Around the world airfare
 

Does anyone know where I can get some information on around the world airfare tickets? For example flying from San Francisco to London to Nepal to Hong Kong for one fare, to be used in a years time??

Hi Rick, <BR>My husband and I are planning an around the world trip starting at the end of Feb for 4-6 months. I've been working with my travel agent to find a world ticket price - it isn't as easy as they used to be. They still exist but hardly anyone uses them so no one knows how they work. The cost will probably be around $4 500 (cdn) for each of us plus side trips. We want to hit a lot of places so it is hard to organize. You also have to search around to find an airline that has knowledge and will work with you on this. Good luck! <BR>

Our travel agent, MIR Corporation (1-800-424-7289) has us booked on Northwest/KLM from US to Amsterdam, then St. Petersburg, Russia, and then from Beijing to Tokyo and back to US Russian/Mongolian/China travel will be by train or Transero.This is at a much lower price than the $4500 quoted above. MIR specializes in off the beaten track tours. <BR>

HI RICK, <BR>CHECK OUT WWW.TICKETPLANET.COM <BR>THEY ARE FROM SAN FRANCISCO,THEY GOT <BR>REALLY GOOD PRICES. <BR>BON VOYAGE!!

United actually has a round-the-world flight. It goes LAX-JFK-London-Hong Kong. You can purchase a ticket from United to use that route over a period of time. I have actually seen it advertised. I am sure you can also put a few other stopovers in that.

A good RTW combination is offered by Singapore Air/Delta/Swiss Air. The prices keep changing but think it is around $4,500 for business class and a little over $6,000 first. One of the best features of this is that they allow back-tracking as long as you stay within the maximum miles. The basic fare includes 25,000 miles, but you can purchase increments of 1,500 miles up to a max. of 29,500. You can only cross the Atlantic and Pacific once, but within a continent you can criss-cross. If you are flying business class, the domestic sectors are in economy,but you can pay $100 per sector to upgrade to first. Sing. Air now has a couple flts from US to Europe so you can do almost all the international sectors on SQ,and it is a wonderful airline. We live in Asia and do these rtw flights several times a year. It is difficult to get a travel agent or even sometimes an airline employee who really understands all the intricacies - but it is worth the effort. <BR>United' business class fare includes first-class travel on domestic sectors, but you must go in one continuous direction, no back-tracking.

I agree on the Delta recommendation. We used their system for a great RTW trip, and we booked directly with Delta. They have a special desk for these types of reservations, and the agent was very helpful and patient, especially considering we were starting our trip from outside the US. They seem to have the most flexible program, and flying business class is a great deal (less RTW than most roundtrip transatlantic trips). My only regret: not having more time to take advantage of more flights!

Star Alliance now has rtw combinations. There are at least 3 variations in different mileage increments. You can use SQ, UA, AC, LF, etc. A bit more expensive than DL/SQ/SR, but if you opt for business class, you are upgraded to first on domestic sectors (where there is no business class) whereas on Delta you are put in economy. On the Star Alliance you are only allowed 5 stop-overs in the US, but you can "back-tractk" as long as you don't stop in any city more than one time. <BR>On the site www.flyertalk.com there are several threads that have a lot of into on RTW travel. You can find charts where pricing is given for purchasing these RTW tickets in different countries, as prices vary considerably. <BR>Having said this, we just did the Star Alliance Star 2 fare in business class, and plan to go back to SQ/SR/DL. We had two cancelled flights on UA - causing missed connections and unplanned overnights, and two instances of luggage lost for over 12 hours. <BR>For anyone planning lots of traveling, the round-the-world fares are worth the effort of researching.