ATW Ticket
Trip Start
Sep 24, 2008
1
2
76
Trip End
Jul 21, 2009
New York City,
New York,
United States
Saturday, September 6, 2008
The airlines have long suffered from overcapacity, rigorous competition and input cost inflation that is outside of their control. One of the solutions has been the advent of the global airline alliances, allowing carriers to share routes, gates, crews, planes, back office logistics and ground operations. Despite all of this, they make it to bankruptcy court more often than they see the dentist. However, these airline alliances also offer a variety of ATW ticket packages at extremely affordable levels.
The strategy is to pick the appropriate airline alliance for your travels - ensuring that the regions you are visiting are covered by the alliance's routes
One World Alliance
. I selected the One World alliance - American, BA, Cathay, Qantas, LAN, amongst others - predominantly because of its coverage of South America. Once you've selected an alliance, the next step is the appropriate package:http://www.oneworld.com/ow/air-travel-options
You have a choice between ATW ticket packages priced on continents visited or multi-continent packages priced on total mileage flown. I ended up having to choose a Global Explorer package, providing me with 16 flights across 6 continents/regions. However, there are a few constraints:
- Flights between continents must all be in one direction, so you can't fly both ways across either the Pacific or Atlantic
- A maximum of 4 flights per continent
- A stopover counts as a flight
- An overland trip counts as a flight
- You have between 10 days and 12 months to complete travel with a minimum of 4 flights
- All routes must be selected upfront, with a $125 + fees charge for every re-routing change
- Any dates/times may be changed up to 7 days prior to the flight
Once you've got your package comes the fun part; pull out a map, come up with a rough plan in your head and download the alliance's global timetable (or use their itinerary planner). Here, the strategy is to minimize the amount of overland and stopover "flights" and maximize the number of long-haul flights under the ATW ticket. You supplement the travel with buses, trains and the occasional budget flight.
The last step is to call them up and make a reservation. A lot easier than it sounds as you must be ticketed on all 16 of your flights upfront forcing you to pick dummy dates. The good thing is you realize which legs are tough to book at certain times. For instance, Aukland-Santiago is ALWAYS sold out, particularly in their summer as it is one of the few links between Australasia and South America.
My ATW route (and indicative dates):
1 NYC-London (Sep)
2 London-Mumbai (Oct)
3 India Overland
4 Chennai-Hong Kong (Oct)
5 Hong Kong-Kunming (Oct)
6 Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos/Thailand/Malaysia/Indonesia Overland (Nov/Dec/Jan) - Thailand or Bali for New Years is the target
7 Jakarta-Sydney (Jan)
8 Sydney-Tahiti (Jan)
9 Tahiti-Santiago (Jan)
10 Santiago-Rio de Janeiro (Jan)
11 Brasil/Argentina Overland (Feb/Mar)
12 Buenos Aires-Guayacuil, Ecuador (Mar)
13 Ecuador/Colombia/Peru Overland (Mar/Apr)
14 Lima-Mexico City (Apr)
15 Mexico City-NYC (Apr)
