Part 1 and part 2 of this three part series on how to find a cheaper flight dis­cussed tips and tech­niques on how to use travel search engines for best results and how low cost air­lines can save you a lot of money and should always be con­sid­ered too– even if they don’t fly to your city (yup, you read that cor­rectly). Today I’m going to dis­cuss the third  and last option that can save you a lot of money, how­ever this time it should only be con­sid­ered when you have a decent amount of time for your trip. How much is “decent”? Well, it will depend on each indi­vid­ual, but I would only con­sider any of these options if I had at least 2 full months and the places I really want to visit are in dif­fer­ent con­ti­nents. Truth is you can spend this time trav­el­ling within a few bor­der­ing coun­tries, but hey, it might not be where you really want to go. You also have to real­ize that choos­ing any of these options will mean that you will have some sort of sched­ule and itin­er­ary to fol­low. What’s the dif­fer­ence between them? It’s quite sim­ple: round the world flights (RTW) have the same depart­ing and final arrival loca­tion, where as the other two don’t.

Multi Stop Flights

Multi stop flights can be arranged by two means. The first one would be by set­ting your­self an itin­er­ary and look­ing for all the flights of your trip using any of the tools dis­cussed already, mak­ing the appro­pri­ate reser­va­tions, and you’re set.

The other option would be using the ser­vices of a well know travel agency that arranges these kinds of trips and has a long his­tory of suc­cess, as well as good cus­tomer ser­vice, well priced deals, and offers all the flex­i­bil­ity you need. If this is what you want (makes things eas­ier for you) I highly rec­om­mend Airtreks (click on ban­ner). I used them in 2003 and was extremely sat­is­fied with what I got– I was even able to change the depar­ture date of two flights dur­ing the trip, one of them free of cost (this is not always the case). To orga­nize your trip, choose one of their spe­cials or use their Trip­plan­ner (inter­ac­tive appli­ca­tion in which you spec­ify your itin­er­ary and whether you’re fly­ing or going over­land between the cities) and you’ll be rewarded with a few price options: your spe­cific itin­er­ary, best bang for the buck includ­ing your itin­er­ary, and your itin­er­ary with a few extras. If you’re inter­ested in one of their options you’ll fill a form and will be phoned by a cus­tomer ser­vice agent shortly for con­fir­ma­tion and/or fur­ther arrange­ments. Easy peasy.

Sin­gle Con­ti­nent Passes

Sin­gle con­ti­nent passes are that pre­cisely: a com­bi­na­tion of within-continent pre­paid flights that usu­ally belong to a same air­line and/or air­line alliance. All des­ti­na­tions have to be stated prior to depar­ture from coun­try of ori­gin (passes are nor­mally only avail­able to vis­i­tors from another con­ti­nent) but just the first leg of the trip requires flight and date con­fir­ma­tion (in other words, you have to make a reser­va­tion for the first flight). Good side– you have your flight reser­va­tions made, you know how much you have spent, you fly with a reknown car­rier, and you get fre­quent flyer miles. Bad side– you have to stick to the air­port list you gave and I don’t find them very cheap.

Around the World Flights

Around the world flights are a dif­fer­ent kind of story, being your best bet to choose one of the sev­eral options that an air­line or air­line alliance (One World, Star Alliance, Skyteam) offers. In some cases the stops are already fixed, in oth­ers you choose where you want to go, the lat­ter being an option usu­ally given by the air­line alliances; this makes sense because not all air­lines fly every­where. Pric­ing is based on the num­ber of con­ti­nents vis­ited, class of travel, if you want a con­ti­nent pass, and there are other restric­tions that you must be aware of that might seem weird: some­times you can only fly east, oth­ers west; you can only fly north of the equa­tor, or then you might only be able to fly south of the equa­tor; cross­ing the equa­tor can mean an addi­tional sur­charge; you have to fly exactly once across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans… the list goes on. I can think of four advan­tages if you are con­sid­er­ing one of these tick­ets: the dates do not have to be pre-planned (how­ever con­firm that you can change the depar­ture dates at no cost), you get fre­quent flyer miles, you may have access to Con­ti­nent Passes lim­ited to RTW flights (this means that for an addi­tional but good price you have access to a few more flights within the con­ti­nent) and that you know before you leave how much you are spend­ing on flights. Prob­a­bly. Sup­posed to. The truth is that even­tu­ally you’ll be charged for a change you will want to make, whether it be because you want to depart from Zanz­ibar and not Nairobi or because you are hav­ing so much fun in Samoa that you want to stay a few more days lying on a ham­mock sip­ping that oh-so-good coconut milk.

There are a few online travel agen­cies that spe­cial­ize in these kinds of trips. Airtreks (men­tioned ear­lier) is a good bet, and so is www.roundtheworldflights.com , com­pany based in the UK that has received a good share of pos­i­tive reviews. I have only booked a RTW once and it was because it was the cheap­est way of get­ting from Aus­tralia to Spain and back on a short notice. Oth­er­wise, I have not and don’t plan to do so in the near future because of two rea­sons: I wouldn’t like or want the restric­tions imposed if I can enjoy a long trip (read vaca­tion), and I don’t think they’re par­tic­u­larly cheap either.
Photo credit (space­ship)= Cam­bridge Engi­neer­ing


Did you find this third and final part use­ful? How about the other three? If you have please share it,“Like“it and com­ment below!