With Increase in Value of the US Dollar, Where to Start RTWs?
 

There is a useful thread on the Star Alliance Board comparing what are currently the best places to start a Star RTW:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/star-...readsheet.html

At present, where are the best [i.e., most economical] places to start a first class oneworld RTW?

[I did look for a thread along these lines and could not find it. If one exists, a reference would be appreciated.]

Discussion of this is cleverly hidden in this thread http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/onewo...-location.html

WearyBizTrvlr has an excellent spreadsheet that computes prices (using real-time exchange rates from OANDA). This spreadsheet can be sorted by Class and number of continents (which greatly affects the cheapest starting location).

Where is it? The only version I could find explicitly states "exchange rates updated 02 May 2008". And the fares seem out of date, with MRU still the cheapest.

At the moment I believe the best price to start a DONEX is ICN and South Africa. However ICN will generally be easier to get to (esp using miles) also you can do a DONE3.

I just ticketed a DONE3 for 4800USD incl tax. If I ticketed this last month It should be around 4300USD or less!

From what I'm seeing S. Africa and S. Korea are virtually tied right now for DONEx/AONEx (4+ cont.) with Pakistan coming in third. This comparison based on arithmetic mean of the prices before taxes using yesterdays currency exchange rates. These latter two countries can be used to start xONE3.