We have spent many evenings and weekends planning the route, trying different options, figuring out where we want to go and what to see. We started with something totally else than we eventually ended up.
Ok, so that might not tell you much, but while planning the trip using oneworld's really good planning tool, you get to know and use the airport codes for convenience. Maybe the map below illustrates the route better. Main route that covers the oneworld explorer ticket is in red and sidetrips in blue. Note: There will definitely be flights in SE Asia, but those will be as ad hoc as can be so don't know yet.
We had South America on our route from the beginning and almost until the end, but we decided that we will go there (all around) maybe the next trip. We started counting the countries we would visit during the trip and we had about 30. Now, that's just too much even for a years trip. So we had to cut somewhere and we decided to keep the places in our itinerary where we could do some diving. And throw in some other variables as well like some restrictions in the OW explorer ticket and above (in red) is what we ended up ticketing.
The dates are not fixed much except that we are leaving Finland 16.7.2012. We plan to stay in London for two nights after which a day-flight to Los Angeles. But after that the dates are quite open. I think we are going to fly the New York to Hong Kong (16h flight btw!!!) somewhere in November.
About the oneworld explorer round the world ticket. It is IMO the best option for a complex and long rtw trip. And oneworld provides a really easy-to-use tool for planning and buying the ticket. The ticket is changeable of course and all but the first flight can be left open dated. Date/time/carrier changes are free and there is a fee to change some of the destinations. In our case (business class ticket) it is 125USD per person to do a change but you can change the ticket almost totally if you wish. I like this sort of flexibility.
-Olli
-Olli
