Cracking the Code of Round-the-World Tickets

Several years ago I stumbled across AirTreks.com, a round-the-world airfare specialist. I blame this site for everything, because I immediately subscribed to their monthly newsletter and I’ve been drooling ever since.

For my round-the-world ticket, I purchased the Star Alliance RTW ticket. All major U.S. airlines have partnerships with airlines in other countries in order to provide travel to virtually anywhere in the world seamlessly with one ticket. The Star Alliance is United Airlines’ alliance, and features partners such as Thai Airways, Egypt Air, and a whole host of others.

With their RTW ticket, you can fly up to 39,000 miles on up to 16 flights on United or any of their international partners. Best of all, although once you buy the ticket you are committed to the flight segments (e.g. Chicago to Manila), the dates of each segment are flexible without charge. This means that there is flexibility to prolong or shorten a stay in one country as needed or desired. Very cool.

On the other hand, 39,000 miles and 16 flights is not as unlimited as it sounds. Just going around the world in a straight line is 26,000 miles, and even getting from the midwest to the Philippines requires a minimum of 3 flights. Plus, you can’t cross from one continent to another and then cross back.

With the outline of my itinerary in hand, it boiled down to minimizing down to as few flights as possible, and trying whenever feasible to cross overland from one country to the next.

Could I cross from Thailand into Cambodia by bus? Can you travel from the Senegal into Mali via train? Do you need a special permit to cross overland from Bangladesh into India? (You do.) If you’re going to fly from western Africa to northern Africa, who is the Star Alliance airline partner in the region so that you can do one nonstop flight instead of two flights with a connection? (Egypt Air). In instances where overland border crossings are not possible, are there cheap regional carriers available?

For Europe, none of this is a big deal: a comprehensive Eurail train pass will grant you virtually everything you need. But for most every other destination, this made for an interesting challenge. Keeping a true round-the-world, multi-continent itinerary under 39,000 miles and 16 flights is no easy task! This involved quite a bit of quality time spent in my local Barnes & Noble perusing the country-specific Lonely Planet guidebooks to ferret out the answers.

And I maxed it out: the final flight itinerary is some 38,850 miles–just shy of the 39,000 mile limit.