Round-The-World Flight Tickets

Flying around the planet is not an easy task, but trying to get from London to Sydney via San Francisco and the Cook Islands is even harder.

This is totally off-topic, but I’m sure you’ll forgive me. I have spent what seems like the best part of a week trying to plan out a round-the-world route for a trip I am planning to take in November and December this year. And, if you ever wish to make your head really hurt, I suggest you try the same thing.

I’d never realised before what big business round-the-world flights were. All the airline alliances seem to have their own packages, some determined by the number of stop-offs you have on the way, others by the total distance covered. The prices all fluctuate depending on when the flights leave, and planning a route can be extraordinarily awkward, especially if the flights don’t usually go to the places you want to go to.

For example, I’d much prefer to visit San Francisco than Los Angeles, and plenty of flights go from London to San Francisco. However, the Air New Zealand flight that I needed to get to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands only goes from Los Angeles. Therefore there’s the tough choice of whether to spend valuable time getting from San Fran to LA or just taking the plunge and going straight into LAX.

Eventually I went with the latter, and now I have the following route – London (England), Los Angeles (California), Rarotonga (Cook Islands), Christchurch (New Zealand), Sydney (Australia), Singapore, Dubai (United Arab Emirates). It’s going to be an interesting six week trip, that’s for certain.

That said, I never want to go through the process of booking round-the-world flight tickets ever again.