Originally Posted by
richarddd
I'd thought of coach or award flights, but that does not seem appealing.
9,000 miles is a long distance to fly and takes lots of time, even to save about $1,800 ($3,500 less the $1,700 cost of the coach ticket, according to Orbitz; it's about 24 hours of flying). 150k miles (AA North America - Africa) and a day or so of flying is not a very good use of miles, IMO.
If I was in the neighborhood of one of the cheap origins on business or otherwise, ticketing ex-MRU or some such might be more attractive.
At least $8,300 for a RTW ticket is cheaper than this:
http://www.nationalgeographicexpeditions.com/486.html
As I've mentioned otherwise, MRU is not the perfect starting place for everybody. You might want to look at the cheaper places in Europe.
Remember that besides ticket-cost savings, the advantage of starting outside NA is that when you get back here you'll be half-way around, with 6 (or 8) segments to spend as you like, roaming between Central America and Alaska, The west coast and the Caribbean. If you start here, you get only two stopovers in-continent.