What My RTW Flights Cost

Want to travel around the world?  You’ve come to the right place to learn about rtw  flight budgets, what the average RTW Ticket  costs, and what  possibilities said tickets entail.

For most people, I don’t recommend buying a RTW (Round the World) Ticket.  Read The Real Cost of a RTW Ticket for all the reasons.  Short version: I think there is no one-size-fits-all trip length, and RTW tickets don’t necessarily save you money.

Certainly the best way to start your trip is with a free flight.  Don’t make my mistake by missing out!

I’ve traveled RTW three times – twice for longer than a year, and once for only half a year.  Hopefully the following data  will help you plan  your RTW flight budget:

Trip 1:

• Length: 23 months
• Miles traveled  ¹includes overland legs that would have counted against an alliance ticket: 29,512
• #  of flights  ²Includes some backtracking not allowed on some alliance tickets.  I didn’t count flight segments.: 10
• Total cost: $2,497 USD
• Continents: four
• Countries: nine

The story: My long-term boyfriend  and I quit our jobs and spent the American summer attending weddings.  By the fall, we were ready to travel internationally but nervous about our depleted savings.  We applied for New Zealand working holiday visas, and headed to Auckland.  To our surprise, we stayed the whole year allowed, working for four months, traveling and work-exchanging for the other eight.  Asia was the next obvious destination.  We chose the Philippines, followed by Thailand, and then Indonesia (Bali) where we rented an apartment for a month.  We never intended to go to Europe, but we were sick of the tropics after just a few months.  We scored a cheap intercontinental hop out of Thailand, so we spent a few more weeks there before we toured Prague, hitched to Germany to visit friends, and flew to Sicily to start  work-exchanging on farms throughout Italy.  Under the  Tuscan summer sun, we decided to book flights  back to the U.S for autumn  family events.  Exhausted again, we rented an apartment in Croatia for six weeks with the intention of doing one last European travel stint before heading to the U.S.  We also booked flights and working holiday visas for Australia the following year, but then broke up.  He decided to stay in the U.S. and settle down, and I decided not to throw away a perfectly good flight and visa.  (See Trip 2).

Hindsight:

• Luckily, we didn’t research  New Zealand very well.  If we had, we never would have “sacrificed” an entire year of travel time for such a small country.  We were both very grateful for our “error.”   Looking back we could see we got to enjoy things in ways that wouldn’t have been possible with less time.
• We didn’t know how easily we would become exhausted, despite having traveled together previously for 2.5 months in South America.  By the time we got to our rented apartments in Bali and Croatia, we were so happy not to have to be packing up our bags every few days/weeks.
• We loved our work exchanges.  They gave us a sense of purpose (visiting waterfalls and museums gets old very quickly) and allowed us to connect with lots of locals and local secrets.

Trip 2:

• Length: 16 months
• Miles traveled  ³includes overland legs that would have counted against an alliance ticket: 27,242
• #  of flights  ⁴I didn’t count flight segments.:10
• Total cost: $2,110 USD
• Continents: four
• Countries:  seven

The story: I decided to use the flights and Australian working holiday visa  I had booked with a partner, even though we split up.  I did a few awesome work exchanges before landing a full-time job.  I started dating an Australian co-worker, and he and I made international travel plans to commence at the end of my Australian visa.  He wanted to travel in America, but the cheapest flights were visa Asia and Europe.  So, we traveled for a few weeks in Asia and a few months in Europe before landing back in the U.S.  (Since I’m American, and since this is about RTW flight budgets, I’m counting our U.S. arrival as the end of this RTW trip.)

Hindsight: I’m really glad I didn’t book onward travel from Australia.  Doing so would have blown a sizeable chunk of my RTW flight budget.  Thankfully, I knew better than to try and predict my life a year from arrival.  Would I want to go back home?  Would I be keen to keep traveling?  Who knew I’d fall in love and end up on a completely different trajectory!

Trip 3:

• Length: 5.5  months
• Miles traveled: 29,955
• #  of flights  ⁵I didn’t count flight segments.: 7
• Total cost: $1,835 USD
• Continents: four
• Countries:  five

The story: My  Australian boyfriend and I worked very hard to obtain the visa needed for me to return to Australia with him.  When he procrastinated buying his tickets to attended a wedding in Portugal, I finally volunteered to go alone.  Soon after, I realized I should volunteer to stop being his girlfriend.  I forfeited the cost of the flights I had to return to Australia from Europe, and instead completed the RTW journey back to the U.S.  (The cost of the forfeited tickets is not included in the financial total here, since I didn’t take the flights. FYI: the return OZ tickets were less than $600.)

Hindsight: This story is more proof that you just never know what life will bring!

How Do You Succeed with a Small RTW Flight Budget?

It’s true – $2,497, $2110, and $1,835 are far cheaper RTW ticket costs than most people expect.  What am I doing?  Riding in the cargo hold?  Booking flights before I was even born? ⁶It’s generally not possible to book flights more than 11 months in advance, so the answer here is a rhetorical “No!”  And how do you get around  onward flight requirements?

And how do I have the flexibility to make travel plans as I’m traveling and still stay within a shoestring RTW flight budget?

Good news: it’s not hard!

Don’t forget, when you travel around the world you have the number one cheap flight factor at your disposal: flexibility.  I always use this method on Skyscanner, and for my trouble I’ve gotten some crazy cheap intercontinental fares.

Really, it’s just research and a bit of planning ahead.  On Trip 1 – the trip that looks most like your typical RTW adventure  – I booked my average flight only 4.3 weeks in advance.  On Trip 2, the average is 14.4 weeks, but it drops to 10 weeks when the repurposed flights are left out of the equation.  I booked Trip 3 flights  an average of 8.4 weeks in advance; however, it was a RTW trip only in the flight sense, and even that was unintentional.

To help you understand what’s possible as you set your RTW flight budget, here’s some data from the trips above – where I flew, how far in advance I booked the travel, and how much each flight cost:

Trip 1:

Point A & Point B	Time Between Booking and Traveling	Cost
Los Angeles, USA and Auckland, New Zealand	four weeks	$685
Auckland, NZ to Christchurch NZ	two weeks	$63
Auckland, NZ to Manila, Philippines	eight weeks	$151
Manila, Philippines to Bangkok, Thailand	six weeks	$86
Bangkok, Thailand to Denpasar, Indonesia (Bali)	five weeks	$105
Denpasar, Indonesia (Bali) to Phuket, Thailand	four weeks	$100
Bangkok, Thailand to Prague, Czech Republic	six weeks	$399
Frankfurt, Germany to Trapani, Italy	four weeks	$69
Zagreb, Croatia to Stuttgart, Germany	two weeks	$151
Frankfurt, Germany to Billings, Montana	twelve weeks	$657

Takeaways:  I booked my flights as soon as I knew my travel plans.  The most advance planning I did (3 months) was knowing I wanted to leave Europe at the end of the summer, followed by knowing I’d need to leave places when my visas ran out.  I booked my flights to Europe – again a place we never dreamed of going at the outset (too expensive, save the easy travel for when we’re older, it will always be there, etc.) – six weeks in advance when we got sick of the tropical heat.

Trip 2:

Point A & Point B	Time Between Booking and Traveling	Cost
Portland, USA to Hawaii, USA	eight months	$246
Hawaii, USA to Sydney, Australia	eight months	$459
Sydney, Australia to Perth, Australia	six weeks	$185
Perth, Australia to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia	eight weeks	$157
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Singapore	three weeks	$18
Singapore to Bangkok, Thailand	three weeks	$61
Bangkok, Thailand to Frankfurt, Germany	sixteen weeks	$432
Dusseldorf, Germany to Madrid, Spain	twelve weeks	$162
Barcelona, Spain to Stockholm, Sweden	twelve weeks	$101
Stockholm, Sweden to Los Angeles, USA	five months	$289

Takeaways:   On this trip, half my  travel plans were made well in advance thanks to several variables.
1) I had planned to go to Australia as part of a previous life.  I stuck with that plan eight months later.
2) My Australian boyfriend and I planned to go to the U.S. together ⁷the “end” of the trip for the purposes of this RTW ticket exercise and immediately bought the cheapest intercontinental legs (Asia to Europe – $430, and Europe to the U.S. – $289).
3) a month later, the connecting details firmed up and we spent the remainder of our RTW flight budget on the interconnecting tickets.

Trip 3:

Point A & Point B	Time Between Booking and Traveling	Cost
Los Angeles, USA to Perth, Australia	twelve weeks	$995
Perth, Australia to Bangkok, Thailand	tweleve weeks	$160
Bangkok, Thailand to Stockholm, Sweden	fourteen weeks	$276
Stockholm, Sweden to Amsterdam, Netherlands	fourteen weeks	$52
Amsterdam, Netherlands to Lisbon, Portugal	thirteen weeks	$91
Lisbon, Portugal to Brussels, Belgium	seven weeks	$43
Brussels, Belgium to Miami, USA	seven weeks	$218

Takeaways:    This wasn’t a RTW trip in the traditional sense.  However the data from the flights that took me around the world are still useful to those trying to understand what’s possible.  I didn’t book my flights all that far ahead, even when I knew I’d likely be going to a place.  Experience told me there was no need to book months in advance, especially because things change so much.  The $995 flight is incredibly uncharacteristic of my flight habits, but I wanted to make it back to the arms of my beau during a peak travel time.

Hope all these numbers help you gain some confidence in the plan-as-you-go department.   Good luck figuring out your RTW flight budget!

If you have an itinerary in mind, you can get a guesstimate to put your mind at ease.  Call  Airtreks  or input your destinations into  Indie – a  flight planning tool that requires a free account but gives you a general idea faster than looking up flights one by one.

Trying to budget for the rest of your trip?

Check out What it Costs to Travel Around the World.

And if you subscribe, you get a PDF detailing my  Costs for 2 Years of RTW Travel!

Happy Traveling! ♣

Flights aren’t the only way to save money on your trip.  Use these travel hacks, too:

• Avoid Travel Gear Overkill
• How to  Sleep for Free When You Travel
• How to Get a Free Backstage Cultural Pass
• How to Become a House Sitter
• 24 Jobs To Do While Traveling the World