“I did this exercise in real time with no pre-conceptions and picked the stopovers quite randomly as typical of places people like to visit. I then created the page in real time as my thoughts and plans developed and changed. It will show how through the planning process options will open up for you and how, as you add options, other possibilities might get closed off. This will probably happen during your planning process. As it does, remember to keep focused on the prime objectives of your trip.”

“You are going to need to make a list! It doesn’t matter if it is in an Excel spreadsheet, a spiral notebook or on a series of Post-It notes on the side of your fridge. You are going to need to make a list!”

“Your Round The World Trip is your Round The World Trip! Don’t get persuaded to drop things that are important to you!

Your Round The World Trip is your Round The World Trip! It’s not for Instagram – unless you are one of those Instagram influencers and Instagram is paying for everything!”

Let’s say you have settled on a plan of travelling in Economy Class and spending three months in Australia – which must include New Year’s Eve in Sydney, three months travelling around Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, a month in New Zealand, a month in Japan, a week in Hawaii, a month in Mexico, a month in Rio de Janeiro and a week in Munich for Oktoberfest for around a ten and a half months trip.

Having read The Knowledge and looked up the Three Letter Codes for all the places you wish to visit it is time to consult The Great Circle Mapper.

Enter your Three Letter codes as a seach string in the box at the top with a dash between each. In this case the search string will be LON-SYD-BKK-AKL-TYO-HNL-MEX-RIO-MUC-LON

Then press the MAP button.

This will return you this useful map plus a total mileage.

This mileage is measured using the Great Circle distance which is generally slightly less than the Ticketed Point Mileage the airline will use to calculate the mileage for your ticket. However for the moment it is good enough.

As we can see this clocks in at a whopping 45,596 miles which takes the route out of the scope of the mileage based tickets which have a maximum limit of 39,000 miles.

It also visits Asia twice and the South West Pacific twice which means it is not a valid routing for the continents based Oneworld Explorer ticket.

So it is time to see if you can smooth things out.

Swapping the order to LON-MUC-TYO-BKK-SYD-AKL-HNL-MEX-RIO-LON drops our provisional distance to 33,954 miles, which is a lot more manageable.

However, the next step is to start to plot this on a calendar and it quickly becomes clear that this is not going to stack up for you. If you want a week at Oktoberfest in Munich plus a month in Japan, plus three months around Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, then you won’t be getting into Sydney until late January or early February and you aren’t going to be there for New Year’s Eve.

Let’s say in your scale of importance New Year’s Eve in Sydney is a “must”, and Oktoberfest is a “always wanted to go there”. You need to work something out to see if both are possible.

If you switch things around and go around the world in the other direction, but keep Munich as the first stop you reduce the distance to a provisional 34,308 miles. This is just over the 34,000 mile limit of some tickets. However you need to remember that the Ticketed Point Mileage will likely be a little higher than this, and you haven’t started looking to see if there are direct flights between all the stopovers yet.

What you have established is that your route is possible within the mileage limit of a ticket.

If you plot this on a calendar it is just about workable. If you go for the first week of Oktoberfest in Munich, usually starting around September 20th, you will be in Brazil from roughly 27th September – 27th October, Mexico from 27th October – 27th November, Hawaii from 27th November – 3rd December and New Zealand from 3rd December – 3rd January. You are going to have to shave a couple of days off here and there but you can make it to Sydney for New Year’s Eve.

Continuing beyond Australia this will mean flying from Sydney to Thailand in late March, Thailand to Japan in late June and from Japan back to London in late July.

“Now you have a rough idea of where you will be and when you will be there, it is time to do a little research. What will the weather be like when you visit? – You might want to avoid Monsoon season. Are there any local festivals or holidays which clash with your dates? – Going to Helsinki for Midsummer’s Day is fantastic but it is handy to know that most shops, bars and restaurants will be closed.

Run these checks now!”

Let’s assume your weather, festivals and holidays checks haven’t shown up any problems and you can proceed.

As this site keeps telling you, your options are going to be a Oneworld ticket, a Star Alliance ticket or a Build Your Own ticket. It might be helpful here to take out a subscription to expertflyer.com – this gives you all sorts of flight information at your fingertips but it is a subscription service – albeit one that is easy to cancel. The other option, and the one we will go with here, is to use an online Booking Engine as a research facility. In this case we are going to use trip.com. Let’s research the London to Munich sector.

Be sure to specify “Flights” and “One Way”, your departure and arrival cities and the approximate date you wish to travel. At this stage number of passengers and Class of Travel are not important. Click “Search” and this will return a screen as below.

If no direct flight options are displayed try changing the date slightly. Flights on some routes might not operate daily.

There are Radio Buttons on the left where you can specify Oneworld or Star Alliance. However because you have done your homework you will know that British Airways are in Oneworld and Lufthansa are in Star Alliance and we can see that both offer nonstop flights on this route.

You will need to continue this process for the whole of your itinerary.

The results will be as below:

For Star Alliance the shortest routing is London Heathrow – Munich – via Lisbon – Rio de Janeiro – via Panama City – Mexico City – via San Francisco – Honolulu – Auckland – Sydney – Bangkok – Tokyo Haneda – London Heathrow.

This is 34,883 miles according to The Great Circle Mapper and would require a 12 stopover/39,000 mile YRWSPCL3 ticket priced at GBP 3008 plus taxes and charges.

However the 15 stopover/39,000 mile YRWSTAR3 ticket priced at GBP 3010 plus taxes and charges might also be considered.

“Both these tickets offer you more bang for your buck than you are currently using. Adding more stopovers is only going to add to taxes and charges you pay. You might decide it is a waste to leave stopovers and mileage on the table.”

The Star Alliance route uses 12 sectors with 8 stopovers so you again have the option to squeeze some extra value out of the situation.

You currently have transfers in Lisbon, Panama City and San Francisco so the first question is whether you think any of those is worth adding as a stopover. Let’s suppose that you decide that Panama City and San Francisco are both worth seeing but that you also noticed that one of the options for routing between Mexico City and Honolulu was to route via Vancouver and you are tempted by that too. trip.com tells us that Star Alliance have direct flights between San Francisco and Vancouver so you decide to add Vancouver in as well.

This now gives you a 13 sector/11 stopover routing of London Heathrow – Munich – via Lisbon – Rio de Janeiro – Panama City – Mexico City – San Francisco – Vancouver – Honolulu – Auckland – Sydney – Bangkok – Tokyo Haneda – London Heathrow. The Great Circle Mapper gives us a mileage of 35,990 so there is no danger of busting through the 39,000 mile ceiling when you convert to Ticketed Point Mileage later.

You are quite taken with the idea of swapping the order of Australia and New Zealand in order not to have to condense your time in Brazil and Mexico and in order to add in the Panama City, San Francisco and Vancouver stops. However trip.com tells you that Star Alliance has no direct Honolulu – Australia flights nor any direct New Zealand – Thailand flights and wants to route you via Singapore.

This means the routing becomes London Heathrow – Munich – via Lisbon – Rio de Janeiro – Panama City – Mexico City – San Francisco – Vancouver – Honolulu – via Auckland – Sydney – Auckland – via Singapore – Bangkok – Tokyo Haneda – London Heathrow. This takes the Great Circle mileage up to 38,774 which is dangerously close to the 39,000 limit.

At this point you would need to get an expertflyer.com subscription where you can check the Ticketed Point Mileage or phone up a Travel Agent and ask them very nicely to do the calculation for you. The Ticketed Point Mileage for this is actually 39,056 so this route is not possible.

There are three options here: You can abandon the idea of Vancouver which drops the Great Circle Mileage down to 37,667 (Ticketed Point Mileage 37,977). You can abandon San Francisco which drops the Great Circle Mileage down to 38,542 (Ticketed Point Mileage 38,858). Or you can keep both San Francisco and Vancouver and begin and end your three months in the Far East in Singapore instead of Bangkok. This drops the Great Circle Mileage down to 38,335 (Ticketed Point Mileage 38,639).

You decide to drop Vancouver because it was a left field idea anyway, and to make Singapore – Bangkok a surface sector so you don’t have to make your way back down to Singapore to pick up the flight to Tokyo.

This gives you a 14 sector/11 stopover routing of  London Heathrow – Munich – via Lisbon – Rio de Janeiro – Panama City – Mexico City – San Francisco – Honolulu – via Auckland – Sydney – Auckland – Singapore -/Surface/- Bangkok – Tokyo Haneda – London Heathrow with a Great Circle mileage of 37,667 (Ticketed Point Mileage 37,977).

So you still have 1,000 miles and two sectors to play with. Perhaps you want to see both islands in New Zealand so you could swap Sydney – Auckland for Sydney – Christchurch and then make your way overland (and sea) to Auckland. This takes the Great Circle mileage up to 38,108 (Ticketed Point Mileage 38,424).

You still have one sector left to play with and you can pull the same trick in Japan as you have in New Zealand by flying from Bangkok into Osaka and then travelling overland to Tokyo.

This gives a final 16 sector/10 stopover routing of London Heathrow – Munich – via Lisbon – Rio de Janeiro – Panama City – Mexico City – San Francisco – Honolulu – via Auckland – Sydney – Christchurch -/Surface/- Auckland – Singapore -/Surface/- Bangkok – Osaka Kansai -/Overland/- Tokyo Haneda – London Heathrow at 38,110 Great Circle miles (38,424 Ticketed Point Miles).

This can be done using a YRWSPCL3 ticket priced at GBP 3008 plus taxes and charges of GBP 817.62 for a total of GBP 3825.62 as of 14th August 2025.

The Star Alliance itinerary has oneway overland sectors in New Zealand and Japan built in but does not feature the flights within Australia. You need to price up Sydney – Cairns – Darwin – Perth – Sydney on trip.com and find that you will pay around GBP 600.

This makes a total of around GBP 4425.

Overall you decide that the Oneworld itinerary offers the best value and you really like the itinerary. So the next step is to get onto trip.com and price this up as a Build Your Own itinerary.

Using trip.com with the criteria of no transfers of more than six hours and with a minimum baggage allowance of 20kg the best options were as follows:

“Ladies and Gentlemen we have a winner!

In this instance the Oneworld Explorer LONE5 ticket is the cheapest option and gives you the advantage of keeping everything in one place on one ticket.

Of course, your route, the decisions you make along your planning journey, and your result will be different. But follow the process above and you won’t go far wrong!”