My wife and I are probably leaving from Hong Kong or Taipei for our Circle Pacific. We would like to visit Nepal, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, AU, NZ, a couple South Pacific islands like Fiji and Easter Island, and stop in South America to backpack and possibly Hawaii on the way back. We're not sure which cities to fly into for these countries and which ticket to even purchase. From this board, I heard there's a miles-based and a continent-based ticket. What is the least we can get away with? (I'm not sure where to post this, but I know Star and OneWorld are the top two, so I'll post in these two.)

Thanks.

OW only has one Cirlce Pacific fare - I don't know the exact rules (other than having to cross the pacific ones to the north and one to the south).

The Round-The-World fared come in mile-based (xGLOBxx) and continent-based (xONEx) varieties. But given your itinerary they are probably in appropriate and not great value.

You can find the rules for the Circle Pacific (CTP), continent-based RTW OneWorldExplorer, and distance-based RTW Global Explorer:

As published in HK by CX here:
http://www.christen.demon.co.uk/CXRule/

And from the star files here:
http://www.hardlink.com/~markdu/OWFiles/

Whether the Global Explorer is usable depends on your flexibility and needs. Here is an example of an itinerary that *should* be valid. I admit that I have never flown one so I might have missed an odd rule.

yyc-ord-nyc-lim-scl-ipc-ppt-akl-syd-jkt-sin-bkk-hkg-del-lhr-ord-yyc

Comes to a few shy of 34,000 miles.

It does come with a few caveats, though. First, the trip doesn't include Fiji but it does include Tahiti. Second, it doesn't include Kuala Lumpur but that is easy enough to get to from Singapore. Flights cost a bit more from SIN or you can take th bus to Johor Baru for a couple bucks and get to Kuala Lumpur for very cheap. Third, it doesn't include Hawaii which will be a bit difficult with many Oneworld trips. Fourth, no oneworld carrier goes to Nepal so you will be on your own for that ticket in any case. I think Delhi is the closest to it. Finally, the Global explorer limits you to only 4 stopovers per continent with only two in the continent of origin. The two-stop limit goes for any of the Oneworld products so starting out of Asia with that many stops in Asia isn't really possible. Judging by the fact that you mentioned "least", an economy ticket out of Canada is about 600USD more than out of Taiwan. Will probably cost close to that to get there unless you are going to be there for some unrelated reason.

Finally, "Indonesia" is a very big country with lots of beautiful parts that aren't terribly close to each other.


[This message has been edited by Darren (edited Feb 19, 2004).]