I bought twice round the world ticket from oneworld. I present the conditions, as travel agents often do not know all the possibilities (updated 10.10.2008). You must do some online search yourself for connections and frequent changes that are introduced by the airlines. There are many conditions, many opportunities, you just carefully get through all current rules.

You can choose from two types of tickets - continental (oneworld explorer) and mileage (global explorer):

Continental – the advantage of this type over the other round the world tickets is that there is no miles limit, well, and you can backtracking within a continent (Europe, North Africa and Middle East counted as one continent). Detailed information can be found here. The only restriction that you can fly up to 16 flight segments on your trip. Travel between two airports by surface transportation will count as one flight segment. You can reach almost any place (the exceptions given on airline websites), where following carriers flight: Iberia (Spain), British Airways (UK), Finnair (Finland), Malev (Hungary), S7 Airlines (Russia), Cathay Pacific (Hong Kong), Japan Airlines (Japan), Royal Jordanian (Jordan), Qantas (Australia), Lan Chile (Chile), Mexicana (Mexico) and American Airlines (USA). This also applies to smaller carriers (known as a codeshare) such as cooperating with them Airkenya Aviation (Africa), or American Eagle / Executive (Caribbean).You can’t take more then four flights within one continent (in North America six flights, and general don’t count intercontinental flights). And you can’t backtrack to already earlier visited continent. In Australia and USA only one long flight such Sydney - Perth or Miami - Los Angeles is allowed, the other flights must be on shorter distances. We have one year to completed our journey.

The price depends on four factors: the number of visited continents (3-6), first departure date (high or low season, different on every continent), country of departure (every country has different price) and selected class of travel (for me economy only).

Currently, such a ticket in economy class on 5 continents, departing Australia in the low season costs 4000 AUD plus airport taxes. Start in the high season would be 300 AUD more. I had to pay 372 AUD airport and other taxes (although in the Philippines I still had to pay an additional 10 $US departure tax). When determining your route visit website of each individual airlines and see where they fly. It’s worth also use surface segments - arrive in one place and depart from other, unfortunately now it is counted as one flight. Note that transit also is counted as a stopover, unless it has the same flight number. We can change flight dates free of charge, but if we want to change the route, it costs us 75 $US.

Here the route that I’ve chosen in old rules (20 flights permitting, surface not counted as a flight): Darwin - Melbourne - Tokyo to Osaka surface - Hong Kong - Manila - Hong Kong - Dubai - London - Warsaw, 3 months in Poland, Prague - Dublin - Madrid - Rio de Janeiro - Santiago - Punta Arenas, surface for 8 months from Tierra del Fuego to Alaska, Anchorage - Chicago - Puerto Rico - Dominica - Puerto Rico - Miami - Los Angeles - Sydney (For visa restrictions I had to swap Dominica into Virgin Islands, cost 75 $US)

Millage: here the price depends on the number of traveled miles, travel class and from the country and date of the first intercontinental flight. The advantage of this ticket is that you can use some exotic airline partners, which can not be selected on the continental ticket, such as Air Tahiti Nui. The precise conditions to see here.

Ticket up to 29,000 miles, economy class, departing Australia in low season, the price of 3500 $US. Departing from Great Britain would be 1549 GBG, from Germany 2400 EUR. Here is my ticket from 2006: Sydney - Auckland (here I bought a separate ticket to Tonga) - Papeete (Tahiti) - Easter Island - Santiago - Havana - Madrid - Barcelona (and overland to South Africa) - Johannesburg - Perth (Australia)

More about domestic airlines in Australia I wrote here.