Agrolingua

Simply for the sake of discussion. What is your idea of a round the world trip? Is it a certain amount of miles? Certain specific destinations or continents?

I would might offer that if you basically traveled along the equator all the way around you could say you were around the world. But, what about if you more or less followed 45 degrees north or south all the way around. Would you consider that around the world? Or, even 20 degrees?

What if we were standing at the north or south pole and we had a big compass and drew a circle with a 3 foot radius and then walked around the circle. Did we travel around the world?

So, I am getting a little absurd, but I hope you see my point. What is your idea of traveling around the world?

lazard

Departing and arriving at your initial city while crossing the Atlantic and Pacific.

sannmann

Crossing every meridian of longitude in a single direction.

Agrolingua

As it is an opinion question I am not out to criticize. Could/would you also say every meridian of latitude? You could go north and south instead of east and west. It is all a little relative in a way. Or, is around only east and west?

Sheikh Yerbooty

You could go North/South and accomplish the same thing, but it will involve purchasing one or more legs on a private jet. Far more practical doing it East/West.

84fiero

I'd say the 3-foot circle example is an around-the-world trip in a very technical sense, though not in the spirit of the term. It gets more grey moving down to 20 degrees, 40 degrees, etc.

This bit from wikipedia is probably not a bad starting point in my mind anyway:

Some methods and routes of circumnavigation are easier than others for various reasons. And since the Earth isn't a perfect sphere, not all routes are equal.

I thought this list of various circumnavigations are records was pretty interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_circumnavigations

Surprisingly, the first global aerial circumnavigation was fairly early in heavier-than-air flight history, in 1924

LondonElite

I'll admit to having had some rather nice wine tonight, but you could achieve that by simply pirouetting around the north (or, for that matter, south) pole.

Tchiowa

As you are posting to a travel site, the travel definition requires longitude. Starting and finishing at the same point without reversing east or west.

Kiwi Flyer

A definition I like is pass through every longitude while crossing the equator at least once.

DENviaLAX

I'd say this is the simplest way to put it.

For instance, SFO-NRT-FRA-IAD-SFO would technically be a RTW trip, in my opinion. But at the same time the actual miles flown would be well short of the circumference of the world. If you were to fly a route such as SFO-EZE-JNB-LHR-SFO, you'd actually be making a similar sort of circular path around the globe, while even flying more miles, but never truly going around the globe in any traditional sense.

If I were to do it, I'd want to actually try to go to every continent in the process(most likely excluding Antarctica, but that'd be the cherry on top if realistically doable). Something like SFO-SYD-SIN-FRA-DXB-JNB-EZE-SFO. To me that would be about as true of a RTW trip as you can get.

Agrolingua

I posted this simply as an opinion question and I really like the diversity of ideas.

I will come clean about what got me to think about this (thought I do not want this to be the focus of the discussion). My wife and I are starting a trip in a couple weeks that many would consider around the world. We start and end in Green Bay, WI. But, on the journey the furthest we dip south is Milan, Italy and we do not get further north than Amsterdam or Tokyo. So, we do cross all the longitudes, some of the continents, etc. But, in terms of miles not quite the same as if we hugged or crossed the equator. We have done two previous RTW trips before and on those trips we crossed the equator at least once of twice.

So, I really like the varying opinions.

Annalisa12

My interpretation is very basic for a RTW trip.. just lots of stops

84fiero

While it's a bit apples to oranges for a personal journey on commercial aviation routes, here's a pretty good reference point. From the wiki article I linked above, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) criteria used for aviation circumnavigation records is summarized:

(link to FAI site in the footnotes to the wikipedia article - couldn't get the direct pdf link to work)

Guinness also uses the same FAI criteria for aviation circumnavigation records, with the fastest time by a passenger aircraft of 31 hours, 27 minutes, 49 seconds by an AF Concorde.

I don't think I'd add an equator crossing requirement in order to describe a personal commercial airplane journey as "RTW", if official world records don't even require it.

I guess I'd say, for purposes of a personal commercial RTW journey, crossing all meridians, beginning and ending at the same airport, would count so long as it's not done at some ridiculous latitude closer to a pole.

In any case, there aren't any RTW Police that will scold you no matter what criteria you use personally!

Too much travel

Are there are fare rules that require you to make at least two stops while doing that pirouette?

onobond

This wouldn't be FT unless there also is a spec of fare basis and what lounges to frequent, and which Champagne to expect.

But I'm more curious on how to aquire the Pole Position