I don't suppose they like it much when someone from Country A starts an RTW in Country B where the fare is cheaper. However, if you walk, cycle, take the bus or train, drive or fly an unrelated airline from A to B, I don't see how there's anything they can do about it. But what if this is--for whatever reason--not possible or convenient?

Let's take a hypothetical case. Say you live in Germany and want to begin your RTW from Poland, saving a lot of money. Say you buy two separate tickets:

T1--return FRA-WAW-FRA on LH or LO
T2--*A RTW, WAW-(the world)-WAW

If you use the outbound of T1 to get to WAW to begin the RTW and the inbound of T1 to get home after the RTW, does this violate any Star rules?

cheers,

Henry

No. But you have to find a travel agent in Poland. If you buy the ticket in Germany (just to stick with your example) the German TA needs to raise the Polish fare to the German level.

If your point of origin isn't too far form WAW, then you could make a one-way train trip out of it, a rental car, fly a cheap carrier or whatever, and make sure the the end of the RTW goes like this:

...-Home-WAW and make sure that the Home-WAW segment isn't happening untill the ticket is abou to expire, at which point you have your start connecting to your next RTW.

Unfortuneatly both the daily flights going Home-WAW are *A flights, so you may need to figure out a way to do that inital segment if you want to keep it high and dry.

With so many low-cost carriers going into Poland now, and at reasonable prices, you should be able to overcome this. Start by checking prices on Germanwings. Next go to the airport websites for Frankfurt Hahn [HHN] and CGN.

Also consider that you do not have to use Warsaw. Your only objective is to build a fare that starts and ends in Poland, the last sector of which you will not use unless you do 2 RTWs in 1 year and you use the last sector to get you to Poland again. That said, look for flights to KRK/KTW/WRO on locos and then for *A flights ex-Poland to FRA/DUS/MUC, any of which can then get you to your preferred departure gateway. You could even go back home for a while if you wanted to have a departure from Germany with your friends.

I would also suggest that if you are from the Frankfurt area that you see if the ICE train connection to CGN can be included. On pure LH tickets, FRA and CGN are common-rated as a rule.