Nick

I did something similar last year. Your plans look pretty good.

As mentioned, backtracking is a bit unavoidable. I avoided a bit by using surface sectors, but you can't do this so much now.

I think your Europe flights look good as the areas you are using your LONE flights don't have so many cheap flights, so I think that is a good use of your 4 flights.

In the US, if you want to go to SEA, you could fly there from London, then across to the East coast, and then your other sectors. I assume you have a reason for going to Panama City? Not that it's bad, but there are lots of alternatives. You have another 3 flights you could use in Nth America, so worst comes to worst you could fly to Canada and back...

The SCL-SYD flight does get booked out, but since your trip looks like taking about a year you should be fine to book in advance. My trip was 360 days, arriving back in Oz on 23 Dec (busy time). You may not be able to book into a date 365+ days in advance, but you can open date, or pick an earlier date and change to the date you want when inventory opens up (about 330 days in advance). I just emailed our travel agent in late Jan (for a Dec flight) to remind them to change the date to the exact flight I wanted. It would be wise for you to pick a date and work around that, as changing dates closer to the time might be difficult...

If you really have no other flights to add, you can also add flights to/from Tassie (or Perth). Perth would be better value, Jetrats are pretty cheap...

Good luck