Although i am not a true newbie, I am little bit perplexed as to where to find the best RTW threads, especially those from the past 1-2 years. Specifically, looking for any tool that compares pricing of one alliance versus another, depending on the country of origin.

A promising thread on another forum contains a lot of useful info, and recommended http://www.wandr.me/RTW_Fares.aspx/ - but this is apparently three years old, and the link is no longer valid. Even the root of this URL seems to no longer have any RTW assistance tools.

I suspect that some avid RTW travelers (or those who study the RTW scene) have compiled the comparative costs for OneWorld, StarAlliance or Skyteam from the principal countries of origin. We live in the US, and might choose Skyteam, but not opposed to looking at others -- and I get the advantages of starting in another country and cutting the trip into two pieces (i.s, fly to XXX, start RTW there, make half the trip to get back to the US, wait 6-11 months and make the other half of the RTW).

All recommendations for info on this site or elsewhere will be greatly appreciated.

Rex, in Indiana USA

For Oneworld RTW *ONE* and *GLOB* look in OW forum http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/oneworld-411/

No equivalent threads for the Star RTW that I am aware of. Star forum http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/star-alliance-413/

You cannot really compare RTW as they are very airline and route dependant.

I wrote a "primer" as it were on RTW tickets over at TripAdvisor, here: http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic...ir_Travel.html

Researching the various "global alliance" boards here at FT is a good way to start. You're right that originating the trip someplace besides the US can save money, but much depends on your proposed route, the class of service you want (economy, business, first class) and any airline loyalty programs you prefer. A "cheap" starting point for a business class RTW might be quite different from one where economy fares are "cheap."

These are very versatile and useful products, but they're very rule-intensive, so getting familiar with the rules and lingo can save a lot of time. But the first order of business is deciding where you'd like to go, when and for how long, and craft the RTW around that, rather than letting the cart lead the horse.

In addition to RTW offered by the alliances, one can often find interesting RTW deals through specialty travel agents that piece together itineraries across unaffiliated airlines with whom they have contracted fares. You may PM if you would like a referral.

Thanks for both of these replies so far, though the dismissal by mwenenzi that apples and oranges cannot be compared seems not true. Of course, they can be compared, especially if - - as is true in my case - - I might not be that picky as to destinations.

I was crossing my fingers that you are still active in such matters, gardyloo - - and I wonder if I have my hopes up too much - - as far as taking a "re-positioning" trip as a "partial " RTW - - then waiting 6-9 months and then taking the remainder of the RTW (plus the return portion of the re-positioning travel destination back home).

I am not finding the savings to be that great, in part because the taxes seem to be MUCH higher in my first attempts to start from Jordan (OneWorld) or from Korea (Star Alliance) , compared to my first stab at a SkyTeam itinerary.

Here is some pertinent background:

I made an impulse Christmas purchase of ("simple") round trip tickets to Taiwan for my wife because she had mentioned that she would like to go there sometime. These were fairly expensive tickets ("full M" which are still not fully refundable). One reason for the impulse decision was that I was able to find seats for economy => biz upgrades at the rate of ("only") 25k Skymiles per passenger, each way (100k total for the two of us).

So, I stumbled across an ad for NatGeo RTW guided trips the other day which piqued my curiosity until I saw the price tag(s) - - $65 to 75k dollars per person. Now this is a true NON-comparable type of trip versus the do-it-yourself RTW. NatGeo flies a private jet and has experts as docents to some destinations that are hardly part of any ordinary itinerary.

But it made me curious: how much would it cost to fly all the way around instead of heading back across the Pacific after our visit to Taiwan? It WILL cost us $350 per passenger to cancel our Taiwan trip (purchase price was about $4600 and 50k Skymiles per passenger) - - but the least expensive tier for Skyteam RTW is "only" $9600 in business class.

It got me to try to piece together an itinerary. SkyTeam is reported to be "coming up" in the word of RTW flying, having been a distant third to OW and SA, in part due to its alliance with China Airlines, Vietnam Airlines and a few others.

Still, I am not impressed - - partly because I actually AM somewhat picky about Asia destinations. My wife and I have not traveled across the Pacific (Tokyo, KL and Australia) but we are NOT really interested in much or any of the following:

not really interested in (returning to) Japan
barely interested in Korea
not very interested in Bangkok
not very interested in South Pacific/Oceania, though maybe NZ (but it is SO far away from Asia)

We are still interested in Taiwan and we would like to go from there to Hong Kong. But how to get further west from there? SkyTeam is particularly weak on South Asia and even the Middle East (which is considered "Europe" for the nost part).

I would choose from any two (or three?) of these, but connecting the dots is not easy:

Delhi, Mumbai, Colombo, Abu Dhabi or Amman

As yu can see, we are hardly trying to do ANY north-south zigging and zagging, so keeping our mileage total under control is no sweat.

I would consider one or two "Europe" destinations, with Athens and Amsterdam at the top of the list, but maybe Moscow or Casablanca.

But I am probably more interested in keeping as much as this on NON-STOP flights as possible, even to the point of sacrificing destinations or adding in some cities that are "good hubs".

My first crack at a Skyteam itinerary looks like this:

SDF (Louisville, our home airport) => MSP => SEA => HKG
HKG => TPE (Taipei)
TPE => DEL (Delhi)
DEL => SVO (23 hr stopover. Moscow) => IST (Istanbul)
IST => FCO (Rome) => CAS (Casablanca)
CAS => CDG (Paris) => ATL => SDF

I let this itinerary expire (they allow 72 hrs), and to my surprise, the e-mail they sent me does not put the taxes in writing, but I recall that they were under $300 per passenger.

Reading about the lower cost of trying to start in another country, I tried origination from Amman on OneWorld and from Seoul on Star Alliance. While the base fare dropped down to about $7200 (per passenger) in both cases, the taxes were right about $1000 per passenger. Thus a savings of "only" about $1800 per passenger. Not really enough to pay for the re-positioning trip - - but more importantly, I don't want to go to Jordan TWICE and I barely have any interest in going to Korea ONCE, let alone twice.

So, I may try some of the "lesser" alliances, but at this point, I am chagrined that this is relatively more difficult than I expected - - even without trying to find the savings strategy of originating in another country.

Any other suggestions? Even if not actual itinerary or alliance proposals, then website planning tools, would still be greatly appreciated.

I will say that I found the OneWorld planner easy to go back and try umpteen different A=> B => C => D => E => F possibilities. By constrast, the Skyteam RTW planner can't even find SDF => TPE at all - - it seems like it should be so easy: China Airlines has one nonstop LAX => TPE seven days a week, and a second nonstop flight six days a week. Putting LAX in as a city was a solution with limited usefulness - - it did result in retrievel of the CI nonstop choices, LAX => TPE, but the planner lists only ONE routing for SDF (via MSP at 07:00) to LAX. There are actually oodles of other routings.

I am not giving up yet!

I will contact you pm, Indelaware.

Best,

Rex (once upon a time almost a daily contributor on Fodors.com Europe forum)

Taxes are exactly the same for all airlines flying the same route and class.
Airline surcharges can & do vary a lot, even on the same route and class. One of the reasons why AA is the preferred ticket issuer for Oneworld *ONE* RTW compared to BA.

Hey, Rex, good to see your name in print again, or I should say pixels.

The following is seriously long-winded; apologies.

In the strange world of RTW products, “cheap” cities for start/end points come and go. Sometimes an origin point will “slip beneath the radar” on the part of whoever in the alliances sets prices, resulting in fares that boggle the mind – not quite “mistake” fares like the business class round trip we got from the US to Cyprus for $80 or some such a few years ago, but low enough to make people do some crazy &%$#. For example a couple of years ago the robots at Oneworld offered first class RTWs for under US$5000 provided you started in the Sudan, not at the top of too many people’s bucket lists at the time.

In your case, Korea had its day around 4 years ago, when the Won was super weak against a big bucket of currencies. Business-class RTW tickets were a great deal for a few months, until all the alliances realized that their old pricing for RTW products (which is almost always denominated in local currency) was out of whack. They promptly raised prices until now Korea is no bargain at all in Asia for RTW tickets issued by any alliance.

Israel and Jordan have been traditionally among the cheaper origin points in Europe/Middle East, particularly with Oneworld (much less dramatic with the other alliances) but that distinction has moved across the Sinai to Egypt for the time being.

With the current strength of the USD, the current leaders for “cheap” (of course that’s a relative term) for business-class RTWs paid for in dollars are South Africa, Egypt and… Japan. Here’s where we come back to your plans.

A Oneworld 3-continent Oneworld Explorer bought and started/ended in Japan has a base price of $5417 today. The comparable (and I don’t think they really are) 29,000-mile Skyteam and Star Alliance business class RTWs bought and started in Japan are $5878 and $5588 respectively. The same tickets bought and started in Korea are $7650, $8158 and $7950 respectively, so over $2000 more than an hour’s flight away.

I have to emphasize again that these are all BASE PRICES. By the time you add government-imposed taxes and fees, but especially by the time you add various fuel surcharges (which all now go by a different name since a couple of mega lawsuits have been filed contesting whether they’re fuel related at all) the final price is usually anywhere from 10% to 20% higher.

So let’s talk about your plan/dilemma.

Let’s take your destination wish list and see what we could do with the three alliances’ RTW offerings assuming you started an RTW in Japan. To refresh, your list included Taipei, Hong Kong, Delhi, Moscow, Istanbul, Athens, Amsterdam, Rome, Casablanca, Paris and Louisville. I've only included some of these, but it doesn't really detract from the message.

Skyteam - HND-TPE-HKG-PVG-DEL-SVO-IST-FCO-CMN-CDG-ATL-SDF-ATL-NRT. This comes to around 24,500 flown miles, well under the 29,000 mile tier for Skyteam’s 29K mile RTW, so you could add up to three segments and/or 4500 more miles to the trip should you choose. There are two glitches: (1) you’d have to travel from Hong Kong to Delhi via Shanghai, as no Skyteam member flies that route directly and (2) Air France doesn’t have business class between Casablanca (CMN) and Paris, so you’d be in coach on that segment.

(A note on Casablanca - round trips between most western European cities and CMN are very cheap - $200 or less in economy, tolerable for a short flight. So using RTW tickets with a value of $300-$500 per segment is - IMO - not the best use of those segments, when the same $500 could get you in business class from Paris to Moscow, or Hong Kong to Amsterdam.)

Star Alliance - NRT-TPE-HKG-DEL-DME-VKO-IST-FCO-LIS-CMN-LIS-ORY-CDG-EWR-SDF-ORD-NRT. This is only 22,600 miles, but because of two cross-town airport changes (Moscow VKO to DME and Paris ORY-CDG) that each require “burning” one of the maximum of 16 segments, you have plenty of mileage cap but no remaining flight segments.

Oneworld - NRT-HKG-DEL-HKG-DME-MAD-CMN-MAD-FCO-ORD-SDF-DFW-ANC-DFW-SDF-ORD-NRT. While Oneworld doesn’t place any mileage restrictions on your route, it limits the number of segments you can fly in any one continent to four (except six in North America.) Combined with Oneworld not having too many partners in Europe, this limits the number of places you could visit within Europe (remember, “Europe” includes the Middle East and parts of North Africa). In the above case, I’ve dropped Istanbul and Paris, with the justification that you could include them as separate side trips at low cost from stopover points like Madrid or Rome. On the other hand, Oneworld’s allowance for six North America segments would allow you to include a whole separate trip within North America at no additional cost, in this case a trip to Alaska. (But it could be to California, Canada, the Caribbean, Central America or whatever.)

Any of these trips could be done in reverse as well – start in Asia, then come home for a breather, head off to Europe later, then end up back in Asia.

Or, at a base price around $1000 more than a three-continent Oneworld ticket, you could include New Zealand, with a routing something like this - NRT-HKG-SYD-AKL-SYD-DFW-SDF-DFW-YVR-JFK-MIA-SDF,MIA-MAD-DME-DOH-NRT.

Note these are all imaginary and could be modified to substitute your choice of destinations, provided the routing is compliant with the rules of the ticket product, and you don't exceed the mileage or continent/segment limitations. The main thing to remember is you have to cross the Atlantic and Pacific in the same direction, and you have to limit your flight segments (including land portions) to 16, all done within a year.

With respect to your already-bought tickets to Taiwan, assuming these are on Skyteam carriers (I assume Delta since you could upgrade) you could do one of the following: (1) Pay whatever change fees necessary to change the tickets to Tokyo instead of TPE, and change the return date while you’re at it, then just include TPE as one of the stops on the RTW ticket; or (2) change the return date on the TPE tickets and just buy a conventional ticket (or use miles) to pay for a TPE-TYO round trip – fly to Taiwan as planned, but then fly on your own to Tokyo, start the RTW, then when the RTW is done, fly back to TPE and use the return portion of the ticket. Or, (3) turn the existing round trip into an open-jaw, with the return from Tokyo instead of TPE, then just buy a one-way ticket from TPE to Tokyo.

You don’t need to stop in Japan at all; you can get off the plane from the US or from TPE, then just fly out of the airport on the first leg of the RTW the same day. (Of course I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that, but it’s possible. The RTW tickets are issued as e-tickets so you just show up and fly to start them.)

I like to suggest that people considering RTW trips put them in a context of a multi-year travel “master plan” that includes places you have to go as well as places you’d like to go, and also to use RTWs as a means of leveraging other travel.

For example, some years ago my wife and I fell in love (head over heels) with South Africa. Well as it happens South Africa is at present the cheapest origination point for Oneworld business-class RTW tickets. So in our strategic planning, we knew we had a certain amount of domestic (US) travel that we typically did every year, and we also had family and friends in various parts of the world that we liked to see from time to time – mainly in Europe and Israel. We wanted to visit Australia and New Zealand, more of Africa, and South America.

What we found was that business-class RTWs, in addition to being fairly inexpensive ways of flying long distances comfortably, also were a means of harvesting a whole lot of frequent flyer miles. One quickly attained elite status with one’s airline (in our case AA) which also led to major “bonus” redeemable miles, in addition to bonuses earned by flying in business or first class. Since the Oneworld Explorer doesn’t have a mileage limit, we found that one of our “typical” RTWs generated something like 100,000 to 120,000 frequent flyer miles for our accounts. So we developed a “strategic” plan that involved buying a Oneworld RTW in South Africa in year one, using that ticket for most if not all our travel needs over the next 12 months, then using the miles we’d earned over the next year, then repeating the process. So an investment of roughly $6000 in an RTW ticket gave us something like 20 or 22 business- or first class flights over two years (16 from the RTW, 4-6 as awards). That works out to $275-$300 per premium cabin flight – okay for SEA-ORD, pretty tremendous for JFK-HKG or SYD-JNB.

This is not for everyone, but my point is that these are very powerful travel tools, and they merit some serious premeditation for people who like to travel.

Wow.

Now this is leading to something like what I had hoped to learn!

First, the distinction about taxes versus surcharges is certainly spot on, as indicted by mwenenzi, and I apologize for implying differently. I do not know for certain about the make-up of the "taxes and surcharges" on the StarAlliance trial itinerary because I did not pay enough attention, but the OneWorld itinerary, originating in Jordan had something close to $800 in surcharges. The first segment was, of course on Royal Jordanian. I was on the OneWorld website, so does that mean that RJ is (was) the issuing airline? It seems moot since Gardyloo has clarified that Jordan is no longer the bargain origination country that was a few years back.

I did spend hours late last night, coming up with an itinerary that met most of my criteria - - specifically, ALL non-stop flights (while outside the US) - - i.e., except for the flights originating from and returning to Louisville (my home airport). It also has NO "bad" departure nor times (hour of the day) while outside the US (for example, before 8 am or after 10 pm.

It might be said that this itinerary does NOT have all that many foreign destinations for a RTW trip, but its hidden bonus is that I was able to work in family visits to Portland (OR) for 2 nights, then Los Angeles (19 hrs, both on the westbound travel FROM the US, and a stop of 25+ hrs in Boston on the return from Europe to the US. About the only compromise was having to cut Amsterdam to just 23 hrs, in order to qualify for the lowest tier [note to Gardyloo: 26,000 miles and only five actual destinations ("stops"), that is, greater than 24 hrs; the 29,000 miles level is actually one tier up on Skyteam].

So, it felt like a fairly good deal. It would be based on simply canceling for a refund, our existing trip to Taipei, with the $350 penalty per passenger.

The itinerary, for what it's worth looks like this.


DL: SDF (08:55) => (09:58) MSP (11:20) => (13:02) PDX, stay 2 nights
DL: PDX (19:05) => (21:30) LAX, stay 1 night (19 hrs)
CI (777): LAX (16:00) => (21:05) TPE (Taipei) +12 hrs; stay 4 nights
CI (A330): TPE (11:00) => (12:45) HKG, stay 3 nights
SU (777): HKG (11:40) => (17:20) SVO (Moscow) -6 hrs; stay 4 nights
This is a Garuda Indonesia code share, operated by SU (Aeroflot)
KL (737): SVO (13:30) => (15:55) AMS, -1 hr; stay 1 night (23 hrs)
DL (767): AMS (14:55) => (17:03) BOS, -6 hrs; stay 1 night, 25+ hrs
DL: BOS (18:30) => (21:20) ATL (22:10) => (23:41) SDF

This is admittedly rather whirlwind. 17 nights on terra firma (3 of those in the comfort of family) and 1 night slept in the air LAX => TPE.

We would consider adding 7 days, scattered throughout the middle, even if we added no additional destinations. As it stands now, the family time is on Thu-Sat for our PDX daughter and Sat-Sun for our LAX daughter; likewise Sat-Sun for our Boston relatives. Weekdays would not have worked as well for those (brief) stays.

I recall reading on a post elsewhere about a RTW journey that lasted seven weeks and it contained the tally of hours spent in airports and on aircraft at just over 170 (literally one-seventh of the total trip duration or 14.7%). Our ration is fairly similar, though slightly lower: only one 90 minute connection and one 50 minute connection (both domestic), so 2.5 hrs total connecting and flights of 2+3.5, 2.5, 14, 2, 10.5, 3.5, 8 and 3+1.5 hrs or 50.5 hrs flying; adds up to 53 hrs out of 18 days total travel = 12.4%

But, the news flash is that Gardyloo really delivered the golden goose with the recommendation about trying a Japan departure. The base fare is literally just about half, at $USD 5269 (638,400 JPY) and the taxes only add another $184 per passenger. There are NO surcharges. This is versus $USD 9626 plus $313 taxes per passenger for the itinerary listed above.

The two itineraries are NOT AT ALL identical, but in my mind that really does not matter. They are both VERY good. That's all that matters.

It goes like this:

DL (777): Tokyo NRT (16:40) => (13:44) MSP, -14 hrs; 90 min connection
DL (Embraer): MSP (15:20, same day) => (18:16) SDF

then wait about 10 months

resume with:

DL (MD88): SDF (16:55) => (18:20) ATL, 2 hr connection
DL (A330): ATL (20:15, same day) => (10:40) AMS -6 hrs; stay 5 nights
KL (unspecified): AMS (21:00) => (16:20) SIN -5 hrs, stay 5 nights
GA (737): SIN (11:50) => 14:35 DPS (Denapasar Bali), stay 5 nights
CI (unspecified): DPS (15:40) => (20:55) TPE (Taipei), stay 2 nights
DL (A330): TPE (11:05) => (15:00) Tokyo NRT - - this ends the RTW trip

The only logistics left to tackle is to make a change on our existing Taiwan roundtrip, which will now look like this:

SDF => gateway city => TPE, still this September, whenever the dates exist that have the "full M" class seats (for SkyMiles upgrade).

(I might still do the SDF => PDX, overnight => LAX =>TPE on CI, as I indicated on the initial Skyteam RTW itinerary)

Stay there 5-6 nights, the TPE => HKG, stay there 3 or 4 nights
Then TPE => NRT as if we are headed back home...

...except schedule the NRT => US in 8-9 months down the road as our return from the RTW.

So, we two trips for (very nearly) the same price as simply refunding the existing TPE trip and buying the US-originating RTW.

It isn't so much about it being CHEAPER, but rather reducing the sensory overload, of so many destinations in one trip - - and the toll it takes to be away overseas for a trip extended beyond 15-20 days. This way, we can enjoy Taiwan and Hong Kong this fall in about 10 days, then sometime in 2016, have our actual RTW trip - - with more time to plan it before we go - - and some rather different destinations (trading in Moscow and getting Singapore and Bali instead).

With both itineraries we are more-or-less skipping all of the Middle East and South Asia. It might mean we never get there. Oh well. It's a consequence of too few offerings by SkyTeam.

So, question Gardyloo: is the price reduction out of Japan similarly great on OW and/or SA? Because it might be worth the exercise to see what flights and destinations I would choose with their different airline options. So many decisions!

Finally, this brings me back to my original question!

It seems like there should be a table (or a series of tables) that can lay out the following information

Economy tier 1 (just as an example)

+++++++++++++++++++ Skyteam ++ OneWorld ++ StarAlliance

Most expensive +++++++++ $xxxx +++ $xxxx +++ $xxxx
countries of origin(list 1 or 2)

USA ++++++++++++++++++ $xxxx +++ $xxxx +++ $xxxx

Less expensive +++++++++ $xxxx +++ $xxxx +++ $xxxx
countries of origin(list 1 or 2)

Least expensive +++++++++ $xxxx +++ $xxxx +++ $xxxx
countries of origin(list 1 or 2)

{It's HARD to create a table on a forum like this!]

...and then repeat the table for Economy tier 2, Economy tier 3, etc

and likewise for Biz class tier 1, tier 2, etc

and (for those few interested): First class, tier 1, tier 2, etc

It's no small amount of work, and it would have to be updated with some regularity. But users could fill in updated info, as they plan trips.

The overwhelming number of choices does make for a fair amount of apples vs oranges vs peaches vs pears - - but knowing what countries fall into what levels of (higher and) lower cost is the critical piece of information. It seems like there ought to be a place here on flyertalk where such a compilation could "cross alliance lines".

Many thanks to gardyloo and to all lurkers who read this!

Best,

Rex in Indiana

Yes, and the differences are even greater. In general Oneworld's RTW products are cheaper (mile for mile, or segment for segment) than either Skyteam's or Star Alliance's.

As you can see, the three alliances have their geographic strengths and weaknesses. Oneworld is particularly strong in the Middle East, Australia and South America, but quite weak in Africa. Star Alliance is strong in southeast and south Asia, and in Africa and central Europe, but quite weak in South America and Australia; Skyteam is hopeless in Australia/NZ, in South America and intra-Africa but pretty strong in Western Europe, Russia, China and across the North Pacific.

Rightly or wrongly, Skyteam has been branded as the weakest of the alliances because of some member airlines with less than sterling reputations, such as Alitalia, Aeroflot and Garuda, but this is more often a case of nitpicking and stereotyping. Certainly Aeroflot is a much different airline today than it was in the Soviet days (when it was, frankly, scary as hell.)

With regard to your proposed route for the Tokyo-based RTW, let me just mention that you could also squeeze in a visit with your LA and Portland people and still stay under the 26K mileage limit (which I forgot about) - see below - like this - NRT-MSP-SDF-ATL-LAX-PDX-SEA-AMS-SIN-DPS-TPE-NRT. However one feature of the 26,000 mile products is that they severely limit the number of stopovers and where they can occur, and in this case you'd have to limit your visits to "forced overnights" between flights at LAX or PDX (meaning under 24 hours, or else it becomes a stopover.)

Moving to the 29,000 mile IRTWSKY3 product from the IRTWSKY4 would raise the base fare by around $600, but give you another 3,000 miles to play with - for example a separate trip to LAX and/or PDX during your long USA sojurn - but would also eliminate the stopover restrictions.

You asked about Star or Oneworld versions of the same sort of itinerary. They'd look something like this.

Star (note business class not offered in their 26,000 mile product, so 29,000 miles is the minimum) - NRT-ORD-SDF-DEN-PDX-SFO-LAX-DEN-SDF-EWR-AMS-SIN-DPS-TPE-NRT. Base price for this would be $5587, around $300 more than Skyteam's 26,000 mile product but $300 less than Sky's 29,000 mile one.

Oneworld - this would be a 3-continent ticket without a mileage limit, base price $5417, so around $150 more than the Skyteam 26,000 mile RTW, $450 less than the Sky 29,000 mile ticket. NRT-ORD-SDF-ORD-LAX-DFW-SDF-PHL-AMS-DOH-DPS-HKG-TPE-NRT. With this ticket, you could add two segments within Europe/Middle East and one in Asia without changing the price.

So you can see the outcomes are pretty similar, but with different hubs for connections. In terms of flexibility, it seems to me that the slight premium for either the Skyteam or Star 29,000 mile tickets, or the negligible one for the Oneworld 3-continent ticket, would be in your interest, mainly for the stopover flexibility you have with the longer tickets compared to the very restrictive limits on the one you've priced. I'd also mention that any changes to the itinerary, except for simple date changes, requires the ticket to be re-issued with a fee of $125 (cheaper than most changes to conventional tickets) and a re-computation of taxes if applicable. (Different airport taxes might apply, for example.)

As for the omnibus table comparing the fares, the simple fact is that there are just too many products to price. People have tried to set up "scrapers" that access the GDSs, but these have very limited usefulness because in addition to RTWs, there are products like "circle Pacific," "circle Atlantic," and similar things that clutter the field.

In addition, the alliances themselves can't publish a table, because of various national (or EU) laws that require that airfares be published as "all in" prices - including taxes and fees. This is impossible with these multi-flight products because the permutation of possible itineraries, each with unique taxes and fees, jumps into the millions of possibilities.

Instead, just subscribe to Expert Flyer or KVS, and you can access the base fares on a country-by-country basis. The fees and taxes you have to estimate, or else use the alliance online booking/planning tools to get to the bottom line. And of course, lurk on the global alliance boards here on FT for all the anecdotal information you could ever ask for, and more.

Amazing conversation. Thank you Professor Gardy.

Unfortunately, I don't think I have time for a RTW trip. I figure that you really need 2 months (60 days and 15 segments means 4 days per segment). Maybe you can rush it in a month. I cannot take off one entire month. Maybe I have to wait until retirement?

Maybe 3 weeks off is the absolute maximum but that is hard.

What many of us do with RTWs is to start someplace away from home, tour around, then break the trip at home while we return to work. The tickets are good for a year, so you can finish the trip, say 10 months later. Example - say you start (like discussed in this thread) in Japan and your home is in the USA. Visit one or two places in Asia right after you start - say Bangkok and Hong Kong, then fly home and back to work for 9 or 10 months. Depending on the specifics of your ticket, you might be able to squeeze in a couple of short trips during that time - a long weekend in New York or San Francisco, or on the beach in Florida or Jamaica, or skiing in Vail? Then when it's time, fly off to Europe - London? Paris? Or maybe Spain and Morocco, or Italy and Jordan? And then back to Tokyo, game over. With one ticket you've had two or maybe three or four separate trips.

GARDYLOO... is it correct that fares ex JNB have gone up? Is this still the best place to start... youre a whiz at this so figured youd know if something has changed!

Yes, they went up significantly a couple of months ago. For business class Oneworld Explorer tickets the cheapest places (in USD) are currently Mozambique and Egypt. Look at this thread - http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/onewo...periences.html - for current information.

Legend... thank you... gutted as had my routing all done and priced with an agent in JNB ex WDH but the price just skyrocketed! Darn that Brexit