SFOBrian

Sorry if this has been asked before, but I've searched to know avail...

I'm *thinking* about booking a trip around the world that would occur as close as possible to a single weekend. SFO-SFO. Really it's just a silly thing to add to my life experience list. I'm a writer, and every few months I'll go to a hotel to hole-up for a weekend of non-stop writing. So I'm thinking maybe a future one could just be on a plane the whole time? The plan would be to not have hotels and to try to get the flights as close together as possible. (Although I haven't thought this through yet to make sure I can do it without 18 hour layovers.)

Has anyone tried this before?
Which direction did you fly?
What routing?

I'm assuming I'll buy economy and use an SWU (dunno if it would need 1 or 2) to C cabin.

Everything I've found when searching has led to the *A Round-the-world fares, but those don't seem like what I want.. I think I just need to book this traditionally? (Probably on the phone with some flexibility so I can confirm the SWUs.)

Thanks!
Brian

sbm12

A RTW fare won't work because it requires more time and actually stopping. You should be able to piece together something with a few one-way tickets but it isn't going to be cheap and using SWUs will be hard as you're not going to get UA metal the whole way. If you're willing to use LH metal you can probably do something like SFO-FRA-HKG-SFO but you haven't crossed the equator; dunno if that's important to you or not. That would be 3 SWUs and some good luck getting them to work, especially as FRA-HKG can only clear day of travel.

MKE-MR

Last year I did HKG-DXB-BAH-DXB-IAD-SFO-HKG in a weekend. Did the reverse a couple of weekends later.
It was an award positioning ticket HKG-DXB-BAH and a UA revenue ticket DXB-HKG, nested. It cashed out my EK miles in exchange for UA miles, and I was able to successfully use an SWU for the entire UA journey. Sounds like you have something like that in mind.

When I was in school I used transpac flights for studying a few times (mileage running during UA's triple EQM months on CMB C fares). I found it a great place to study since there was nowhere to get away/procrastinate--this was before the upgraded IFE so I really felt like reading business literature was my best option I can see how writing would be the same way and could be very productive if you have the discipline.

You can definitely do something like this with minimal layovers and no hotel--on mine, I added the BAH tag for about 5 hours to kill off an 8 hour daytime layover, but there was no other layover longer than 4 hours IIRC.

German Expat

An around the world also is more expensive then trying to find the cheapest flights possible. Why would you not just add a couple single flights and make sure that your SWU will clear ahead of time.
E.g. go SFO -> Europe and back and then SFO - > Asia or Australia and back. A weekend is a little short though, you would need an extended weekend.
You could try to get constructive with your routing and go to Hawaii first and then from there back to Europe if the fares are cheaper.
In summary I would not do an around the world because your chances of SWU clearance are too low, the price of the tickets will be more expensive too. If you just want to be on a plane for a weekend try some international routes and put them together based on price and SWU chances to clear.

ironmanjt

^ sorry for the slightly OT post, but I'm glad I'm not the only one who did this. We stuffed 3 CMB-YVR RTs in during the triple miles promo (two C fares and one F) and I think netted nearly 200,000 RDMs during that month.

vkng

Depending on the winds EWR-SIN-EWR on SQ can be around the world. When I went in the fall of 07 we went east the whole way around.