RTW Ticket questions
 

Hey everyone,

I am planning a Round the World trip for 2008 (possibly for the entire year) and am comparing the plans (eg, Star, Sky and One World alliances)

It seems they all want you to provide a rough itinerary even though it can be changed later. Is it possible to just show up to an airport and hop on a flight if there are openings?

Are there runs that are unavailable to these holders? For example, I plan on flying into Beijing shortly before the olympics. Not sure if that will be a problem or not.

I know a few of you have used these tickets, any tips or problems/restrictions to beware of?

--Joey

Do you mean travel stand-by or find a round-the-world ticket with no particular destinations ?

When I was shopping my round the world ticket, shopping that lasted a few months and got me on dozens of sites and to contact per phone several agencies, I always had to provide a minimum of destinations.

The best option I found -meaning the cheapest !- was a one-year return ticket, Montreal-Sydney, with two stopovers, one in Asia (Malaysia) and one in Europe (Germany), from where I traveled on the continents. It costed $CAN 2500 (about $US 1800 in 2003). The dates at stopovers didn't need to be planned ahead.

Flights added were Kuala Lumpur-Vientiane, Hanoi-Bangkok, Bangkok-Kathmandu.

Who was that with?

I was thinking of this as a rail pass with wings ;) In other words, you can just show up to any train station in Europe with a Eurail pass and provided there is room, jump on/make a reservation.

Not sure if that is how these work or not...

--Joey

You probably had seen this, but here's what I found when googling "airpass"

http://www.airtimetable.com/airpass.htm

It seems that airpasses are regional; there's a section about round the world trips, and according to what I've read, no airpass is available for this sort of ticket. But I may have missread, I spent 5 minutes on the site.

I bought my ticket with STA travel Canada. The employee spent 3 weeks on my case, she did a great job !

Hope this will help, Joey ! :D

Hey Joe, I've been looking at doing the exact same thing. I'm headed out in November of this year though. I've talked with several place that I found on the internet that provide RTW tickets but they've all been kinda sketchy with the fine print.

I think I talked to Long Haul Travel...its a canadian division of another company and they want a pretty structured itinerary...but at a pretty solid price. So I think it's obviously the trade off between flexibility and price.

I have to book within the next few months so I'll give you a heads up with the companies I talk with and how it goes.

Joey, how are your plans coming along ? Were you able to find a rtw airpass ?

Hey Esther,

Hope ol' CH is treating you well.

I found out some information for my RTW trip so I thought I would post it here for anyone else who is trying to do some of the same leg work

I am examining Star Alliance, Sky Team, and One World. With this rough itinerary

January - May Tampa-Malaga-Milan
May-June - Milan-Frankfurt (Heidelberg)
July - Frankfurt - Istanbul - Dubai - Beijing
August - December Hong Kong - Tokyo - Tampa

From what I have gathered from Sky Team it is very difficult to do the Istanbul - Dubai leg (it requires backtracking through Milan, Paris and/or Amsterdam).

My FAQ guide (work in progress)

What if I change the ticket - $100 USD per change on Skyteam, $125 on Star Alliance

What if my tickets become Lost/Stolen - Sky Team (all e tickets not an issue), Star Alliance - mostly etickets but if ticket is lost owner must pay $100 USD and the cost of a full fare coach ticket...if the ticket is not used, then that amount will be refunded

What are the minimum/maximum number of stops? - 3/15 for min/max for Skyteam and Star Alliance (with Star Alliance you are also limited to 24 flights)

How much does it cost? - For Sky Team and Star Alliance they break the prices down by mileage blocs

29k/34k/39k is 3662/4218/4960 plus applicable taxes (~$400) on Star Alliance
Skyteam is getting me a quote but it sounds like the average cost is 4000.
One World charges you based on continents so for 3/4/5/6 continents it will cost 3900/4100/4900/5300 regardless of miles used.




Other Misc notes:

Skyteam seems very deficient at covering Australia/New Zealand and South America.
Oneworld seems really difficult to work with. The planning software says there are 5 change-overs you can make in a continent. So for Europe/Middle East, I need to get to Malaga, Spain. Tampa-London-Malaga (2) then on to Munich via Madrid, (2) then Istanbul. Now trying to get to Dubai is borderline impossible. You have to get on to Asia. That kind of stinks.
Star Alliance is looking good so far.

An RTW trip allows you to choose odd locations that are usually very expensive for the price of miles, so as such I am considering flying from Frankfurt to Oslo/Tromso and from there to Longyearbyen in Svalbard (about as close as you can get to the North pole)

If I choose One World, I am going to try a leg through Easter Island on Lan depending on how it is classified (eg, is it South America (because it is part of Chile or is it Oceania/Australia/New Zealand)

I am also going to find out about the direction you can travel so I will update this thread in a few days once I get everything together. It also appears btw, that the cost of the ticket can be reduced by buying it in another country (for example, Bulgaria over the US)

The wikitravel article is really good and fairly accurate

--Joey

Just checking up Joe. Did you end up booking anything yet?? If so who did you go with??

I think I'm going to end up going with Star Alliance for myself. At first I thought their rates were a little high but if I can keep it down around 29k and do more on land I think I'll so that.

Not going to lie though I'm kind of nervous bearing down and booking it ....just the last leg is killing me figuring out what I should do. Especially since on most of these tickets you can change your dates/stop overs without paying out your hole.

Peace.

I still haven't booked anything yet. I'll be honest the Star Alliance for my itinerary is attractive since it stops the massive backtracking on Skyteam. On the other hand my Aunt gave me an idea. If I am only going to Dubai for a week, why do it during the summer when the temperatures are brutal? I will have a week off in March so I could maybe do Spring break in Dubai and fly back to Spain. The backtracking doesn't hurt me on miles (I am staying in the Northern Hemisphere) only on exhaustion. I just dropped off my itinerary with STA this morning hopefully I will hear back from them soon :)

I still need to talk to One World to see what is available with them (I like the idea of going to Easter Island with Lan) and how the continents are defined.

--Joey

Thanks for the detailed infos. That'll be useful to more tpunks. :)

It seems rather expensive to me, though. Total cost for me was less than $3000, for 6 stops, 4 continents
Montreal to Sydney-»Malaysia-»Laos
(overland to Vietnam)
Vietnam to Bangkok-»Nepal-»Frankfurt to Montreal

but with a real rtw ticket, such as the examples you've given, you don't need to worry about getting additional tickets. So just to save this time it's worth it (when one has the $!).

I'm waiting on, and still have to talk to a few different travel agents about mine just to see what they come up with. I'm open to basically any option thats the cheapest. Whether it means less flights or more flights I don't really care.

Here's my basic itinerary if I hadn't let you know:

Calgary – Auckland (Nov 12)
Overland
Christchurch – Sydney (Dec 3)
Overland
Brisbane – Phuket (Dec 18)
Overland
Hanoi – Osaka (April 15)
Overland
Tokyo – Xi’an (April 30)
Overland (I’m willing to change flights around China/Japan for convenience/budget reasons)
Shanghai – Moscow (May 19)
Moscow – Prague (May 26)
Prague – Berlin (June 9)
Berlin – Amsterdam (June 18)

From here it all depends on price for me. I would like to go through Spain before heading back to North America but if it costs an arm and a leg to get there then I would just head back through the UK or Ireland. (Departing back to Calgary for approx July sometime).


Some have been so completely useless with RTW trips I can't understand how they have a job. I guess there just use to booking cruises.

^We may be in Germany around the same time

--Joey

Look into getting separate tickets to get to Egypt and beginning your RTW ticket from there. RTW tickets are priced according to your originating country, as well as the options involved. It's quite likely that the combined cost of your ticket TO Egypt + your RTW ticket from there would be less than a RTW ticket from the US. Hell, for the cost of a RTW ticket from the US, you could probably travel in J (Business Class) on your RTW ticket from Egypt.

Price comparisons for Y, J, and F (economy, business, first)
(Up to 39,000 miles - from 2004 - I am looking for newer prices)
USA
$4770, $8590, $10780
Egypt
$1929, $3673, $5193

Now, the 39,000 mile ticket in economy costs $5408 if originating in the US, so I'm sure the Egyptian ticket has likely increased in price...but there is definitely plenty of savings to be had!

This is where a good travel agent actually comes in handy, if you're not too familiar with fare rules and all the airline-speak.

Ignore my post above. It contains factually incorrect information, and of course, I can no longer edit.

Joe are you planning on going through a travel agent for your final bookings or just going through the arilines yourself.

I have real mixed feelings for both. After giving my itinerary to a handful of agents most of them were completely useless. The only two that said they could help with a RTW ticket haven't gotten back to me in a week. At the same time though I'm pretty freaked to go ahead and book it all without someone going over everything.

Quick update, I called Skyteam and got this itinerary:

Tampa-Malaga
Malaga-Milan
Milan-Istanbul
Istanbul-Moscow
Moscow-Dubai
Dubai-Hong Kong
Land Segment
Beijing - Seoul
Seoul - Tokyo
Tokyo -Tampa

A few interesting notes:

-Arriving in Turkey requires you to be of "clean appearance".
-Seats on flights in and out of Beijing in August and July are being held (such as those on Northwest/Continental/Delta etc) in order to maximize profits. Except on Korean Air, they aren't doing that. So if you are going to Beijing for the Olympics, look at Korean Air :)
-There is no routing through Dubai on Emirates because they do not participate on RTW tickets, but apparently now Aeroflot does.

So while Star Alliance would allow me to go to the end of the earth (Longyearbyen), Sky Team would allow me to see Moscow and Seoul.

They appear to be similar deals roughly 4k for each. I'll try STA now to see if they have anything better.

--Joey

HAHA! maybe this goes back to the whole thread we had going a few months ago about some girl being asked to "cover up" on a plane in the US for the way she was dressed... that's funny though. Birley's been to Turkey, I wonder if they told her the same thing.

I really like your route, Joe. Most people (including myself) miss out a huge chunk of the world when doing a "RTW" trip, namely Europe, so it's nice to see something a bit different being thrown about.

when you buy RTW tickets, do you buy tickets for like every move you're going to make or just the "big moves"? Like I know that you woul;d use ground transportation in some parts of the trip (esp Europe), but like say you wanted to go to Peru, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, and Brazil in part of your RTW trip, but then fly on then to Aftica. Would you buy plane ticket to each place or would you get the RTW ticket to cover where you are before South America TO one of the above mentioned places, then from that place TO say, South Africa or whereveryou're going next?

Just curious how the logisitics of the whole thing works. :)

When you buy an RTW ticket you initially plan out all stops. So if you were hitting those countries in South America you would see which airline in your alliance covers those flights. Then you see which city would get you to Africa (you may have to go through Europe first).

--Joey