About RTWs

WONK WARNING - Unless this stuff really interests you, now might be a good time to take on a crossword puzzle.

There are a number of Round The World - RTW - products offered by various airlines, small groups of airlines (two or three acting together) or by the big airline alliances - Oneworld, Star Alliance, and Skyteam.  (See links below.)

Some common rules

They all have a few things in common.  First, they all have very complicated rules that are often not well understood even by the airline people themselves.  This is probably why more people don't use them - the airlines that sell them don't get it themselves, and the airlines' increasing refusal to compensate travel agents for their work means few TAs bother to familiarize themselves with the products, hence nobody (but us wonks) knows much at all.

Second, they all allow one circuit of the globe, moving in a generally eastward or westward direction between the three "zones" that the airline industry has created for the world.  Zone 1 is North and South America, the Caribbean and some island groups like Hawaii (N. America) or Easter Island (S. America.)  Zone 2 is Europe and Africa.  (For zone purposes, the Middle East is included in this zone and most airlines include the Middle East and countries in Africa that border the Mediterranean as Europe.)  Zone 3 is Asia and the Southwest Pacific (or "SWP") meaning Australia, New Zealand, and the various South Pacific island groups like Tahiti or Fiji. 

With a very few exceptions, you cannot enter or leave a zone more than once.  In all programs you must cross both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, once each. In all programs you must end your RTW in the same country where you began it; there are some exceptions to this such as any country in the Middle East being okay for ending a RTW begun in another (specifically the Oneworld Explorer allows this); Canada and the US are regarded as one country for these purposes, and a couple of others.  But generally you have to return to where you started the trip.

Thus a valid RTW itinerary starting in, say, Europe (Zone 2), could be one where you travel first to Africa (still Zone 2), then to Asia (Zone 3), then to Australia (3), then to North America (1), then to South America (1), and end back in Europe where you started.  An itinerary that goes from Europe (2) to Asia (3) then back to Europe en route to N. America (1), would be invalid as it reverses direction and doesn't cross the Pacific.

Third, all the RTW plans allow up to one year to complete the trip.  Unlike many airline ticket products, RTWs have reasonably flexible change and refund provisions.  However, there are also minimum completion times, usually 10-14 days, presumably imposed to reduce the number of RTW tickets sold to business travelers for one-week long distance business trips. 

Fourth, the big commonality between the tickets is that they are priced differently depending on where the ticket is sold and where travel begins.  This is a very important factor, because the prices of the tickets can vary by up to 100% or more from one country to another.  In general (very few exceptions) travel must begin and end in the country where the ticket is purchased.  For example, if you buy the ticket in the UK, but want the first flight to be between Egypt and Spain, you will pay the UK, not the Egyptian price.  Since the UK price will typically be 40%-60% higher than the Egyptian equivalent, you will have made a costly mistake.

Thus a big part of RTW planning is figuring out where to start and end, and doing the math to determine whether the cost of getting to the start point, in addition to the price of the RTW ticket, makes economic sense.  We chose Turkey because tickets bought there were, at the time, around 60% less than the US, and 20% less than Western Europe, so the cost of going all the way to Istanbul was justified given the "all in" savings achieved over the alternatives. 

Finally, all RTW tickets are sold in 3 classes of service (or CoS as it is called)  - economy, business, and first class.  Thus ticket prices will vary not only by the originating country but also by which class of travel is chosen, and here it can get complicated.  For example, Egypt may be the cheapest place to buy first class tickets, but not the cheapest for business class; economy tickets bought in the UK in some programs are cheaper than the same ticket bought in France.  One of the most expensive places to buy business class RTW tickets on the popular Oneworld Explorer program is Ireland, while the same ticket purchased in the UK will be almost £600 cheaper, well worth the flight on Ryanair to buy the ticket in Britain.  And, of course, it's a moving picture, as the airlines and alliances constantly tweak the "yield management" pricing software.  Still, prices are reasonably stable, seldom changing more than 5%-7% over a year.

RTW providers

There are several main providers of RTW tickets -

·          - Individual airlines, a few of which offer RTWs using solely their own services.  Singapore Airlines is one such.

·         - Airline members of global alliances - Oneworld, Star Alliance, and Skyteam - can each sell RTWs where the traveler is limited to flying on that alliance's airlines and no others.  More on this below.

·         - Groups of airlines that work together to form RTW itineraries. Some airlines that are members of one of the alliances may also team up with non-alliance members.  For example, Singapore Airlines offers their own RTW, and they participate in Star Alliance RTWs as a key member of Star.  They also have joint RTW arrangements with Continental (Skyteam) and the same with Virgin Atlantic (unaligned), and yet another product (called the "Great Escapade") in conjunction with Air New Zealand (also a Star member) and Virgin Atlantic.  United Airlines (Star) and Emirates (unaligned) have another 2-airline ticket that offers very attractive business-class and first class fares, especially when bought in Thailand, but also good from the US.

·         - Specialty travel agencies, who put together RTW itineraries through finding discounted flights between the passenger's stops and bundling them together in one fare. There are only a few of these because the yield on these tickets to them is low.

Except for tickets sold through travel agencies, one buys an RTW from an individual member of the various alliances or ad-hoc groups.  Thus any member of One World can sell a Oneworld Explorer ticket; any member of Star Alliance can sell one of theirs, etc.  Not every airline in a group is willing to do so, however, given the complexity, and in fact only a few airlines even seem ready to take on the matter, further complicating the shopper's life.

There are a few travel agencies (mainly in cities like Bangkok or Cairo) that specialize in selling RTWs.  In general, though, the rules and regulations of the RTWs are so complicated that most travel agents (and, in fact, most airline reservations departments) don't bother to become familiar with them.

Mileage-based v. continent-based RTWs

Except for the Oneworld Explorer ticket, all RTW tickets limit the total distance one can travel and the number of separate flights that one can take.  For example, with Star Alliance one cannot travel farther than 39,000 miles on an RTW or take more than 16 flights. One can buy tickets that limit total miles to 26,000, 29,000, 34,000 or 39,000 miles, with lower prices for the lower limits.  (Note Star Alliance airlines include United, Lufthansa, Air Canada, Varig, Austrian, BMI, Air New Zealand, All Nippon, Polish, Singapore, and a few others.)  Skyteam (Air France/KLM, Alitalia, Continental, Delta, Northwest, Czech, Korean, others) also offer 29,000, 34,000 and 39,000 mile RTWs.  Generally "open jaw" or surface segments e.g., London-Paris-(overland)-Rome are counted in the total as if flown.

The Oneworld Alliance - American, British, Qantas, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Iberia, Lan Chile, soon Malev (Hungarian) - offer the product that we're using, called the Oneworld Explorer, which is continent-based, not mileage-based.  Basically, you buy a ticket that's good for 20 flights across 3, 4, 5 or 6 continents.  The continents are N. America, S. America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Southwest Pacific.  In this program, the total mileage doesn't matter, only the number of continents touched by the airplanes' wheels.  With the way the Oneworld airlines' routes work, it's impossible to visit Africa, S. America, or the SWP without buying at least a 4-continent RTW since there are no nonstop flights between Europe and Australia, between Asia and S. America, or either or the Americas and Africa.

Frequent flyer mileage and programs

All paid (not award) RTW tickets are eligible for mileage/points accumulation through the various airlines' mileage plans.  Depending on class of service (economy, business etc.) the long length of RTW trips can be very lucrative in terms of total miles or points earned, with a couple of significant indirect benefits:

·         Elite status - It is not difficult to attain elite status in an airline's mileage program when traveling on an RTW ticket.  Most airline programs award elite status with an annual accumulation of 25,000 or more miles or some number of points based on miles flown in given classes, with additional elite "tiers" being achieved at 50,000 or 100,000 miles or points accumulated in a year's time, or on some airlines "tier" or "sector" credit totals based on distances/class, etc.  Elite status confers benefits past the end of the RTW trip; for instance elites with most airlines are allowed to use lounges, board first, select economy "exit row" or bulkhead seats with more room, qualify for upgrades to higher classes more easily, and other benefits that can be used after or during the RTW trip.

·         Bonus miles - Most airlines convey bonus or supplemental miles/points for higher classes of service than economy; they award bonus points to elite members of their frequent flyer plans, etc. 

The aggregate value of the miles earned in a RTW can be quite high; for instance, in the Oneworld program, 130,000 miles can be exchanged for a business-class ticket good for travel for up to 20,000 miles, e.g., Los Angeles - New York - London - Hong Kong - Los Angeles, or in other words another RTW.  130,000 miles may sound like a lot, but given elite-level mileage and class of service bonuses, that amount is not terribly difficult to earn in one RTW.  Thus one paid RTW earns two.

Costs

Mile for mile, especially in business or first class, the cost savings created by buying an RTW in comparison to a "point-to-point" or round-trip ticket for long-haul trips is extremely great.  Most people are amazed to learn that they can fly in business class around the world for less than $4500 or £2500 per person, when the equivalent "over the counter" costs from an airline would be double or even triple that amount, depending on precise route.  The fact that the ticket has the potential of funding a second RTW, or at least a further long-haul award ticket in a premium cabin (transatlantic, say) is even more amazing.  Many business flyers who travel in long-haul (and medium duration) trips buy RTWs exclusively; it's not uncommon for business flyers to have two or more RTW tickets in their possession simultaneously, one westbound, the other eastbound, so they can cobble together itineraries that use both tickets in conjunction with their business travels.  The savings to the businesses that this juggling creates can be enormous over the course of a year.

Costs change all the time, and one "bargain" origin point may vanish and another appear without warning, but in general the RTW fares have - at worst - kept pace with price inflation in the industry as a whole, and in many areas have grown at a slower pace than commercial fares.  But monitoring and reviewing pricing information is needed throughout the course of RTW planning.  A couple of the links below are excellent resources for price updates.

Our RTW

As an illustration of how one program works, I'll describe our trip and how it relates to the product (Oneworld Explorer) that we're using.

Our RTW is a four-continent business class Oneworld Explorer ticket, called a "DONE4" in airline code, the "D" standing for business class, the ONE being the term for the RTW product, and the 4 representing 4 continents.  If it were "AONE3" that would mean a first class ("A") 3-continent ticket; "LONE5" would signify an economy ("L") 5-continent ticket. 

Our general route is Europe (starting in Istanbul in April) to North America to Australia to Africa and back to Europe, thus touching 4 continents.  The map below shows the "official" RTW, and doesn't include the flights used to get to and from Istanbul before and after the RTW, nor does it show the flights we will take to "break" the trip between September 2005 and March 2006, nor "off plan" flights taken outside the RTW, like holiday season flights we may take to California, business trips, etc.

One important factor is that stopovers (gaps over 24 hours) between flights are limited to 2 in the continent of origin, in our case Europe, but unlimited in all other continents.  We will return to Europe from Africa in September, but will not travel to Istanbul to complete the trip until next spring, thus we will have a six-month "stopover" in the eyes of the program, during which time we will go home for the winter using separate tickets, then return to London in the spring, travel to Israel on the RTW, then back to London, spend less than a day, then back to Istanbul, completing the trip.  Our 2 Europe stopovers will have been London (six months) and Israel (a few days).

Of the 20 allowed flights within the ticket, there are maximum numbers of flights allowed within each continent, to which one must add the 4 intercontinental flights.  Up to six flights are allowed within N. America and up to 4 in all other continents, but the math requires that not all allowable flights can be used in all continents, thus we will have 3 flights each in Australia and Africa.  Only one flight in N. America can be a transcontinental nonstop; the same rule applies to Australia (e.g. Sydney-Perth) so it's easy to consume ticket coupons in plane changes.

In the course of the trip, because of our status with American Airlines, we will have each accumulated something like 160,000 frequent flyer miles; good for another RTW as an award should we choose to extend the madness.  We will have actually flown around 60,000 "butt-in-seat" miles as they're called.

If we can afford the money and time, we hope to do a second one, maybe immediately following the end of this one.  Our next RTW (as currently contemplated) would feature some more extensive time in Asia and would include South America, specifically Argentina, Chile, and Easter Island. 

So if we were to do that, the eventual "composite" map might look like this...

Links

This is all potentially very confusing to those unfamiliar with air travel planning (and plenty who are.) 

However, there are some extremely useful web links documenting the various programs.  Here's a (not exhaustive) list valid as of the time of writing.

http://flyertalk.com

Flyertalk is a message board that hosts a vast amount of accumulated knowledge regarding flying and airline programs, travel etc.  The Global Alliances boards are especially useful to RTW planners: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=391

Alliance sites

http://www.oneworld.com/home.cfm - look under "global products"

http://www.star-alliance.com/star_alliance/star/frame/main_10.html - look under "airpasses"

http://skyteam.com/EN/benefits/around03/index.jsp

Airline sites

http://www.qantas.com.au/agents/dyn/qf/fares/global - Qantas seems to be the most diligent of the Oneworld airlines to update its rules and fares posts.  American and British seem to want to keep it more secretive.

http://www.singaporeair.com - log onto the US site and look under "promotions" for details on their excellent "Escapade" product.  Virgin's UK phone number is apparently good; in the US only Singapore and Air NZ know what they're doing

http://www.hardlink.com/~markdu/OWFiles/ - a Flyertalk regular has done yeoman work assembling all the "star files" - the official rules - covering various Oneworld products including RTWs.  May be a bit out of date here and there but vital tools for planning.  Lots of fine print.

http://www.rtwinfo.co.uk/ft/index.htm - another FT regular has posted this guideline also, now quite out of date but still useful.

http://qsi.cc/users/wbt/RTW%20Fares.xls - this is the link for a downloadable Excel spreadsheet which is the best and usually current compilation of RTW fares by alliance, class of service, and origin point - incredibly useful

http://gc.kls2.com/ - an amazing website that allows you to set out itineraries and see how many miles they generate - essential for planning mileage-based RTWs.

Phone numbers:  In N. America both American Airlines and British Airways have RTW "desks" that supposedly specialize in RTW tickets and fares.  In practice the AA desk is excellent, the BA desk pretty hopeless: BA (800) 828-7797; AA (800) 247-3247.  In the UK, one goes through the regular BA phone system in order to get transferred to someone in India, apparently. 

A key to dealing with the airlines on RTWs is to know as much as they do, hence becoming adept at the rules and costs is essential.  This is especially important in ticketing, because the US or UK offices will inevitably tell you that the ticket price is the one that applies to tickets sold in that country, not the one where you may want to purchase the RTW and start the loop.