2006.01.20.1541 :: what the crap is an rtw ticket?

since my last entry, i've had a lot of people asking me what exactly an "RTW ticket" is, so i thought i'd clear that up. basically, RTW ('Round-the-World) is a term invented by United back when they first added service to India. they liked to brag that they had service all the way around the world, so they decided to offer a special ticket to do it. since then, a lot of airlines have offered it and it is now currently offered by all the major alliances and also offered by many independent travel agencies who put the tickets together for you from different sources.

i first heard of RTW tickets several years ago when my friend diana was talking about booking one using her mileage, but i basically forgot about it after that. then, last summer (august 9th... i just found the AIM log), i was reading the wall street journal in the bathroom at my work and read an article about round-the-world tickets. i came back to my desk and asked jes if she wanted to travel around the world with me and she said yes, pretty simple.

anyway, i built the itinerary with the star alliance round the world mileage calculator. the actual RTW ticket itinerary looks omething like this, with the rest of the flights being booked in addition to the ticket. all the other alliances offer a similar ticket (and the one from oneworld sounds particularly intriguing) and there are some other places worth checking out, like airtreks, which builds itineraries by buying seats in bulk from carriers.

if you're interested in RTW travel, i recommend reading around the web about it first. there are a lot of people who have done it and blogged about it, and there are a lot of forums that talk about it. my favorite resource is boots n all, which has great information on destinations and also has a great forum, and the best blog i've seen is probably thirteen months, mostly just because i'm jealous of their interactive map. another good resource is the RTW guide at travel-library.com, which was the first page i stumbled on when i started my googling after reading the article.

anyway, if anybody has any questions or anything, they can ask me and i'll answer the best that i can. i'll try to update as much as i can while i'm on the trip too.