So when most people think about long-term around the world travel, they're probably envisioning trains, buses and budget airlines booked on the go, maybe a week or even a few days in advance of heading off to a new destination. As we laid out the places we wanted to visit though, we realized we wouldn't be spending more than 3 weeks in any one country or region. And because we would need visas for a third of the countries we're visiting, it seemed like some basic planning and pre-arranged travel made sense. We eventually settled on pre-purchasing a "Round-the-World" airline ticket with the OneWorld airline partnership, booked through American Airlines (click for AA OneWorld contact info). The main thing to point out here is that we're visiting a lot of places and we already know where we want to go. If we were visiting fewer countries for longer periods, a RTW ticket might not make as much sense. In the end, we get all direct flights during the best times of the day, arranged by one airline desk and all mileage goes towards our American Airlines account. How did we settle on and plan for 6 months?
We started off with a spreadsheet, of course. I mean, who wouldn't want to start their trip of a life-time without one? Question was - do we use Microsoft Excel or Google Docs. We debated but eventually began with Excel, though in the end we transferred to Docs (hopefully you get the dry humor here, although sadly we did actually have this debate). Guess who voted for which.
First up in the planning was to decide on our destinations. Assuming 6 months of travel, and at least 1-3 weeks in each region / country, we started in Europe and headed East, adding up weeks and areas of interest. We went through a few iterations but pretty quickly narrowed down our top destinations given the time available. After picking our regions / countries of interest, we used the OneWorld online planning tool to identify our arrival and departure cities. Our best advice, at least for the OneWorld tool, is to click on your departure city and let it highlight cities with direct connections. Identifying direct flights is critical because 1) layovers count against your total available stops and 2) who wants a layover? If you like puzzles, you'll like this process... For instance, we wanted to visit Madrid, Istanbul, Prague, St. Petersburg and Moscow. Turns out there is a direct Madrid to Prague or Madrid to Istanbul but no direct from Istanbul to Prague or St. Petersburg or even Moscow. However, there is a direct from Prague to Helsinki and direct from Helsinki to St. Petersburg. Stopping in Istanbul would've added a lot of mileage and one stop. So we figured, well, Helsinki would be really interesting, and it would allow us to fly into St. Petersburg refreshed after a short flight. So again, the main thing to do if you're considering a RTW ticket - identify direct flights with optimum mileage (e.g., find a city in the direct path of two other cities of interest) to reduce your number of stops and the total mileage. So how did we end up...? See below for probably the most amazing ticket that I think we'll ever have the fortune of purchasing.
Other examples of optimizing your ticket include a stop in Taihiti and Easter Island (only possible with the OneWorld Global Explorer ticket). These are two hard-to-reach places that happen to be on the flight path from Sydney to Santiago, so they add almost no mileage. We opted for Fiji instead of the Taihiti-Easter Island route, because 1) we think it will be less touristy, costly and more secluded and 2) Easter Island wasn't a major draw for us. Another example includes our Hong Kong to Cairns flight. The original plan was to fly from Bangkok to Cairns, but all flights went through Sydney! This doubled the segment's mileage and stops. So we plan to travel in South-East Asia separate from our RTW ticket and use Hong Kong as a base, with a direct from Hong Kong to Cairns.
Our OneWorld Global Explorer ticket worked out to include 15 stops out of a maximum of 16 and 31,800 miles out of a maximum (for the cost tier we wanted) of 32,000. Compared to purchasing separately, we might have saved by purchasing tickets along the way, but we wouldn't have the added benefit of 100% direct flights, excellent flight times (arriving no later than 7:45 pm in any destination), mileage points, customer service, etc. There's a lot of other tips and tricks, so if you plan on going this route (pun definitely intended) check out all the other online resources available or ask questions in the comments below. Last tip - consider signing up for a credit card with a mileage offer via your booking airline. We got the Citi AAdvantage Platinum Visa with a 75,000 miles special offer and used it to buy the flights. Now we've got 95,000+ points in our AA account, good for one or two future international round trip flights.
