buy flights as i go or?

just wandering peoples input on if it is cheaper to buy plane tickets for 2 as you travel or to just buy round the world tickets. Opinions,advice?

Depends on your trip.

busman7 wrote:Depends on your trip.

As unhelpful as this seems, it's the short answer.

The long answer is that a trip along conventional routes served by a single airline alliance (ideally Oneworld, since they have better RTW prices) can probably benefit from a RTW pass. A lot of RTW trips skip Africa, and if that's you, I'd put good odds the RTW pricing will work out in your favour. If you're going to Africa, I'd be betting that point-to-point tickets are a better option.

Even with RTW pricing in your favour though, Trans-pacific routes, particularly between either of the Americas and Australia or NZ, book up their RTW seats early (most airlines only allow a few seats on each flight on RTW tickets, it's like trying to use points), so you have to firm up the date for that flight as early as possible. If you wait until a month in advance of the flight, you'll probably be told the next available seat is 3 months away.

Paying cash avoids these pitfalls, but with cash payments, you usually get better prices booking further in advance...last minute could prove very expensive. Using a service like Airtreks might get you better prices than booking a week or two before flight dates, but means you have to nail down your dates far in advance.

[quote="2wanderers"]

Even with RTW pricing in your favour though, Trans-pacific routes, particularly between either of the Americas and Australia or NZ, book up their RTW seats early (most airlines only allow a few seats on each flight on RTW tickets, it's like trying to use points), so you have to firm up the date for that flight as early as possible. If you wait until a month in advance of the flight, you'll probably be told the next available seat is 3 months away.

I can attest to that from experience with Qantas (OZ's version of Air Canada) who refused to honor my OW ticket SYD-HNL for over a month. Qantas also has the most rude, ignorant (of airline routes) & obnoxious reps I have had the misfortune to encounter since I quit flying with AC years ago.

What do you mean they didn't honor your ticket, They wouldn't let you fly even though you had a paid ticket?

I had a RTW with an open (no date booked) SYD-HNL which Qantas claimed they had no available seats on for the next 32 days, at which time they would have booked my flight. I considered that amount of time unreasonable & spent the next 2 days fighting with them to change my itinerary to what I wanted NOT what Qantas wanted.

i've been planning my RTW for over a year and gotten tons of airfare quotes for multiple itineraries. It seems that finding cheap flights on kayak.com almost always works out significantly cheaper than what it would if i bought a RTW pass. i'm doing Europe->South Africa->Bali->SEAsia->New Zealand->USA

Make sure you check different countries of origin when pricing RTW tickets, on my trip it was over $1200 cheaper to start in London rather than Toronto, made my own way to London & just didn't use the last segment returning to London.

We booked all of our plane tickets ourselves and it saved us thousands.

We booked most of our flights on the road using discount carriers like Air Asia and Jet Star. It does become annoying to play the whole "how far in advance should I book my ticket game," but we felt like we saved a lot of money.

For example, we flew from Gold Coast, Australia to London, via Kuala Lumpur, for $350USD each (on Air Asia). That included paying for a seat, meal, checked bags. You can't beat that price. Do what you feel comfortable with but we liked the flexibility and possible money saved by doing it ourselves.

I also found it much cheaper to book my own when doing my first RTW trip, since then I've not even bothered looking into the package round the world tickets. Now I don't even like to book my flights far in advance, plans change too much when travelling over far distances. It may cost a little bit more, but the flexibility is worth it, plus sometimes you find cheaper ways to get places through people you meet.