Round-the-world on low cost airlines
October 7th, 2008 by Tim Uden
Over the last ten years, low cost airlines have become enormously popular for relatively short flights and with growth of Asian low cost carriers, it has now become possible to fly around the world entirely on budget airlines. But are the savings worth it?
Looking at various airline’s websites I have been able to put together a RTW itinerary with travel on the following budget airlines: Air Arabia, easyJet, Flyglobespan, Jetstar, Tiger Airlines and Westjet taking in Australia, Asia, Europe and North America. Here’s how it all fits together:
- London-Hamilton (Ontario, Canada) – Flyglobespan £179
- Vancouver-Honolulu – Westjet CAD$491 (£257)
- Honolulu-Sydney – Jetstar USD$489 (£277)
- Darwin-Singapore – Tiger Airways AUD$100 (£42)
- Singapore-Chennai – Tiger Airways SGD$270 (£105)
- Chennai-Sharjah – Air Arabia AED650 (£100)
- Sharjah-Istanbul – Air Arabia AED736 (£114)
- Istanbul-London – easyJet EUR€30 (£23)
TOTAL £1097
All the above fares are inclusive of taxes, fees and charges but do not include additional charges for checked luggage or priority seating.
I purposely left open overland travel in Australia and North America because most people using this website are travelling to explore a destination and not to simply hop from one airport to another.
I checked with STA Travel for an equivalent round-the-world fare and was told that London-Singapore-Sydney-San Francisco and New York-London on Qantas and British Airways would cost £891 plus tax. STA’s website wouldn’t tell me what the tax would be but the Flight Centre website has a similar itinerary for £1279 inclusive of tax.
So you may save a couple of hundred quid flying on low cost airlines, but you could probably do it for a lot less if it didn’t cost so much to fly across the Pacific. Because of the lack of competition even low cost carriers like Jetstar can charge high prices for what should be a relatively cheap flight.
Budget airlines don’t offer the comfort of a regular airline, but one of the real differences is the lack of frequent flyer points. This normally isn’t such a big deal but on a round-the-world flight you can earn almost enough points for a free one-way flight between Australia and North America.
If you’re planning on making several round-the-world trips, then the cheapest option would be to make your first trip on a regular airline and earn your frequent flyer points. Then use the points for the trans-Pacific leg on your next trip and use budget airlines for the rest. In this case the second trip will cost only £563 plus whatever tax you have to pay on your free flight that you get with the frequent flyer points.
6 Responses to “Round-the-world on low cost airlines”
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October 7th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
good on you mate
November 20th, 2008 at 10:45 am
The Times had a similar article 2 years ago saying you can go round the world for under £500.
Now most of those major longhaul airlines have gone out of business - Zoom, Oasis etc.
Also stopping in Sharjah and not stopping in NZ? Thats a bit mad… Or you could fly a fully flexible RTW or Multi-Stop ticket on established airlines (Virgin, Air NZ, Qantas etc)for around £1000. Or a cracking RTW ticket for 11 Stops for £1300.
Saying that I think the more people who do an RTW the better, and I’d only recommend the above trip if you’re going for a quicky (one month or under) and fixed dated RTW.
December 6th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Well two years ago Zoom and Oasis meant that you could make a RTW trip on low cost airlines with far fewer stops. Now you would have to go through Sharjah because that is Air Arabia’s hub; however Air Asia X should be starting Australia-KL-London flights soon, which should simplify the Australia-Europe leg of a RTW trip.
The main problem of doing a RTW trip on low cost airlines is the trans-Pacific leg of the trip, which rules out a stop in NZ. Hopefully we’ll soon see increased competition on this leg of the trip but until then the relatively short 14-hour flight from Australia to the USA’s west coast costs more than the much longer 24-hour flight between Australia and the UK.
March 12th, 2009 at 9:41 am
[...] Round-the-world on low cost airlines [...]
May 27th, 2009 at 1:17 am
Tiger Airways no longer fly Darwin-Asia. The cheapest option is to fly out of Perth (sometimes as low as $50 a flight) but unfortunately it means a $200+ flight to Perth from anywhere else in Australia.
AirAsiaX are flying to KL & I’ve recently spent a few DAYS searching for cheap flights from Bris - KL but they’re not as cheap as you’d imagine - $420 return was the cheapest I could find for flights in June/July - although still far cheaper than the competition (even Jetstar).
May 28th, 2009 at 1:44 am
Darwin Airport got greedy and increased their charges so Tiger pulled out.
You can still get a cheap flights to Asia on Tiger via Perth and this can often beat AirAsia’s prices.
I recently checked the price on an Australia-UK flight and I was able to save a few hundred dollars by flying MEL-PER-KUL on Tiger rather than MEL-KUL on AirAsia.
Now that Tiger have Perth-Kuala Lumpur flights it is often worth checking the price of this leg of the journey on Tiger, then transfering to AirAsia to continue on to London.