11 Apr The Cost of Round-the-World Flights for 15 Months of Travel

Like most people embarking on a round-the-world trip, during the years of planning we researched and discussed what would be best for us; buying a round-the-world plane ticket or pay-as-you-go flights. In the end we decided to book our flights as we travel, which was a good decision as it ended up being ultimately cheaper and much more flexible. Although we’ve yet to travel a full 15 months we have booked all our flights up until our temporary return to the UK in June, so here’s how much we’ve spent on flights for the first 15 months of our trip.

Did we Make the Right Choice?

When researching which types of tickets to buy before we left we found out that the cheapest round-the-world ticket option would have cost us £1,569 each. Although that’s cheaper than what we eventually spent on our flights, the round-the-world ticket only covered eight journeys per person, one of which was back to the UK. Since we’ve ended up taking three times as many flights, 24 per person, the round-the-world ticket would have been totally inadequate for our needs.

Another drawback with the round-the-world ticket is that we would have been forced to finish our trip within a year; we wouldn’t have been able to travel for as long or as thoroughly as we have done. We would have ended up paying extra for additional domestic flights and we wouldn’t have had the flexibility of adding in new destinations.

The Good, the Bad and the Layovers

Booking flights as we went did take a lot of time and patience. All of our flights were booked after hours of online research about destinations and airlines and we always purchased the cheapest economy seats we could find. We used Skyscanner mainly for the expensive flights and booked them quite a few months in advance to get the best rates; cheaper flights were only booked a few days or weeks ahead using budget airlines.

We found that our flight experiences varied greatly too. Whereas Korean Air was a dream to fly with, offering amazing service and reasonable comfort considering we were in the air for over 20 hours, some budget airlines weren’t so great. AirAsia planes tend to be tiny and cramped and Tiger Air changed our schedule without telling us, so we nearly missed our flight to Thailand. Although some of our friends and family got free upgrades when they visited us in Thailand over the summer we have sadly never been upgraded on any of our flights. There’s still time though China Southern Airlines if you’re reading!

One of the things we’ve had to get used to when booking cheap flights is layovers. Our very first flight from London to Auckland had a 75-minute layover in Korea and we were a little worried about making our connection on time; what if we’re delayed? What if they lose our bags? Wait, we have carry-on luggage! We made it just fine of course. We’re dreading our flight from Taiwan to the UK in June though since we’ll have a 16-hour layover in China! Hopefully there’ll be some WiFi available or perhaps we’ll book into a hotel for a few hours. Sometimes layovers can work in your favour though; our AirAsia flight from Bali to the Philippines was rescheduled in such a way that we were able to escape Indonesia early and gain an amazing three-week layover in Malaysia on the way to the Philippines.

The Cost of Round-the-World Flights for 15 Months of Travel

Check out our individual and total flight costs for our first 15 months of travel:

So, would we book flights the same way again? Absolutely; with an average flight cost per person of £82.38 and the added flexibility of booking as you go, it’s a no-brainer. This was easily the better option and when we continue our travels after our summer visit to the UK we’ll do it the same way again.

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What do you think of our costs? Would you book separate flights or an all in one ticket? Could you or did you find these flights any cheaper?