RTW ticket but not returning

Hi my gf and I are planning a RTW trip next november, we have a rough guide of where we wish to go

London - miami
make our own way to toronto
toronto to Lima
Make our own way to buenas aries
Buenas aries to johanasberg
Johanasberg to Perth
make our own way to Sydney
Sydney to jakarta

we dont wish to return the the UK and so were wondering what the cheapest way of doing this would be?
We have checked the price with STA travel and it works out at about £1400 pus taxes.
We were just wondering if anyone had any ideas which would allow us to get a cheaper deal but keep roughly the same fight framework?

Thanks for any help you can give,

Chris

Have you actually checked with STA travel that this would be a valid itinerary on a round the world ticket? I've know just recently a new round the world ticket has been released that has Malaysian, South African, Alaskan, Emirates and a few others in it which would cover for some of that itinerary but I think the only way you are likely to be able to do half of those flights is by going via a hub city which would add a lot of mileage on to the ticket.

As far as I can see Malaysian Airlines is the only airline that is operating a direct service between Buenos Aires and Johannesburg and that is only on select dates. You'll be extremely lucky if this itinerary is even possible on any round the world ticket without purchasing any seperate flights other than ones you are probably planning to anyway.

A London-Miami flight only appears to be valid on the One World alliance but then you'd have no chance of doing the South America-South Africa bit on that.

You'd be going from West-East then back only to come back across again. In the direction you'd be travelling I can't see how it would be possible to make a round the world ticket valid because you'd have to do more than 360 degrees of the world to make you arrive back in the same country of original departure on the ticket. Despite the fact you don't want to return to the UK, if you want a round the world ticket you'd at least need to have that as your final stopping point even if you just don't turn up for your flight. Without making it your final stopping point a round the world ticket can't be validated legally. I think you'll only get this to be valid if you did sector fares.

Goodluck with getting it to work. I know I spent weeks trying to get my itinerary to be a valid one.

[ Edit: Edited on Nov 5, 2007, at 3:49 AM by aharrold45 ]

Thankyou for your advice,

Which ticket did you manage to get in the end?
We really just want to have the flexibility of being able to change the dates of our flights.
Really we r very flexible as to which areas of the continent we go to as long as we get one in north america, one in south america one to new z or australia and one going to asia.
If a round the world ticket is not a good option for this do u have anything you would recommend which would keep the flexibility of being able to change flight dates?
We found one ticket with global village which allows a number of stops in all the continents we wish to go however it is valid for one year only and we are planning to travel around for at least 2 years. is there anything similar to this anywhere else?

Thanks again,

Chris

For my round the world trip I used a continent based One World fare. This did allow me to go to pretty much all the places you are wanting and many more but not in the order you want and also I could't fit Africa in and could only be done for a maximum of 12 months. That is about the most expensive round the world fare on the market but got me to some pretty out of the way places like Easter Island, Jamaica, Hawaii. On this fare about the only way you will fit Africa in is by having your last flight that is in Asia as Hong Kong and then take the Hong Kong-Johannesburg flight. After that flight you would have a few options for smaller flights within Africa but then the only place from the next point would be to London.

The only way you will be able to get the flexibility of changing the dates is on a round the world ticket otherwise in all probability you will not only have date change fees but upgrade fees which can amount to quite a lot. Changing dates on a round the world fare is easy, but in some cases you may have to wait for a while before any availability is going to be there for the round the world class as they only have limited seats in that class of travel. On normal fares you will always have a date change fee, but most the time unless you change many months in advance will also have a class upgrade fee due to the fare class you booked not being available any longer.

All round the airfares (and any airfares for that matter) are only valid for a maximum of 12 months no matter if you changed them on the 364th day of the 12 month period or not. I think that when you spoke to STA travel you either didn't mention the 2 years bit or they based the prices on dates as far as they can look in advance and in which case taxes and prices will most likely be different to what they said. It isn't possible to look up flights through a travel agents reservation system that far in advance as you can only do availability for 330 days/11 months in advance. Looking up 11 months and 1 day-12 months in advance will normally come up with an error message stating that fare prices aren't available.

What area of the world are you planning to be at 12 months after the date of departure?

Hi,

We have figured that we should be leaving south america after the first year so would we have to get 2 tickets?
I have just looked at the one world ticket and it looks exactly what we are after except the 12 month restriction. Do the prices of the ticket vary heavily on the places u visit within each continent?

Thanks for your advice it has really helped us narrow down all the options.

Chris

The price of the ticket only varies by the amount of miles you travel (on a mileage based fare) or the amount of continents you go to including the one of departure (on a continent based ticket). The one thing that always will vary is the taxes. The only other thing that makes things increase is if you make more than the maximum allowed free stops in any one continent so for South America any more than 4 stops and you will have exceeded you limited and would have to pay extra for a maximum of two extra stops. Overland sections are also considered part of the free flights.

It doesn't seem like you really have any restrictions at all except maybe the money factorso something that may work for you but in a different order to what you have got the places is getting that round the world ticket and having London-Toronto (overland)-Miami-Lima (overland) -Santiago-Easter Island-Papeete-Auckland-Sydney-Bangkok-London. According to a mileage calculation site that says it would be 25,652 miles which would be one of the cheaper mileage based one world fares instead of the far more expensive continent based fare. That's assuming this all worked out as a valid ticket. Overland section count towards allowed flights and depending on how large that distance is it makes a difference as to how many flights it is considered to have taken up.

I know this misses some of your itinerary out and also adds some places in, but with this itinerary it would make a valid round the world ticket meaning you could save money particularly on the South America section where sector fares are very costly. To see Buenos Aires it is an overnight bus trip from Santiago (and a pretty spectacular one too!).

It would mean as long as you got to the Sydney or at very worst the Auckland part before the 365th day of the ticket, you could just not turn up for the remainder of those last few flights that are meant to take you home. In Australia you have a number of options to get to Asia at a reasonable price as long as you don't leave it until the last minute to book. Without putting those last couple of flights in, you wouldn't be allowed to get the ticket and having a flight from Sydney-Bangkok-London would be about the least flights you could use whilst taking up a smaller amount of mileage for a cheaper ticket. If you just made the Sydney-Bangkok-London within a couple of days of the end of the round the world ticket, then you would have been able to use a lot of the flights which in normal situation would be rather expensive.

Then from Australia you'd either need to skip Johannesburg or alternatively do a return journey between Australia and Johannesburg. Then get a cheap flight to Asia either on Tiger Airways, Air Asia from Cooloongatta or Viva Macau from Sydney. Then you'd get an Oasis Hong Kong flight back to London from Hong Kong. I think that is about the cheapest you will be able to do without making the whole trip fit in to a maximum of 12 months.

That last option sounds really good, what are the milage based sites you are using? this would certainly be an option for us.
The more I investigate the more difficult it is becoming to find a solution due to the gaps where we travel over land.
Is it viable to just book as u go, we have seen it is easy to pick up cheap flights throughout the U.S but is this the same for South America, Africa and New Zealand?

Thanks again,

Chris

When I saw your initiary I first thought "one-way tickets". Ok, with circling mostly the Southern Hemisphere this is too expensive. But the reason I thought the above is that zoom flies London-Toronto and charter airlines like Condor and LTU cover Europe-Miami. Flights from Miami to South America should also be more frequent and cheaper than from Toronto. I thus suggest you consider flying from Europe to Toronto and then making your way to Miami.

http://wikitravel.org/en/RTW#Southern_Hemisphere

Thanks for the advice guys, we have been checking out a site called airtreks.com this seems to have the cheapest. Is this a reputable site to travel with? it is easily the chaepest option for us.
Also anyone who has used this site can they help us to understand what they mean when they say the ticket is valid from the time of issue not date of departure. Does this mean we will have to wait till just a few months before we leave? (Nov 2008)
This seems strange as idealy we would like to book or reserve tickets now and have them valid for the trip.
They also meantioned something about supplying us with tickets in stages, is this a viable option?
If this site does everything it says it does it would be perfect for us as we can book the first half (1 year) of our journey, book the 2nd half while we are completing the first which would allow us to travel for more than a year and we do not have to buy a return flight to the UK.

We just wanted to get the opinions of everyone else here.

Thanks a lot,

Chris + Natalie