SYD Thai,

Routing like this is 5,568m on Star whereas Great Circle see this as 3907m, A difference of 1,661

You seems to be correct about the Chicago Houston discussion
YVR-IAH-Mia = 2935m on Great Circle
Yvr-ord-mia = 2961m ON Great Circle

Any thoughts on the SIN -SYD leg maybe miss out SIN.

@JIMBURNS - Happy to hear any alternative suggestions / experience you may have.

14

Richard,

Have a look at Scoot (flyscoot.com) as they're a budget airline who fly the Singapore to Sydney leg.

Unless you have a specific reason to go to Korea and Japan then I'd look at getting a flight from London to Singapore, then budget flights around SE Asia (Air Asia, Jetstar, Tiger). There are plenty of cheap flights between Sydney and Auckland however I can't help you with the NZ to US part as I've never done that leg before.