Round the World plane ticket

[jennypenny]

Does anyone have any experience with them? Starting in May, DD needs to fly from college to here (Philly) then Iceland, then on to China, then back to school, then probably Portugal over Christmas. I started to wonder whether a round the world ticket would work for her and save us some money. We can start the trip in Memphis or Philly (or EWR), and end it wherever works best. I can always fly her back and forth to school on a different ticket.

I've googled a bit but most of the information I've found is older. Has anyone used one recently or know someone who has?

[chenda]

Iceland and Portugal may be cheaper on a low cost airline from London area rather than adding to a RTW ticket - see http://www.easyjet.com/en/ and https://www.ryanair.com/gb/en/

Portugal from the UK can be very cheap, especially outside school holidays.

[henrik]

I've used this one, but I doubt the list of airlines will cover your needs?
My problem at the time was I needed to get from Europe to Australia and back and the RTW ticket saved me considerable money and let me see a bunch of new places. IIRC my route was London - SF - LA - Auckland - Wellington - Christchurch - Melbourne - Brisbane - Sydney - Singapore - London (with a few of the legs done overland and one with a local budget airline).

[Chris]

RTW rules often stipulate that the travel must occur in one direction, without backtracking/overlapping.

Based on those destinations though, it would be wise to investigate using stopovers and open jaws instead of going point-to-point.

Having Iceland in the mix is good; she might be able to take advantage of Iceland Air's free stopover or maybe get a cheap one-way fare on Wow Air from BWI.

Also with so much flying, getting a travel rewards card might be in order. The current referral code Chase sent me has a 50k point signup bonus (good for >$625 in travel spending). PM me if you want the link.

[jennypenny]

Thanks for the suggestions. I looked at them, and talked to a couple of people at Delta and American who were very helpful. The RTW ticket isn't going to work for DD because, as Chris said, you basically have to travel around the world in one direction and are only allowed to cross the Atlantic and Pacific once. Her Europe leg couldn't be folded into the ticket. The other issue is the Reykjavik to Harbin leg. Obviously not a common route and it will be difficult to book legs that include both on the same airline. (I'd rather avoid booking a single leg from PEK to HRB even though DD is basically fluent now.) The woman at Delta was very helpful and suggested a couple of ways to get to the cheapest hubs and then book the longer legs.

That Wow Air out of BWI looks great. The flight was booked on the day she needed. Too bad. I'm going to keep it in mind for future travel. Even their flights to CPH were the cheapest I've seen from the northeast.

[brighteye]

When we booked our RTW ticket, we had the choice between OneWorld and StarAlliance (there is also SkyTeam). Then, you can use any airline from their member airlines to put your RTW ticket together. We went with OneWorld, because they had better connections to South America (from Europe). The whole system is quite complex, so we put our trip together with a travel agent.
But I don't see how a RTW ticket could work out for your DD (instead of "around", she goes "back and forth")