After numerous months of research and planning we have finally developed the itinerary for our Oneworld Round the World Flights and have just completed a lengthy call with British Airways getting them booked.

You may ask, “Why round the world flights”. Well there are 2 primary reasons – cost and flexibility over booking regular flights. We started with 2 requirements – getting to Thailand for our son’s wedding then to Sydney for the World Cruise, before returning to Vancouver at the end of the cruise. The costs for the Thailand and Sydney flights were actually more than the first itinerary I priced on the Oneworld website. Flexibility is also amazing, with flight changes, even at short notice, only requiring a quick phone call.

So if you are considering multiple flights, remember to check the round the world offerings or the special deals for heading around the Pacific and Atlantic.

Our schedule includes UK, South Africa, Thailand, Vietnam, Australia and USA, with flights and aircraft, as follows:

• Vancouver to Edinburgh – British Airways B-747 & B-319. At the end of March 2015, we depart Vancouver for Edinburgh, UK, spending a couple of weeks with Andy’s dad. To help with finalising the wedding plans we will also take a quick trip down to Manchester to stay with our daughter-in-laws mum.
• Edinburgh to Cape Town – British Airways B-319 & B-777. While initially considering India, the vaccination requirements put us off, so we selected South Africa as an alternate destination. We talked to 3 travel companies and selected Pembury Tours, who assigned us a personal travel consultant, who provided numerous options for what we wanted to see. The first three days will be in Cape Town, during which we will spend 1 day at Cape of Good Hope, a day at Table Mountain and a day touring the city. Then it is off to the Winelands for 2 days of touring wineries, followed by a 3 day safari at Sabi Sand Reserve. This will be interesting to compare the South African safari to those we completed in Kenya and Tanzania a few years ago. To recover from the safari we are heading to Zambia for 3 days at Victoria Falls, before returning to Cape Town for some quiet days.
• Cape Town to Bangkok – Qatar Airways B-787 and A-380. This is a new airline for us, but from our research these should be pleasant flights. From Bangkok we take a short hop to Koh Samui, where we have rented a house for the 2 weeks.
• Bangkok to Saigon – this will be considered a surface sector and we will book flights outside of the round the world package. After the wedding and a couple of weeks with family and friends, we are off to Saigon in Vietnam, where we will spend a week with our niece and her family.
• Saigon to Sydney – Cathay Pacific A-330. We arrive in Sydney a couple of days before the World Cruise and will spend 2 nights at our Worldmark timeshare in downtown, close to the harbour.
• World Cruise – we will be gone for 104 nights on the Sea Princess, followed by another week in Sydney at our timeshare.
• Sydney to Brisbane – Qantas B-737. From this point we will spend 3 months touring the Australian East Coast, heading down to Adelaide. Most of the time we will stay at our various timeshare properties.
• Adelaide to Los Angeles – Qantas B-737 & A-380. To assist in getting over jet lag we are going to stay in Los Angeles for a week before heading home to YVR. We have reserved 8 nights at the Worldmark Anaheim.
• Los Angeles to Vancouver – American Airlines B-767 & B-737. While they have a direct flight on a smaller aircraft, it wasn’t available on the Oneworld site, so we take the circuitous route to Vancouver via Dallas – Fort Worth.

This is an exciting itinerary and should provide lots of opportunities for blog posts.