A Round The World Ticket is defined as a airline ticket originating and ending in the same city, the same country or in some cases the same region, it must include one (and only one) crossing of the Atlantic Ocean and one (and only one) crossing of the Pacific Ocean and must visit all three IATA Traffic Conference Areas once (and only once).

For most purposes if you remember the rule about the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean crossings you won’t go wrong.

So, London – Singapore – Sydney – Los Angeles – London is a valid routing for a Round The World ticket. However London – Singapore – Sydney – Johannesburg – London is not a valid routing for a Round The World ticket as it contains no crossing of the Atlantic Ocean.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has divided the world in to three Traffic Conference Areas.

These are:

TC1 – North and South America

TC2 – Europe, Middle East and Africa

TC3 – Asia and South West Pacific

For a Round The World ticket you will need to visit all three Traffic Conference Areas once (and only once). This means that you cannot backtrack to an area once you have left it.

See below to check which country falls into which Traffic Conference Area:

The obvious place to start your Round The World trip is from your local airport, or at least from your own country.

Sometimes this isn’t the wisest choice.

As of July 2025, a Oneworld LGLOB34 ticket originating from London would cost GBP2550 plus taxes and charges. Originating in Oslo the same ticket would cost GBP1738. That GBP812 saving will more than cover the cost of positioning flights to and from Oslo.

In Business Class a DGLOB34 ticket originating in London would cost GBP6200 plus taxes and charges. Originating in Oslo the same ticket would cost GBP4206.

Replace London with Frankfurt and the results are similar. Swapping Singapore for Kuala Lumpur or Tokyo is also likely to yield big savings.

Each Oneworld and Star Alliance fare has its own page on this website where Franky has produced a Price Comparison table for different starting points.

All airports around the world have a three letter airport code.

Some of these are very obvious, Sydney is SYD, London Heathrow is LHR, Mexico City is MEX.

Some are less obvious, Queenstown in New Zealand is ZQN, Chicago O’Hare is ORD and all airport codes in Canada begin with the letter Y.

Learning the three letter airport codes for the cities you wish to visit on your Round The World trip will make planning it a whole lot easier.

All airlines around the world have a two letter code.

Some of these are very obvious, American Airlines is AA, Air Canada is AC, British Airways is BA and Lufthansa is LH.

Some are less obvious, Cathay Pacific is CX, Qantas is QF, Aegean Airlines is A3 and Egyptair is MS.

Learning the two letter codes for the airlines you wish to utilise on your Round The World trip will make planning it a whole lot easier.

Most Round The World tickets have a maximum mileage limit.

Every airline route from any airport to any other airport has a Ticketed Point Mileage attached to it and these are added together to calculate which fare will apply to your route.

To get an idea of the mileage for your ticket and the fare which will apply without the need for a subscription you can enter the string of three letter codes into the Great Circle Mapper. This will give you an idea of the mileage but uses the Great Circle Distance between each point rather than the Ticketed Point Mileage distance so will not be exact. The Ticketed Point Milege will typically be higher by 1-3%.

The easiest way to measure your chosen route using Ticketed Point Mileage is through ExpertFlyer.com. This is a subscription service, albeit this can be easily cancelled.

On Oneworld Round The World fares you will need to know how Oneworld defines Continents or Regions.

The six continents or regions are defined as:

Africa – excluding Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia.

Asia – including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Russia east of The Urals.

Europe/Middle East – including Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and Russia west of The Urals. 

North America – including the Caribbean, Central America and Panama.

South America

South West Pacific

See below to check which country falls into which Continent:

All the fares shown on this website are displayed as “Plus Taxes and Charges”.

Whatever route you decide on for your Round The World ticket, you will need to pay government arrival and/or departure taxes for each country you visit, plus government and/or airport charges for each airport you visit, plus the dreaded airline YQ or YR charges. These came about in the early 2000s as “Fuel Surcharges” and have never gone away.

YQ and YR charges can be reduced depending on your starting point or which airline is used to issue the ticket. An experienced agent should be able to guide you through this. We tested the route OSL-HEL-SIN-HND-HKG-BNE-DRW-PER-MEL-SYD-LAX-SFO-ORD-MIA-JFK-LHR-OSL on Oneworld in Business Class where the total of all taxes and charges was the equivalent to GBP1860. If we booked the same itinerary but commencing in Tokyo this reduced to GBP1055.

There are hundreds of thousands of possible Round The World routes each of which will attract a unique set of Taxes and Charges, and these are impossible to calculate until the airline booking as been made.

For a basic five stop Economy Class ticket Taxes and Charges are likely to be around GBP600 (EUR700/AUD1250/USD850/NOK8500/JPY120,000). This can more than double for a fifteen stop itinerary and can double again if flying in Premium classes.

All airline tickets have a published Minimum and Maximum Stay.

Round The World tickets typically have a zero or ten day minimum stay. A ten day minimum stay means your itinerary must be at least ten days long.

Round The World tickets typically have a one year maximum stay, meaning that the final flight of your itinerary must depart no later than one year after the departure of the first flight of your itinerary.

Once you book your Round The World itinerary all your flight details will be held by the airline in a Passenger Name Record or PNR. In the case of a Oneworld or Star Alliance Round The World ticket you will have one PNR covering all your flights. In the case of a Build Your Own itinerary you will have several PNRs.

A PNR will include details such as the passenger names, contact information, flight itinerary, ticket details, plus any special meal and seating requests. All details of the agent and agency which made the booking will be recorded along with details of any changes which are made along the way and who made those changes.

As your Oneworld or Star Alliance PNR will in all likelihood feature multiple airlines each of these will have their own “Locator” held within the PNR and through which they can access all your details.

Knowing the Locators for each airline in your itinerary will help you should you need to contact any of them during your trip or access your booking via airline websites.

Whether you book via a Travel Agent or online, your ticket will be issued on the “plate” or “stock” of a particular airline. “Plate” is a throwback to paper tickets where a physical metal plate denoting the issuing carrier was placed into the ticketing machine. Tickets are now issued electronically but are still issued on the “stock” of a particular airline who will then be responsible for the correct payment of all applicable taxes and charges and the distribution of monies to other airlines who are involved in the itinerary.

If booking online Oneworld bookings usually go to Qantas for ticketing and Star Alliance bookings usually go to Lufthansa for ticketing.

If booking a Oneworld or Star Alliance ticket via a Travel Agent, the agent should be able to advise whether ticketing on a particular carrier can reduce the applicable YQ and YR charges.

Round The World tickets usually permit 16 flights or sectors – although some cheaper tickets may permit fewer.

Each flight will use one Sector, for which the ticketing agent will issue one Coupon.

If there is no direct flight between two of your chosen stopovers, for instance Singapore to Queenstown, and you have to fly Singapore – Auckland – Queenstown on different flights with different flight numbers, then this will require two coupons and will therefore use up two of your sixteen sectors.

Conversely if you are flying from London Heathrow to Sydney on a single flight number, even though your flight has a stopover in Singapore en route, because of the single flight number only one coupon needs to be issued and this will only use one of your sectors.

This one is very simple!

A stopover is a period of more than 24 hours between landing at one airport and departing from the same, or a different, airport.

A Transfer or Transit is a period of less than 24 hours between landing at one airport and departing from the same, or a different, airport.

Be aware that if you do require a transfer/transit to get from your arrival airport, for example London Gatwick (LGW),  to your departure airport, for example London Heathrow (LHR), then this will require a coupon to be issued for the overland sector.

Let’s say that as part of your Round The World ticket you want to get off a flight in Vancouver, ride the Rocky Mountaineer train to Calgary and then catch your next flight from Calgary. The sector between Vancouver and Calgary is known as a “Surface Sector”.

The airline ticketing agent will have to issue an Arrival Not Known (ARNK) sector between Vancouver and Calgary and this will use up one of your ticket coupons.

The surface sector will therefore count as one of your permitted sectors and the mileage between Vancouver and Calgary must be counted towards your Maximum Permitted Mileage.

Right! Fasten your seatbelts and prepare for a long haul with this one……

Airlines are in the business of filling as many seats as possible on as many flights as possible for as much money as possible.

However they are also aware that different sectors of the market might have different price ceilings. Ben and Becky Backpacker will likely have a different price ceiling to Roger and Renee Retiree who might have a different price ceiling to Brian Businessman or Irene Investment-Banker.

Therefore within the same cabin on the the same flight an airline will offer seats at various different prices. Generally with each increase in the fare there will be a corresponding decrease in the restrictions that apply on that ticket.

Airlines manage this via Booking Classes, which are also sometimes known as “Fare Buckets”.

When requesting seat availability for a particular flight an agent will see a display like this:

F5 A3 J9 D9 P4 I0 W9 R5 E2 Y9 B9 H9 K9 M5 L5 V0 S0 N0 Q0 O0

This will tell the agent that the airline has five First Class seats available. It will sell all five at the Full Fare “F” Class level and is prepared to sell three seats at the lower “A” Class level.

The airline will sell nine (or more) Business Class seats at the Full Fare “J” Class level and is also prepared to sell nine (or more) seats at the discounted “D” Class level. However it is only prepared to sell four seats at the further discounted “P” Class level and is not prepared to sell any seats at the most discounted “I” Class level.

In Premium Economy the airline will sell nine (or more) seats at the Full Fare “W” Class level, but only five at the discounted “R” Class level and only two at the further discounted “E” Class level.

In Economy Class the airline will sell nine (or more) seats at the Full Fare “Y” Class level and nine (or more) of the progressively more discounted “B”, “H” and “K” Class levels. It is prepared to sell five seats at the further discounted “M” and “L” Class levels but none at all in “V”, “S”, “N”, “Q” and “O” Class levels.

The airline can use all sorts of tricks to restrict the availability that an agent can access. This can be filtered by the country the agent is located in (Point of Sale), by where the itinerary commences (Point of Commencement), or simply by how much or how little business a particular agency does with a particular airline.

Flight sectors can be also be married together so that there might be no availability to fly from Hanoi to Sydney via Singapore in a certain Booking Class despite the fact that seats in that Booking Class do show as available individually on both the Hanoi to Singapore and Singapore to Sydney sectors. Once the agent books the Hanoi to Singapore sector “married sector” logic will kick in and prevent them booking Singapore to Sydney on the same day,

Round The World tickets are viewed as “low yield” by the airlines and so usually book into low to middle Booking Classes. Consequently seat availability can be hard to come by even several weeks or months ahead of your desired flight.

A percentage of seat inventory is only released into online channels which work best for simple Single and Return tickets. This further reduces seat availability via Global Distribution Systems for complicated Round The World tickets.

Airline reservation system usually work 335-355 days ahead. This is called “System Range”. On January 1st the System Range will reach to somewhere between December 1st and 21st.

If you have planned your Round The World Trip and want to make your booking on September 1st for departure on January 1st the following year, at the time of booking the System Range will reach August of the following year.

If you are planning on taking a trip lasting a full year then the flights you want to take in the latter stages of your trip will not yet be within System Range and you won’t be able to book them.

The solution is to book the flights which are beyond System Range on dummy dates which are within System Range. Once you are underway and your desired dates have fallen within System Range contact the airline or agency which has issued your ticket and get the dates rebooked.

Your ticket will then be “Revalidated” for the new dates. Oneworld and Star Alliance Round The World tickets permit date changes for this very purpose. A Travel Agency may charge their own fee for their time and effort in doing this.

It is very important that you make the date changes for your flights prior to the dummy dates which have been booked. Failure to do this could result in you being marked as a “No Show” when you fail to travel on the dummy date, and could result in the rest of your itinerary being cancelled.

Once you have commenced your Round The World ticket you may wish to change the dates of some of your subsequent flights, either because they were originally outside the System Range, or because you are having a particularly good or bad time at a particular stopover and want to extend or curtail it.

Contact the airline or agency which issued your tickets to rebook the flights and revalidate your ticket for the new dates. There is no charge on the Oneworld or Star Alliance fares for this however Travel Agencies may charge a fee for doing this.

Before booking with a Travel Agency make sure you are aware of their policy.

On Build Your Own itineraries individual tickets are likely to be Non-Changeable and Non-Refundable.

If you wish to amend the route of your Round The World ticket, either before you have booked or once you are underway, this will require the airline or agency which has issued the ticket to start again and re-issue the ticket. This usually entails a fee on the ticket of USD125.

A Travel Agency will add their own fee for their time in rebooking the flights or reissuing the ticket.

Additionally the taxes and charges will need to be recalculated for the new route and any increases must be paid for.

On Build Your Own itineraries individual tickets are likely to be Non-Changeable and Non-Refundable.

Most airline schedules operate in two seasons, from late March to late October and from late October to late March. Some routes only operate in one season or the other or for only part of a season. If booking flights beyond System Range which you intend to change later, it is important to make sure that the flight is not a seasonal service which only operates for part of the year.

expertflyer.com is an excellent resource to check airline schedules.

Codeshares are a device whereby an airline attaches their flight numbers to flights operated by a partner airline.

For example BA418 from London Heathrow – Luxembourg is operated by British Airways and BA418 is the Prime Flight Number. However it also carries the Codeshare Flight Numbers AA6677, JL7141 and QR9783.

These Codeshare Flight Numbers will not be bookable for a standalone London Heathrow – Luxembourg ticket. However the AA6677 code will permit American Airlines to offer its customers through tickets from the USA via London Heathrow to Luxembourg, to be able to set the fares and to offer the flight connection through their own website and distribution channels. Japan Airlines are able to do the same from Japan and Qatar Airways are able to do the same from Doha.

Additionally American Airlines, Japan Airlines and Qatar Airways frequent flyers will earn at the full rate when booking under the Codeshare Flight Number.

This is all well and good until something goes wrong at London Heathrow and BA418 is cancelled for some reason. British Airways won’t want to get involved in tickets from other airlines and agents from the other airlines won’t be live on the scene and might find it difficult to fully assist.

Therefore, unless you are doing so because there is no availability elsewhere, or because it is advantageous for your Frequent Flyer points earning, we would always advise avoiding Codeshare Flight Numbers and to always book flights on your Round The World ticket using Prime Flight Numbers.

Although the vast majority of flights operate to, from or between an airline’s hub airport or airports, Fifth Freedom flights typically operate as a tag on flight beyond the first destination and therefore do not operate to or from a hub.

Most obviously British Airways operate a Fifth Freedom flight from Singapore – Sydney to complete their London Heathrow – Singapore – Sydney service. In the opposite direction Qantas operate a Fifth Freedom flight from Singapore – London Heathrow to complete their Sydney – Singapore – London Heathrow service.

Oneworld Fifth Freedom routes which do not touch a Oneworld hub and which might be useful for your Round The World ticket route include:

• Antigua – St Kitts & Nevis
• Apia – Honolulu
• Auckland – Raratonga
• Bergen – Stockholm Arlanda
• Bissau – Praia
• Buenos Aires – Rio de Janeiro
• Douala – Bangui (One Way Only)
• Djibouti – Mogadishu
• Freetown – Monrovia
• Harare – Lusaka
• Ho Chi Minh City – Phnom Penh
• Kiribati – Honolulu
• Nassau – Grand Cayman
• Nassau – Providenciales
• Saint Lucia – Georgetown
• Saint Lucia – Grenada
• Saint Lucia – Tobago
• Singapore – Sydney
• Taipei Taoyuan – Nagoya
• Taipei Taoyuan – Osaka Kansai

Fifth Freedom flights operated by Star Alliance airlines which do not touch a Star Alliance hub and which might be useful for your Round The World trip include:

• Abidjan – Accra
• Abidjan – Conakry
• Abidjan – New York JFK
• Accra – Sao Tome
• Bamako – Dakar
• Barcelona – Milan Malpensa
• Blantyre – Dar Es Salaam
• Blantyre – Lilongwe
• Bulawayo – Ndola
• Chuuk – Pohnpei
• Conakry – Ouagadougou
• Djibouti – Mogadishu
• Douala – Malabo
• Entebbe – Kigali
• Freetown – Monrovia
• Freetown – Ouagadougou
• Gabarone – Victoria Falls
• Harare – Lusaka
• Koror – Manila
• Kwajalein – Kosrai
• Kwajalein – Pohnpei
• Libreville – Luanda
• Libreville – Yaounde
• Lilongwe – Harare
• Lilongwe – Lusaka
• London City – Vilnius
• Madrid – Havana
• Madrid – Sao Paulo Guarulhos
• Majuro – Pohnpei
• Managua – Guatemala
• N’Djamena – Niamey
• Niamey – Ouagadougou
• San Jose (Costa Rica) – Guatemala
• San Jose (Costa Rica) – Managua
• Sao Paulo Guarulhos – Buenos Aires
• Sao Paulo Guarulhos – Santiago de Chile
• Stockholm Arlanda – Oslo

It is your responsibility to check and comply with the Visa requirements for all countries you intend to visit during your Round The World trip.

You can check these at expertflyer.com or Google is your friend.

It is your responsibility to check and comply with the Vaccination requirements for all countries you intend to visit during your Round The World trip.

You can check these at your government’s Foreign Office website, with a medical practitioner or Google is your friend.