It’s not for everyone, but there’s an amazing “dare to dream” notion to around the world airline tickets. The concept isn’t nearly as crazy or jet lag inducing as one might think. These tickets allow travelers to stop off in preferred destinations for a few days, a few hours, or even a few months, checking out the best the world has to offer – on their own terms. This week we learned of a round the world flight offer which makes the wheels spin. There are just a few catches…
The First And Only Catch
The only way to unlock this extreme “around the world in business class” discount is by originating in Australia, but don’t let that automatically stop you without a good think first. If you live in Australia, congrats by the way. This is by very few definitions “cheap”, but for a once in a lifetime moment, or series of moments, $3,666USD isn’t all that crazy for total comfort.
Getting to Australia is easier than ever, and flight deals from Europe and the US can be found under $500, or nearly for free if you’re using points! This deal is offered by Finnair, and allows travel on a variety of Oneworld airlines, including Qantas. You 100% earn points and miles on these flights.
How The Trip Might Look
Your adventure could take a few shapes, each of which are pretty cool. These tickets are for travel from March 1st to May 31st, 2019 or September 1st thru November 30th, 2019 and can be spread out over up to six months. You could go…
- Australia, Asia, Europe, N. A, S.A, then Australia.
- Australia, North America, Europe, Asia, Australia.
- Australia, Asia, Europe, North America, Australia.
- Australia, S.A., N.A., Europe, Asia, Australia.
Finnair allows you to add a stop anywhere in Europe where the airline flies, in addition to Helsinki. There’s a handy forum on the subject of the fare with tips on optimal routings and dates to secure the lowest prices.
Customize Your Stopovers
These Finnair tickets allow up to five stops, but if you pay more, you can get the number up to 20. Most people pay more than $3,000 for a simple round trip like New York to London, so it goes without saying that just a fraction more to go around the world is seriously cool. Any stops under 23:59 don’t even count.
Endless Side Trips Too
Even if you just take the lowest price option with 5 side trips, you could put points or good deals to use to add as many possible trips as you could ever want in between. Using British Airways Avios you can use as few as 4,500 points for one way flights within Europe or Asia, and 7,500 in North America. You’d just simply connect the dots.
Booking These Tickets
These deals expire March 16, so you’ve got about a month to plan. These fares can be booked by Finnair, or any travel agent worth dealing with. These fares seem to only be bookable by Australian travel agents. Here’s one (who will only help Australian residents), and another to contact. Find a travel agent online and get them to help you! This is not a Oneworld around the world ticket, but rather a Finnair specific product, so be sure to mention that to your travel agent to pull up these awesome prices.
Good travel agents who can book these fares are also welcome to leave their contact details in the replies.
Hi. Can you explain the sentence “flight can be spread over 6 months”?
In the sentence before you said that flights need to be taken between March and May or September and November. So how do you spread it so far unless you have 3 month break somewhere?
Yes I don’t understand this either? Can I start in October and use it over 6 months?
Hi Shona!
I’m an Australian based travel agent. You potentially could, however we would need be able to book it currently as most airlines only release flights 10-11 months in advance, so we may only be able to book up to mid-January 2020 currently depending on the airline. Noting the date expiry of the fare offer, you may be able to leave in October but your last flight would need to be in January at the latest!
Hope that helps – Louise
Hi Ian!
I’m an Australian based travel agent. I can see how that might be really confusing, so hope I can clarify it a little for you.
The months mentioned (March-May and Sept-Nov) would be when there are dates that can be travelled on for this price. The reason being June-August being peak Summer travel time in Europe and so prices would be higher as there is likely less availability left currently. With that being said we could probably still get some flights then, the price may just change.
The sentence “flights can be spread over 6 months” would refer to the maximum travel time allowed. Every single flight combination that we book has a minimum and maximum travel time as a part of their rules. Essentially, if you left on the 1st May, the latest you would have to arrive back at your destination would be the 1st November.
Hope that makes sense – let me know if you have any other questions!
Hi GSTP, thanks for the mention of our website. I’m the Director of RoundAbout Travel. Please note for your readers we do not accept any reservations for travellers originating outside of Australia. The product is intended for local distribution only. Reasons behind this are time zone differences which make servicing difficult, the high transaction cost of international payments and merchant account restrictions due to increased fraud risk from overseas credit cards. Due to the forward delivery risk of accepting travel bookings months in advance and local collapses of companies including Bestjet our Australian banking sector is quite difficult and risk averse and thus monitor our percentage of overseas transactions to ensure we are not posing them a greater risk. Unfortunately whilst the product is amazing any inquires received from travellers originating overseas would be politely declined.
So everyone emailing you should find their favorite Australian hotel address for billing purposes? 😉.
All jokes aside…
Noted. You have it there, if you wish to book this perhaps a bit more digging or effort required. Thanks Mark for helping our readers.
If you use modern banking there are minimal bank fees and very good ex rates with extremely low % uplifts (0.35%) using the daily mid rate. These include “local” multi currency bank accounts inc AUD where the individual can pay and receive in that local currency as they have a local account code set
I am sorry sir but you sound like you’re living in the 1970s! Really, time zone differences and banking issues? How old are you, 60?
Hi GTSP, awesome article highlighting the absolute gem that true round the world fares are! As an Australian travel agent with a big and well known agency, we absolutely book travellers originating outside of Australia. I’ve personally done so on numerous occasions, there really isn’t any restriction other than time zones and not being able to see my clients in person until they get here and often like to come say hi!
So I just wanted to reach out to give hope to anyone seeing this who is genuinely interested – we absolutely can do it! I’m more than happy to help answer questions from anyone, and can also pass along my work email if anyone is interested!
Cheers, and thank you again for an awesome article, Louise
Hi Louise, What email address can you be contacted at to book this fare? Thanks!
Hi Louise,
My friend and I are very keen to make this work. We are from Singapore and just got declined by RoundAboutTravel. How may we reach you for this?
Thanks,
Michelle
Hi GTSP,
There’s seems to be a lot of aussie agents that read your blog!
I’m also completely happy to assist any overseas based flyers want to take advantage of the deal, I regularly book my US based family so happy to work around time zones etc. Keep in mind that the transaction will be in Australian Dollars so make sure you’ve got a card with no or low foreign transaction fees. I know GTSP has a few good recommendations.
Feel free to contact me at nathanial.brown@flightcentre.com.au
hi there
I am already in Australia (Perth). Do I need to fly within Australia first or can i go straight from Perth to Europe?
Will this deal likely be available in 2020?
Thank you