Some of the major airline code sharing alliances, such as OneWorld, SkyTeam and Star Alliance, offer round-the-world, or RTW, airfares. Many web sites extoll their virtues, but dollar for dollar, are these tickets really advantageous?

First off, you should realize that RTW fares come with many restrictions, some of which you wouldn’t face with a regular ticket. You can’t just hop on planes wherever and whenever you want on this type of plan: You have to choose one of their ready-made trajectories or design your own in advance. Typically, your itinerary cannot go through the same airport twice, unless it’s a hub and you’re just using it for transfers. Since your travel is limited to the small bunch of airlines that belong to the alliance, it can be rather challenging designing a plan that makes sense. For example, in Europe, One World has British Airways, so all your hops have to go through London. Want to go from Athens to  Rome? You’ll have to go through London! Some RTW’s have a total distance limit, so all those useless jumps to London (or whatever hub)  will eat away at that number, never mind that you’ll be sick of Heathrow!

To circumvent the lack of connecting flights, you might have to use land or sea travel to get to your next destination, but this won’t be covered by your RTW fare, and they’ll have the gall to count it towards your segment limit! Keeping fares low with a RTW package isn’t easy, because none of the discount airlines such as Southwest, Jet Blue, Spirit, Ryan Air or Air Berlin are part of any alliance, so you’re left with all the blue chip carriers.

Invariably, when I price my itinerary with Orbitz, my total cost winds-up being a lot less than any RTW plan, and without the unnerving difficulties in scheduling and routing that comes with the latter. Simply, you have a better chance of getting the cheapest flights and have many more flight options without the RTW plan, if you don’t mind using a wider range of carriers. It’s not true that all airlines charge as much or more for one way tickets than round trips. Some do, many don’t, especially the discount airlines. As for any air miles you might get from flying with one alliance, you have to wonder if it’s worth spending an extra thousand or two just for some points which you might not use.

Whatever you do, don’t stay home!

 

 

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