Sisters Astray

There are several different options for Round-the-World plane tickets and we considered the following: 

Airline Alliances

An airline alliance consists of several carriers (Continental, Delta, and Qantas) who network together to let customers travel anywhere they fly on a single ticket.  Two of the major airline alliances are Star Alliance, which operates on a mileage-based system, and OneWorld, which is based on your number of flight segments or desinations.  These types of tickets are usually a good bargain, but come with a ton of restrictions.  For example, the OneWorld Explorer ticket allots you 16 total flight segments for around $6K, but you have to travel in one direction, you can only fly to cities that their carriers fly, you only get four stops per continent, back tracking is not allowed, and you have to complete the entire trip within one year. 

Ticket Consolidators

Ticket consolidators receive price cuts on airfare and string together a bunch of one-way tickets on a variety of airlines based on your desired route.   Two of these companies are Airbrokers International and Airtreks.  They’re a little pricier than the alliance ticket, but offer much more freedom, as there are no restrictions.  Wherever and whenever you want to go, they’ll get you tickets.

Buy As You Go

This option is pretty self explanatory.  You just buy airline tickets as you go.  Most around the world travelers are doing it this way now since you can find pretty awesome flight deals on the internet.  Buying as you go also gives you ultimate freedom and flexibility…if love a place, stay for months.  If you hate it, buy a ticket and leave the next day. 

 What We Chose

I spent months, if not over a year, contemplating which option to go with.  For a long time, I was convinced that the airline alliance was the way to go because of the lower price, but ultimately found that the ticket was too restrictive for our itinerary and timing.  We knew for certain we wanted to be in Nepal by the first week in April, but after that our itinerary plans got a little hazy. 

We briefly considered the buy as you go option, but anyone close to me knows that I am a planner.  In fact, I over plan everything.   I understand that one of the reasons to take an round-the-world trip is to be spontaneous and see where the adventure takes you, but there is no way I’d be comfortable with this.   Not having a plan causes severe anxiety and stress for me.  (Yes, I realize this is something I need to work on.)  More importantly, we want to spend our time having fun wherever we are and not be hunkered down in an internet café for hours looking online for flight deals.

 Ultimately, we decided on a happy medium and bought our first six months of tickets from Airtreks for about $3600.   There were no restrictions on our itinerary, the first six months are planned, and (hopefully) we will be well seasoned travelers by the half-way mark, confident enough to buy the remaining tickets as we go!  After Nepal, it’s all up in the air…