Hello everyone,

My girlfriend and I are planning to go travelling next year (August 2011) for about a year and I'm hoping you guys could give us some suggestions.

We currently live in Canada and here are the places we would like to visit, listed in the direction we think might be best (west);

Mexico (Chichen Itza)
New Zealand
Australlia (Great Barrier Reef)
Thailand
Cambodia (Angkor Archaelogical Park)
India (Taj Mahal, Golden Temple, Maldives)
UAE (Dubai)
Egypt (Great Pyramids)
Jordan (Petra)
Tanzania (Safari Migration)
South Africa (Cape Town)
Brazil/Argentina (Iguazu Waterfalls)
Peru (Machu Picchu)
Costa Rica
Home

We tried to figure out what the rough cost would be for this but we kept running into errors when doing the OneWorld online estimator thing. For example, when we reach Cape Town and want to fly over to Brazil, the only option is to go to London, England then to Brazil, but that causes another problem because we've already been in their "Europe continent" when we fly to Egypt. Can anyone give us a rough cost estimate for this type of package?

We are not planning on staying in expensive hotels, but rather in hostels or regular motels. As for luggage, we are thinking of doing most of these locations with backpacks. Is this possible?


Any suggestions/tips for planning this type of trip will be much appreciated.


Thank you

This look like an amazing trip.

As you have noted, there are several problems. The biggest one is the fact that the ticket only allows 16 coupons and for this itinerary you need a lot more. So you need to do some of the side trip on separate ticket. Here is something I would suggest:

yyz-cun-lax-akl-bne-hkg-bkk-del-amm-cai-lhr-jnb-dar-lhr-eze-lim-jfk

You would need to do CNS as a side trip from BNE, Angkor as a side trip from BKK and both of them can be flown but are a lot of fun also as a road trip. From AMM you can do a side trip to Dubai (I would highly recommend visiting Oman indead/in addition).

This routing makes use of a loophole which exists at the moment in the rules. Normally you can only have one entry into Europe with an exception for flights to/from certain African destinations like DAR. However, the BA franchise just announced flying JNB-DAR so you could do this and then continue to Europe. This loophole will get fixed pretty soon. Also this can't be ticketed online as the JNB-DAR flights are not in the tool yet.

If it does and you can't ticket this then you can change your order a bit and fly to ....hkg-bkk-del-hkg-jnb-dar-lhr... which will also work.

Price for this in Economy is C$6899 plus tax so this will be C$7500 all in p.p. Plus side trips, hotels, food etc.

It might be cheaper to drop certain continents (Australia) and book them as separate side trips on budget airlines like Air Asia.

Hi - sounds a good trip. This will work with the Oneworld ticket but you need to route slightly differently.

There are two ways of achieving it - either you fly to Africa from Sydney and then go to Asia ... or you could fly Asia-London-Tanzania because there is an exemption if you stop less than 24 hours in London for Tanzania entry.

Your main problem is that you can only have a maximum of 16 segments so you are losing 'value' from taking internal flights around a continent.

Here would be my starting point - put this into the online tool and work from here.

[0] LAX Los Angeles
[1] AKL Auckland
[2] SYD Sydney - side trip to Gold Coast
[3] JNB Johannesberg - side trip to Cape Town + Tanzania
[4] HKG Hong Kong - side trip to Cambodia?
[5] BKK Bangkok - side trip to Maldives?
[6] BOM Mumbai - side trip to other India cities
[7] DXB Dubai
[8] AMM Amman
[9] CAI Cairo
[10] LHR London Heathrow
[11] EZE Buenos Aires [or Sao Paolo or Rio] - side trip to Iguazu
[12] SCL Santiago
[13] MEX Mexico City
[14] SJO San Jose
[15] MIA/JFK Miami/New York

Extra ideas:
good value to add on trip to Easter Island, usually expensive to fly to, from Santiago de Chile. Santiago-Easter Island-Lima triangle route.

Another expensive triangular route to be aware of is Johannesburg - Mauritius - London Heathrow.

Complicated extra idea:
You can 'nest' another ticket like the Oneworld Circle Trip Explorer, which will mean you can use around 25 flights instead of the current 16 flight limit. It might be better value than buying all side trips separately especially given the BIG BENEFIT of these tickets which is FULLY FLEXIBLE DATE/TIME CHANGES.

Lots of good ideas there xanthien, but the above three segments will not work - they involve backtracking from TC2 (jnb) back to TC3 (hkg) after you've already been in TC3 (syd)

However - SYD-HKG-JNB works fine

Slow day in the office - so here goes:

Firstly, welcome to FT D7882

Considering your planned itinerary, you are certainly in the correct forum here, because really the only single ticket that will come close to what you want is the One World Explorer (OWE). Other RTW tickets either have restrictions on the number of stopovers or they are mileage-based � and your itinerary would be well beyond their mileage limits. Also One World is the only alliance with decent coverage of Sth America (and conversely its coverage of Africa is poor, though the soon to be initiated JNB-DAR flight will improve this).

If you haven�t already done so, I suggest you read the OWE web page and fare rules. Half the fun is planning and �what iffing� � and for that you need to know the constraints of the ticket you�re considering. Other useful tools are Sagy�s excellent spreadsheet for One World fares and ITA Software (for exploring the cost of add-on tickets).

I must admit I gulped when DownUnderFlyer said your ticket would cost CAD6899. I double-checked and of course he is correct. Your ticket will be an ex-Canada 6 continent economy-class OWE which costs CAD6899 plus taxes and surcharges. This is known as a LONE6 � L means economy class (L is the ticket�s booking class), ONE is for 1-world, and 6 is the number of continents.

Sagy�s spreadsheet will show you there are far cheaper places on the planet from which to start a OWE.
NZ is just about the cheapest � a LONE5 is NZD4099, a LONE6 is NZD4799 (approx CAD3060 and CAD3580 respectively). My guess would be that Air NZ has fairly cheap fares from Canada (it flies out of YVR) down to AKL to allow you position yourself to start a RTW from there � check fares on the ITA site.

Here are some possible itineraries out of AKL

LONE5: AKL-SYD-BKK-DEL-HKG-JNB-DAR-LHR-AMM-CAI-MAD-EZE-LIM-SCL-AKLLONE6: AKL-SYD-BKK-DEL-HKG-JNB-DAR-LHR-CAI-AMM-YUL,YYZ-SCL-LIM-EZE-SYD-AKLLONE6: AKL-SCL-LIM-EZE-JFK-AMM-CAI-LHR-DAR-JNB-HKG-DEL-BKK-SYD-AKLLONE6: AKL-LAX-SCL-LIM-EZE-MAD-AMM-CAI-LHR-DAR-JNB-HKG-DEL-BKK-SYD-AKLLONE6: AKL-SYD-BKK-DEL-HKG-JNB-DAR-LHR-AMM-CAI-MAD-EZE-LIM-SCL-YYZ-LAX-AKLThere are plenty of other possibilities

Fuel Fines can be significant on a 16-flight itinerary
The ticketing airline sets the fuel fines you will be charged
Using the on-line tool, in general the marketing carrier of the first flight does the ticketing.
Some OW airlines have big fuel fines (for example QF); some have none (for example LA); some charge a little (for example AA)
For the above itineraries that start either AKL-SYD or AKL-SCL you can fly either QF or LA, and those that start AKL-LAX are on QF or AA � which should you choose?

Have fun planning � and of course have a great trip when it happens
One more thing � think about which frequent flyer programme you�ll use.

Slow day in the office�.

* for more on the Platinum Challenge see the sticky in the American Airlines forum

Still quiet here in the office�

The reasons the tool is trying to route you CPT-LHR-Brazil are:

• there are no OW flights from Africa to the Americas (neither North nor South)
• the only OW long-haul flight out of CPT is CPT-LHR (Sth Africa is very Jo�burg centric)

And yes, if you�ve already been to Europe (and CAI and AMM are considered part of Europe), then you�ll have a problem because Sth Africa is not on the list of countries from where a second European entry is allowed

So if travelling westbound, it�s probably easier to enter Africa first and then move on to Europe. If travelling eastbound, then Europe before Africa.

You should be fine using backpacks everywhere

Oops � realized I missed Dubai from the itineraries in my earlier post
It�s worth a day or two - Mrs P loves the gold souk
those that know say MCT is better
Back to the drawing board to fit DXB in�
(CX flies into DXB from HKG via BOM; RJ from AMM; BA from LHR)

I forgot my manners and it needed someone from WA to remind me:

Welcome to FT, D7882 and congratulations on your first post xanthien!

And I would really like to have pandaperth' job.

And I forgot my manners too; I didn't notice it was xanthien's first post

Welcome xanthien and congratulations on your first post being one that was a contribution rather than a question (which my first post was)

(and by the end of the day - it was full on again at work, so D7882 just got lucky)

Thank you all for your responses and welcomings. We have a lot of reading and researching to do. Still have to get used to the acronyms

I mentioned we currently live in Canada, however there is a possibility of moving to the States. As mentioned, it might be cheaper to fly out from a different area, that is something to think about too.

Thanks again, and I'm sure we will have plenty of other questions as soon as we do some research.

We were expecting that price, so that's not a big surprise to us. Anyone know a rough estimate of the other expenses such as living/food? Again, in hostels and regular motels, nothing fancy. we wont be going to expensive restaurants either.

Yes but - don't know about you, but I think CAD6899 is a heck of a price to pay for a LONE6 when it is so much cheaper from elsewhere

So - how would you like to go round the world TWICE - for less? 32 stopovers, lots more FF miles

First RTW ticket - a LONE3 from Canada/US - include the ORD-DEL flight and thus be able to have NAM-ASA-SWP as the three continents (see this thread)

Second RTW ticket - a LONE4 or LONE5 from New Zealand - SWP-SAM-EUR-AFR-SAM. The LONE5 only costs NZD300 more than the LONE4 - so add either NAM (and take a break back home for a while) or revisit ASA

First ticket CAD/USD3499 depending where you start
Second ticket NZD3799/4099 depending on whether a 4 or 5 continent
plus taxes and surcharges

Suggested itineraries:

ORD-DEL-BKK-CMB-HKG-CNS-BNE-AKL-LAX-CUN-SJO-ORD
(only 11 segments used; note LAX has to be a transit as you are only allowed 2 stopovers in your continent of origin and you want them to be CUN and SJO)

and

AKL-SCL-IPC-LIM-GYE-EZE-LHR-DXB-AMM-CAI-LHR-DAR-JNB-CPT-JNB-SYD-AKL

Stop the first one in AKL, then do the second one - returning to AKL and then complete the first one

I think you would be surprised how expensive the costs of living will be if you do this trip for a whole year... even in hostels, you would not be doing justice to this trip if you didn't visit the major tourist sites (which costs real money) etc. Given that you already know that you are going to be spending a fair amount of cash on this trip, I would strongly advise you to look at the difference in cost to upgrade the ticket to business class. Apart from the obvious difference in experience between longhaul economy and business, the arguments in favour of this are:

1. it makes the price of the ticket even better value - fully flexible business class tickets normally cost a fortune.

2. You will get at least double the number of frequent flyer miles which significantly helps to offset the extra cost because you will be able to take some seriously good vacations the following year using those.

3. you will achieve 'top tier' frequent flyer status -- which has several key benefits which will stay with you the year following your trip

4. With so many flights, something will definitely go wrong and usually in an airport you don't want to spend more than an hour in. Flights will be cancelled etc. If you are in business class, and if you are top tier frequent flyer - you will be looked after very well -- rerouted promptly into business class on other airlines etc. If you are in economy you will not experience anything like as humane treatment and should expect some seriously long waits sleeping on airport floors!

--

I think pandaperth's idea of two RTWs is a much better idea than my nested Circle Trip Explorer suggestion. (Only if you can definitely complete within 12 months). In his first ticket you have only 3 asian segments, you can add a fourth by flying from HKG to either Shanghai or Tokyo and then flying from there to Australia.

For another data-point, my wife and I did a 14-month RTW trip using a DONE5, which we purchased in YYZ (we live in the U.S.) to take advantage of the South America price (we took a weekend trip to Niagara Falls). We then booked a one-way ticket from JFK-SCL using BA miles on LA, so that we could start our trip in SCL. Our DONE5 routing was CJC-xSCL-IPC-SCL-EZE-JFK-xDFW-OGG/HNL-NRT/KIX-BKK/DPS-HKG-LHR-MRU/NBO-xLHR-xJFK-SCL (we had to start in CJC to avoid the passing through the point of origin rule). We purchased the LAN South America Airpass for our intra-South American travels (AA's version of the South American airpass required a round-trip OneWorld ticket to link the pass to (notwithstanding that we were exiting South America on our DONE5, which theoretically should have been sufficient), while LA was more flexible and let us link it to our one-way ticket into South America (plus it was cheaper)). We used a Eurorail for our six weeks in Europe, and we relied on various discount carriers for most of Asia and certain parts of Europe. We used a TA for Africa (and later for our time in Morocco and India). Two months into the trip, we each redeemed 190,000 AA miles for a One-World award (190C), having the following routing: EZE-xLIM-JFK-xYYZ-LHR-DEL-HKG-xBNE-CNS-xSYD-AKL-SYD-HNL-LAX-MCO (using an open-jaw at the end). (Be careful with this--unlike the paid RTW ticket, all travel on the mileage ticket must be completed within one year of ticketing, so we had to wait a few months before ticketing this, since our DONE5 travel took about nine months to complete.) While we gave serious thought to the earlier suggestion to use two paid RTWs, and while that would have made our lives much easier in terms of moving flights around on the second stage of our trip, ultimately, it's just a lot of money to spend (given the cost of a trip like this), plus we figured that if we didn't use the miles during this trip, it would be hard in the future to find time to use them once we resumed working. Some of the routing on our mileage ticket reflected our inability to get direct flights to various locations, requiring us to route through some other city. Let me know if you have any questions.

(Just adding, our DONE5 technically had one too-many stopovers in South America, but it ticketed anyway.)

Thanks again for the replies.

We have another question, how do you guys schedule your trips when it comes to weather and peak times. For the places we want to travel, it seems a bit difficult to arrive during nice weather and avoid high prices because of their peak times.

What are your major factors when planning the destinations.

jgold, if you dont mind me asking, what did that trip cost you in total?

The matching of seasons is obviously a tough one. I found it helpful to look at Lonely Planet and other guides, since those often had a "best time to visit" section, which was not always consistent across guidebooks. But at least that way you'll know the peak times, the shoulder seasons, and more importantly, the times to avoid (e.g., during a monsoon season). Some places, like Antarctica have pretty firm seasons (i.e., Nov. - Mar.), while others are more flexible if you're not picky on the weather. You should also make a list of festivals, such as Carnivale if going to Rio, and so on. Within a given region, I think we generally found the weather consistent (e.g., Mar. - April for S.E. Asia; May - June for W. Europe; etc.), but tradeoffs will have to be made (e.g., we did Machu Picchu in October, rather than June (October's a little rainy in Peru)). However, it can be VERY helpful to see ahead of time, for example, when Golden Week in Asia is so you don't get bottled up trying to find space on a train along with half the country.

For destinations and costs questions, I don't think I can be much help, since everyone's different. It was a combination of cities and natural-type wonders, with some back and forth either by necessity or on purpose. For me a big part was picking places that wouldn't really work in a two-week trip from the States, and that I wouldn't otherwise get the chance to visit. A lot of the places were picked with the "when else will I have the chance to..." rationale.

Hello again,

We're still saving money for our big trip and have some questions for you guys.

According to our trip, which would benefit us more, "airmiles" or "aeroplan"?

Also, when it comes to luggage, what would you recommend our weight to be? I hear every airline is different but what should be a safe weight per luggage?

That is it for now, hear from all you soon.