Alrighty then. I am planning on going to Beijing in November of 08 and from there I will take the train to Moscow and then up through Scandinavia and eventually ending up in London to fly home. My question is when would be a good time to book a flight to Beijing? I know that STA has good deals on flights but they are only applicable if you fly within a month of purchasing or something like that. So should I wait until it gets closer to my departure time or should I try and book a ticket as soon as possible? Also I won't be needing a return ticket from Beijing cause I am flying out of London. Seems like there is not much of a difference between R/T and one way? Does anybody have any suggestions on the best way to do something like this? Sorry I have a lot of questions, I have never been a a journey this long (distance).

for november, you could probably wait until early summer when you book. don't book last minute or else prices will shoot up. if you buy too early, it'll be pricey too. round trip and one way fares are sometimes comparable, but oftentimes one way is a lot more expensive.. which is stupid!

maybe you can look into a multi-city ticket going into beijing and out of london. the price may be comparable to your one-way.. worth a look? unless you really don't know when you'll be in london and ready to go home. multi-city should be an option that you can check (next to roundtrip/oneway) on most airline websites. from what i've *tried* to book through STA, they suck. i always look for flights on airline websites. or check out www.itasoftware.com where it searches airlines for you. they won't charge you anything extra because you can't book through them, but it'll show you which airline has the cheapest, so you can then go to that airline's website to buy the flight.

have fun and good luck!

early as humanly possible

Hi there,
First, you need to know that on one plane, in economy class, they often have different fares for the same seats. If, for example, they have 100 seats to sell, they might sell 25 at a cheap price, 25 are a little more expensive ,let's say 100$ more, and you can add another 50$ for the other tickets. My numbers here are just to give you an example, but in this scenario, the first 25 custommers get the best deal... Anyways, that's what was explained to me by a trustworthy travel agent.

On the other hand, about 2½ years ago I learned something else while shopping for my ticket to Egypt. After having checked on the net and spoken to several travel agents, I kind of knew how much my ticket was going to cost. But finally, I found a travel agency that mostly catered to Arabic custommers. The nice lady there told me that of course she could give me a price, but that if I was willing to wait another week, Egyptair was supposed to come up with specials. She called me back a week later and I ended up saving about 200$ on the cheapest flight I had found prior... Companies often have specials and agents sometimes know when there gonna come out. If you book too far ahead, you might miss them.

So what are you to do? I don't know... Check out prices regularly, ask questions to travel agents and companies, check the net, Chinatown's a good place to start for tikets to China.
I don't think that there's a magical way of finding the best deal. So Shop! Shop! Shop! and good luck!

Maybe even check out a "round the world ticket" as well.

would i be flying enough in order to get a RTW ticket? Don't those usually have four or five stops?