Round-The-World Trip Planning
For a round-the-world trip, I was looking at possible ways to do this:
I won't be able to use credit cards for this at the moment. I was planning to use Rocketmiles/Kaligo/Pointshound and flying on United's Star Alliance partner Air India or Jet Airways for domestic travel & other mileage earning opportunities for this. Here it is in segments:
1) From Bangalore, India, my home town, I was planning to use United miles or Virgin Elevate miles (as the latter seem to be some of the cheapest miles for redemptions) to get to the US with a stopover in Europe. I want to avoid airlines that pass on fuel surcharges.
Or I could book with the above award miles upto Europe/ or take a relatively cheap Air India paid flight to Europe.
2) Then from there take a Wow Air flight from London/Copenhagen to Boston/Washington DC. They had promo fares of $99 dollars a while back but now the lowest I could find was 199 pounds.
3) From the West Coast I could take American's newly inaugurated service to Sydney or Air New Zealand or Quantas. This would also have to be award miles to be cost-effective, I suppose.
4) From Sydney, I can get an Airasia flight to Chennai, India, which was quite cheap last I checked at ~ Rs.11,000 plus change (converts to $~11,000 plus change/~65 = ~169-odd dollars) and then a train ride back to Bangalore which would be a nominal spend.
I'd appreciate advice on how I can make this better and if this makes sense. Which are the airline alliances/airlines I should be looking to earn miles through & redeem on? Are my choices okay or not optimal? What are my options? Please do let me know. Thanks!