RTW airfare varies greatly depending on the route you take to purchase your RTW tickets. Typically, purchasing tickets through an airline alliance like One World or Star Alliance will run you from $2,500 up to $6,000 for coach seats for the entire route.
You can cut some of the price off if you’ve got a host of frequent flyer miles and purchase tickets along the route individually. Many of the alliance rules don’t allow you to use your frequent flyer miles for any leg of the trip or accumulated them as you fly. You’ve got to wait until you return to the origin city, but at least you’ll have enough miles for a free trip or close to it for that trip to to help you ease your wanderlust after a long RTW trip.
Managing RTW Airfares
The further you travel and closer you are to a ‘typical’ RTW trip of one year reaching 4 continents, the better value an RTW ticket through an alliance will be. You will be beholden to your travel route however but being able to fly a few times within a continent will give you the flexibility to leave a country or city that you just really don’t like. If your plans are open-ended and you aren’t quite sure where you’ll be going or want to end up, it’s perhaps better to look into purchasing one or two individual flights and using low fare carrier to “hop” across large land masses. You could for example book a long haul from North America to a point in the west of Western Europe, then use RyanAir for example, to hop from city to city making your way east. From there you could from, say Russia or Turkey, use one of the low fare Central Asian carriers to make your way towards China or South East Asia. That would let you spend 3 months in Spain if you really wanted to and focus your exploration on a particular spot you happen to fall in love with (or fall in love in).
Chose Major Routes and Hubs
You’ll want to plan your trip by flying in an out of continental hubs and major cities. Don’t increase your costs or your RTW airfare by flying into a small airport or country just because you really want to see it. You can move around within continents using buses, trains, and ferries if possible and most hub cities like Rio de Janeiro, Paris, or Istanbul have excellent public transportation and transit systems that are well connected regionally. You can also book a low fare carrier once you arrive, there aren’t any restrictions on local travel for more RTW tickets so long as you’re at the right airport at the right time. Using alternative methods of transportation you can significantly reduce your RTW airfare and use more of your budget for traveling.
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