Hi guys,
Looking for RTW options brought me here and I read through the stickies and some related posts, but it seems like a lot of information is outdated and changes rapidly. So I decided to open a new post to ask for advice and try to summarize some up-to-date information.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I understand getting the lowest price depends on:
- city of origin - determines the base fare (cheapest: Khartoum)
- airline issuing the ticket, which is typically the airline of the first flight when booking online, and determines the greater surcharges, such as fuel (cheapest: LAN?)
- avoiding certain airlines and destination, which impose extra charges (in one case changing one city lowered overall surcharges with nearly 40%)

Variance in price is huge. I experimented with 16 segment LONE4 routes which ranged from $2400 to $8000 (with the latter actually covering fewer miles)

I want to do Europe-S.America-S.Pacific-Asia-Europe

As a start point within the EU (where it's cheap and easy to start anywhere if you live in Europe) Madrid seemed like the best option because it was the only way I could start with a LAN flight (Madrid-Lima) and save $500 worth of surcharges compared to starting with EU airlines. The downside was that I had to pass through Santiago twice if I wanted to use 4 segments in South America. This got to me $4300 total.

Then I read about the Khartoum anomaly. Seems like flying 1st class cheap is no longer an option but the LONE4 base price shows up as $1292 in the booking tool (I got all the way to the payment information page so I assume it's legit). Surcharges added up to about $2400 total. It adds a few Arab segments I'm not so excited about, a $100 visa and a $700 return ticket to Khartoum. But the price still seems attractive.
Has anyone bought a LONE4 ex-Khartoum at that price? Even wandr.me doesn't list it that low.

Apparently if you don't want to go to North America, you start planning around Santiago-Auckland, which is the only south pacific crossing and has very limited availability. I read people mentioning some new alternatives but the online tool doesn't seem to offer anything. Maybe there's something planned for 2013?

The South Pacific has limited options. From NZ there's Australia. Anything else seems to be only possible by leaving and returning to Australia (which in turn adds a lot of surcharges). Any alternatives to visit the islands, or should I just book separate side trips?

S.E.Asia also has limited options but with Malaysia Airlines joining *O on 1 Feb 2013 that will change. Do you think their flights will be immediately available when they join?