around the world
I can’t believe I didn’t already know about this: for a few thousand dollars, you can buy a “round the world” ticket that lets you spend a year flying anywhere in the world, as long as it’s fewer than 16 segments and you decide on the cities in advance.
Here’s a sample itinerary:
- San Francisco
- Vancouver
- Washington DC
- Buenos Aires
- Madrid
- Cairo
- Warsaw
- Tashkent
- Beijing
- Honolulu
- Chicago
- San Francisco
This has 16 flight segments (Tashkent adds 3 or 4 by itself, I think) for a total of 34,771 miles of travel and costs only $8,137. Which is a lot of money, but if you are not paying rent and travelling frugally, it’s doesn’t seem so out of reach. Also, consider that this is 16 flights, so the cost per flight is around $500. You can save money by not originating in the North America, or by travelling a smaller number of miles. And you can change the dates of the flights as many times as you want, without any of those service charges they usually hit you with when you change an itinerary.
Also, it looks like the other major “round the world” ticket, from the oneworld airline network, is cheaper and has more straight-forward pricing. The “six continent” economy fare is only $7099.
Where would you go if you had one of these tickets?
