I mentioned in the last section that I had a really good reason for me wanting to be in business class for my trip to Bogota. Well, the reason was I had to be in Singapore immediately after this trip and I was going to fly the long way round!
In the space of 4 weeks, I took 11 flights:
- London to Amsterdam
- Amsterdam to Panama
- Panama to Bogota
- Bogota to Paris
- Paris to London
- London to Singapore
- Singapore to Kuala Lumpur
- Kuala Lumpur to Singapore
- Singapore to Tokyo
- Tokyo to Singapore
- Singapore to London
To do all this, I did investigate the “Round the World” ticket option. This ticket allows you to fly around the world, stopping in many locations, as long as you are constantly travelling in the same direction. This ticket is not cheap! Unfortunately, whilst they would have sold me a ticket, it was prohibitively expensive. For this trip the ticket would have looked like this: London, Madrid, Bogota, San Francisco, Singapore, London. It would have only used One World Airlines.
This was in 2017 and flight pricing was quite different then. If I remember correctly, booking 2 return trips was cheaper than booking the round-the-world trip by around £1000.
However, I want to give you up to date information, so I did some research for a similar trip to go in September 2025, flying in economy only this time, not Premium Economy, here’s my results:
Round the World Trip: London, Bogota, Dallas, Tokyo, Singapore, London: £3600*
Two return trips, London – Bogota AND London to Singapore: £1350
*I had to add in other stops as the flight routes that were available pre-pandemic are not there now.
How do I book a round- the-world ticket?
Since you will be relying on multiple airlines, the best way to research your trip is to use the alliance websites, rather than the airlines:
One World – www.oneworld.com
Star Alliance – www.staralliance.com
Sky Team – www.skyteam.com
Both One World and Star Alliance have dedicated round-the-world booking tools where you put in your chosen cities, and it proposes possible routes for you and gives you an option to book from the most suitable airline.
Delays and lost bags
In the end the round the world ticket was too expensive, so I booked my trip to South America and my trip to Asia as two completely separate trips. But the timing was tight, I needed to get from Bogota to Singapore quickly. The Bogota to London trip was a completely separate booking and different airline to my London to Singapore trip. If I had any major delays on my first flights it could have seriously impacted the rest of my trip. I allowed 6 hours at London Heathrow for my turn around, and as it happened that was almost not enough.
For this part of my trip I was flying Air France in business class from Bogota to London, stopping in Paris (this was the return leg of my KLM trip out to Bogota mentioned before). Then I was flying from London to Singapore in Premium Economy on British Airways. As mentioned previously I was very impressed with the Air France business class product, what I didn’t mention is that we were late departing Bogota because a tropical thunderstorm was passing over. It wasn’t a huge delay, if I remember rightly around 45 minutes. But I had a very short connection in Paris for my short hop over to London. When we arrived in Paris, I had no time to sample the Air France lounge, I had to run straight from one flight to the next. Upon arriving at the gate I realised that my short turnaround time might have been ok for me, but not for my bags. I asked the member of staff at the gate if they knew if my bags were coming across, they did some checking and seemed to think it would be fine. So, I boarded the A320 for my short flight across to London. Upon arrival I waited at the baggage belt and nothing appeared, when I went to check with baggage services, it indeed had not made my flight. They said it shouldn’t be too much of a problem as it would be on the next flight which was only an hour behind. When I asked what I should do, I was told I should leave the area to go landside, and wait until the next flight landed. When it did land there is a telephone I could use on the wall right next to the exit where I could request permission to re-enter the baggage collection area and collect my bag. I should point out the airline had offered to post it to my final destination, even though that was going to be Singapore. Generally speaking, airlines have a policy that if they lose your bag they will post it to any address anywhere in the world. But as I was going on another trip, I really wanted my bag with me, so I left the area and waited.
Going back to luggage collection
My upcoming trip to Asia was going to be a long one, plus I was visiting friends while there, so I’d stored an additional bag in the excess luggage company at Terminal 4. I had the bright idea to go and remove this bag now to save me some time, this turned out not to be such a good idea. I collected my bag, got my phone out and made a few phone calls while I waited for the flight from Paris to land with my other bag.
When the flight did land, I went to the phone rang through and asked for permission to go back to the luggage area, I was then escorted to a security checkpoint, who of course want to scan all my bags. The bag I had been storing here had a bottle of gin in it, as a gift for my friend in Malaysia, of course I was not allowed to take that through security and they wouldn’t watch it for me even for a few minutes. I had to leave the area go back to excess luggage, check it back in again, then head back security to go through with my hand luggage to finally collect my bag.
After a few minutes I was reunited with both sets of luggage and I was ready to make my way to Terminal 5 to catch my flight to Singapore, thankfully with still a few hours to spare, but not the luxurious 5 or 6 hours I was hoping for.
Getting between terminals
One thing Heathrow does not do particularly well is help you transition between other terminals particularly terminal 4 to Terminal 5 (when you are landside, airside they bus you around). With hindsight I now know I should have stepped outside and found the direct bus that goes there, but at the time I was tired, jet lagged and feeling a little rushed as my time had been clipped, so I went and found the trains instead. It took me ages to get one train back to Heathrow terminals 2 and 3, and then another train up to Terminal 5. Eventually I arrived, checked in my 2 bags and made my way to the BA first class lounge to have a little bit of relaxing time before my flight to Singapore.
End of the journey
I made sure I booked myself in for a free shower to freshen up before getting on my second long haul, and 3rd flight of the day. Eventually it was time to board the A380 for my long 13-hour flight to Singapore. In London time it was an evening flight, however I had just flown a night flight from South America and was on a completely different time zone, knowing I was going to land evening time in Singapore, it made sense for me to stay awake for the majority of the flight. This did seem to confuse the crew somewhat as I was the only person wide awake, but I watched a lot of films and they kept bringing me regular drinks and snacks to keep me awake.
I eventually landed in Singapore after over 24 hours of flying to go around the world the long way. Whilst it is definitely an affordable approach compared to the round the world ticket, I’m not sure I’d recommend this particular route to someone else. As a fan of flying however I thoroughly enjoyed it, not to mention learnt a lot about doing unusual things like collecting a late bag or moving between Heathrow terminals.
And the story continues…
These are just some examples of my flying adventures, on this site I’ve recorded other flying experiences as well as tips and information about flying to help you get the most of your journeys in the air.
What did I learn from these trips?
Well, an awful lot about flying, but I think my biggest lesson was about leaving time between 2, unconnected long-haul flights. If I ever did that again I’d leave more time or even an overnight stop to avoid disaster.
