You may elect to make your own way between two points. This is permitted on most round the world tickets. Distance based fares will include the gap between two cities and the surface sector is included in the maximum calculation of 16 sectors on any one e-ticket.

The direction can either be via the South Pacific, South America, or North America or it can be Asia or Africa. The ticket must include a trans Pacific flight and trans Atlantic flight, and must be within the allowed stopovers, mileage etc of your chosen airfare.

An overnight stay can be utilised without necessarily counting as a stopover. Cities can be transited multiple times if needed; this can be the case with major hub cities such as London, Frankfurt and Chicago, but please check with your RTW Airfares Expert first.

12 months is normally the maximum travel duration from first to last flight on almost all around the world tickets. The last flight must arrive on or before the 12 month maximum. If your first flight is 11 months in advance, then the ticket is valid for a further 12 months from the date of depart, not the date the ticket is issued

A minimum of 2 stopovers must be taken on an around the world ticket. More than 20 stopovers can be had on the top tier of tickets. A city may only be stopped in once but can be transited up to 3 times. Some tickets will restrict the number of stopovers in each continent, particularly the OneWorld® tickets which only allow 2 stops in Europe on their 26,000 mile around the world ticket.

Flight changes before departure attract the airline reissue fee plus the fare and taxes are reassessed to current levels with any gap paid. If rerouting, additional taxes and fees will apply. Changes after departure attract the reissue fee, if there is no route change and the same pricing bracket is available it is just the flat reissue fee collected.

I want to book a round the world ticket because it’s open datedRound the World Airfares / Alliances / Tickets certainly offer good flexibility and value for money, allowing you to see more for often similar or less than the cost of a return ticket. Like return tickets though, dates for each leg are booked in advance and change fees are in place for future amendments. Change fees along with seat selections, baggage and even food and entertainment fees are a big part of the airlines profit in the current climate with fare pricing not really changing in tandem with inflation over the past 10-15 years. It’s best to have your dates firm where you can and avoid paying those penalties by the airlines. On a positive note, with changing a round the world ticket, you are able to change multiple legs on at the same time and is covered by the one change fee [subject to availability in your tickets booking class]. There are also fares with minimal change fees when booking the more inclusive OneWorld ® / Star Alliance style fares.

It’s cheaper to travel in a East or West direction, most fares are not affected but the direction you choose to fly. Each city has slightly different departure taxes along the way and as long as there is availability on the same flights, there will only be a minor change based on if you head East or West. Our Airfares Experts may suggest the order of your itinerary should booking class availability make the difference.

I’ll book last minute, it’ll be cheaper, with airlines having implemented advanced yield management software that tracks and uses a very long history of booking trends, they can effectively stimulate demand in advance to fill aircraft well before the travel date. This allows them to skim the market and as you get closer, pricing will trend up as people book. In the low seasons you may get away with booking relatively late, but for other times of the year we recommend 3-6 months notice if travelling outside of school holidays, or 6-10 months booking notice for travel during a school holiday period. More seats and discounted seats are not released closer to departure, in fact, airlines make most of their profit in the last few weeks of sale selling the last few seats at a premium to those people who absolutely have to travel regardless of cost.

Booking economy and upgrade with frequent flyer points, upgrading with frequent flyer points is a bit of a mirage for most travellers. While we see a lot of people earning points with credit cards and many wanting to use them to upgrade to business class. Unfortunately that is not a realistic option without maintaining a high status frequent flyer account. Airline upgrades are primarily based on frequent flyer status, rewarding those who spend the most time in the air with them. Also, you need to pay upfront for an ‘upgradeable’ airfare which generally rules out all discount level pricing. For Gold and Platinum frequent flyers this may be something worth considering but for Bronze or Silver members it is very unlikely you will receive a confirmed upgrade with so much competition from high tier frequent flyers.

Round the World Airfares can use your FF points to achieve other return sectors within a traditional RTW Airfare, ask you RTW Expert for more details on this option.

In today’s dynamic travel environment airlines offer price incentives to book early with lower pricing for those quick to snap up limited and discount seat availability. However, they require payment upfront to confirm your flights. This is will usually be inside of 3 days from reservation, with some fares offering 7 to 14 days payment options. This way the airlines have confirmed, paid seats without worrying that there will be a number of seats released closer to departure. Unfortunately, the days of having a long time to pay off your flights are behind us when using return point to point airfares.

Purchasing a round the world ticket can be cheaper than travelling to certain destinations at certain times of the year but there is no hard and fast rule. Sometimes due to availability of seats on around the world tickets can be cheaper than purchasing tickets to Australia of the US. See our cost comparison for more information. One thing is for sure; round the world tickets deliver much better value than point to point fares due to their flexibility, no seasonal surcharges and the overall cost per flight.

You can backtrack whilst remaining inside a continent, however, some restrictions apply. For example, you can only travel from the west coast of the US to the east coast once but you may backtrack as long as you don’t make your way back to the coast. Bear in mind that backtracking is counted in your mileage should you be purchasing a mileage based ticket.

Round the World Airfares can also construct an itinerary to achieve almost any routing, we combine point to point fares (ticketed separately) but within the overall itinerary to achieve some very unique and complex journey’s.