http://www.westernair.co.uk/roundtheworld1.html

For the benefit of those relatively new to this site, we had a long
discussion early in the life of this site about buying RTW tickets
outside your home country.

Basically the situation is that the airlines set differnt prices for
RTW tickts according to the country you buy the ticket in (which is
also the country where your flights start and end).

For some reason the prices charged in North America (and less
surprisingly places like Japan, China etc) are considerably above
those charged in other countries, particualrly Australia, NZ, UK
Thailand and India.

This means that it can often save North American travellers many
hundeds of dollars to buy a cheap one way to one of the cheap
countries (UK tends to be the most convenient) and buy their RTW
there. In this case you will probably left with a "stub" North
America-London ticket which need not use.

There are a few additional complications. On the positive side
buying a RTW ticet in UK is very straightforward, u just sort out
the itinerary (perhaps better done in the US unless u have cheap
transatlantic phone costs) just call an agency such as trailfinders
who have RTW specialists and dont charge extra commission for credit
card sales. IN the UK u can buy most RTW tickets on the day if u
want (in practice this is not very practical as it usually takjes
some time to finalise your itinerary. In the US they are I believe
one week advanced purchase tickets so a US airline/agent may tell
you that you would have to hang around in London for a week to get
your RTW ticket in London - this is wrong. You can buy your RTW
ticket in london over the phone from the US if u want then either
(i) collect it from their offices when u get to London (ii) have
them send it to the aireport for you to collect their (may incur
surcharge) (iii) have them send it to a UK friend who then posts it
to u in the US ( I think they cannot post directly to US for
regulatory reasons).

The recent weakening of the USD has made this somoewhat less
attractive then a year ago, however i beleive there are still
considerable savings. The strengthening of the Euro on the other
hand, has made buying a RTW in London attractive for many Europeans
(I think the savings are typically ˆ300-600).

On the negative side there is one complication that you should be
aware of. that is that u can "in theory" - in practice I imagine it
may well be OK) only change the dates on Star Alliance RTW tickets
once u have made the first intercontinental flight. Thus a
potential disadvantage is that you would not have flexibility for
flight dates on your European stops. In practice, most airline
staff seemn unaware of this rule, so im not sure it would be
enforced.

Wade
London
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