Originally Posted by buddhaman
How did it work out with your ticket etc? Was the ticket price very different to the one you could have purchased at home?
It was certainly worthwhile for me. I managed to just scrape in and get a ticket at TOP 8730 + taxes which ended up being around AU$7000 including taxes and fuel surcharges. A DGLOB34 from Australia would have cost me over AU$10,000 including taxes so I saved more than $3,000 on the fare.
To be fair, the cost of the trip to Tonga should be included in the cost comparison, but I got an award flight to get there so it was very cheap for me. You can get low-season return economy ticket SYD-TBU for around AU$600 if you are lucky.
Oneworld has dramatically increased prices from Tonga since 15 June and it would not be much of an advantage to start your oneworld RTW from there now. The Star Alliance RTW fares seems to have gone up too.
The best starting point for Australians from a cost point of view now is Sri Lanka or Thailand.