Oneworld alliance comprises 15 member airlines:
They serve more than 900 destinations in 170 countries.
Your journey has to start and finish in the same country, but not necessarily in the same city. Therefore you can’t, for example, go from London to Beijing by train, take your first flight in this city and finish your trip in London.
Your trip must be completed within a minimum of 10 days and a maximum of 1 year between the date of your first flight and that of your last flight.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) divides the world into three areas, also known as “Traffic Conference Areas” (TC Areas). The RTW tickets use these TC Areas:
Between each of these three areas, you must always travel in the same direction: West to East or East to West. So you can’t, for example, travel from Europe – Asia – Africa – Australia – America – Europe, as the Asia – Africa section would make you turn back on yourself.
You must cross the Atlantic and the Pacific exactly once (no more, no less).
The first crossing between two areas has to be done by plane. It can’t be a surface sector. If you want to include the Trans-Siberian in the itinerary of your RTW ticket, you’ll have to go through a specialist travel agency.
On the other hand, within each area, you don’t always have to travel in the same direction. You can zigzag if you want to.
Your itinerary can include 3 to 16 segments, except for the Global Explorer 26,000 miles fare, which can’t have more than 6 segments.
Each flight sector with a stopover counts as a segment. Travelling between two airports by land also counts as a segment.
You can change the travel dates of all your tickets free of charge up to 24 hours before departure, but no later than one year after the date of your first flight.
To change the date of one of your tickets, you just have to email or call the airline you’re flying with. It’s usually sorted in less than 24 hours.
Staying in a city for more than 24 hours and crossing a surface sector between two regions count as stopovers.
You can change the departure and / or arrival city of flights, but that’ll result in a fee of $125 (£90) for each ticket change.
2 pieces of luggage at the weight of 23 kg (50 lbs) each
All flights with Oneworld’s member airlines will allow you to earn miles which can then be redeemed for an upgrade or a free ticket.
Taxes and surcharges aren’t included in the base fare of Oneworld tickets. This detail is important, because they are usually between $550 (£400) and $1,150 (£800) on top of the base fare. We can’t give you an exact total price, as taxes and surcharges vary a lot depending on which airports you choose.
Oneworld offers two types of RTW tickets:
Be careful, as the way of counting continents in the Oneworld Explorer fare isn’t based on the IATA TC areas, but on the these:
You can have fun planning, building and saving different itineraries using the online booking tools on the Oneworld website.
However, you can only do this with the Oneworld Explorer ticket. The Global Explorer ticket doesn’t have this option. Therefore, you have to go through one of Oneworld’s member airlines. We advise you to contact the specialist RTW team at British Airways by email [email protected]. They respond very quickly.
The two fare systems (continent-based and distance-based) offer more flexibility.
