RichS

Anyone done a visit home to the UK on a round the world ticket. We're looking at going Syd - Asia - UK - LA - Hawaii - Syd.

Plusses/pitfalls/tips/places to get good deals gratefully received.

Please no-one mention Flight Centre. I'd rather chop my own (unfeasibly large) dangly bits off than deal with them again.

jad n rich

Only pitfall I could see is the taxes, every stop adds more We booked last week for Christmas flights were frequent flyer but adult taxes were just under $300, kids about 10% less. Prior to that we looked at round world ticket and taxes were heading to the $500 thats each by the way. Over the weekend some of the levies went up another $30 each per flight segment.

If three or four of you are travelling the taxes go up into the thousands no problem at all!!

bondipom

The sta travel site www.statravel.com.au has a RTW planner. They have much been better than the flightcentre at providing decent quotes for going back to the UK.

hevs

I have looked into this cos i figure while i'm paying so much to get out i may aswel see some other bits of the world!!

Price wise the tickets are only about $50 more that for a return to Heathrow, but as Jand R say its the airport taxes that soon add up. Let us know how you go

gedge

I can recommend STA too. We used them for our RTW trip some years back.
One good thing is they have shops in the UK too, so you can visit them when you get there to sort out the second half of your trip.

We recently visited STA for quotes on flights to the UK. They beat most of the competition, including the unmentionable "FC". However we still got a better deal on-line.

Has anyone found an online site that will quote you UK prices, for trips starting in Oz?

bondipom

It is tricky booking some RTW tickets online as they may not pick up on special deals and often return with multitudes of full fare o/w tickets that an add up to $20,000.

The flight I got last month was on www.zuji.com.au and they were the cheapest for then. I was able to chose the seats I wanted online.

gedge

We tried Zuji, but ended up using travel.com.au
They actually got us seats on a flight that all other travel agents told us were fully booked.

Did you actually get the seats you requested?

bondipom

Yep. I only had the choice of 3 rows but they were in the front economy cabin which means you get off and into the immigration q quicker. That was going with Virgin Atlantic although the planes were actually Malaysia airlines.

RichS

well its turned out that it'll cost me about $150pp more to go the whole way round using star alliance - that includes taxes. for the times i wanted to go the cost was going to be about 2200 on sq, and now its going to be 2350. taxes are much of a muchness as I'm using about the same number of drop offs.
There was a cheaper deal of 1800ish which was fronted by lufthansa and was based around start alliance partners, however this involved transit via frankfurt on the way there and then onward to LA. If I was travelling without the nippers I might have taken this on, but just didn't fancy it with them as well.

The prices weren't as horrific as I expected considering I'm going around xmas/new year.

Still we won't be going out for a while.

gedge

That's a good price considering we've just paid 2100 for straight oz-uk return flights in Sept. Do you mind telling us where you booked it?

Hels

Can I ask, where did you get the quote from?

Hels

SNAP!!

bondipom

I am paying 1900 excluding taxes on Singapore airlines leaving on the 25 nov and leaving UK on 1 jan. That was with STA. That fare is probably booked out now. I think Cathay had a similiar fare at the same time. Taxes were about 350 on top of that. On the 26 Nov Singapore airfares go up and a week later they go up again.

gedge

I should have qualified that by saying $2100 was including taxes of about $250. Flights are with Malaysian, both in Sept, booked through travel.com.au as I mentioned before. Neither flight centre, harvey world or sta could find availability on these flights, but somehow that website got us seats.

We were really aiming to bring the cost under 2k, as we know that in the uk we could book similar return flights uk-oz for under £800. That's why I ask about uk web sites selling flight tickets where the starting point is outside the British Isles.