Recently I purchased a ticket that would take me around the world for 120,000 Dividend Miles and $300. My trip starts and ends in Mexico City but takes me to Miami, San Paulo, Paris, Kuala Lumpur, and Los Angeles before taking me back to Mexico. The trip was booked in a mixture of first, business, and economy class, with all long haul segments in First, except for GRU-CDG (business instead), KUL-HKG (Business) and LAX-DFW-MEX (economy—which I probably won’t fly). Although this ticket cost me 120,000 miles and $300 I wanted to see what it would be if I actually priced it out, airline by airline.
I initially started to use ITA to price things out, but ITA priced things at rates 10-100x higher than I knew the airlines were pricing the same tickets. For example, ITA said MEX-MIA in business/First was $6000, yet AA.com priced MEX-MIA as only $606! So I decided to use each airline site that I was flying to price out the segments, the same way they are divided/listed on my US airways account.
Mex-Mia-GRU in AA/TAM First via aa.com $4408
GRU-CDG in TAM Business via Tam.com.br $3630
CDG-KUL in Malaysia First via malaysiaairlines.com 4674€ or $5900
KUL-HKG-LAX in Cathay Pacific regional Business to Long-haul First: 52,620 MYR or $16,032
LAX-DFW-MEX in AA Economy $221
Grand Total: $30,191
$30,000 for a round the world ticket in premium cabin doesn’t seem to be too ridiculous however 120,000 US Airways miles + $300 doesn’t seem like a bad deal at all! Aferall I could NEVER afford a $30,000 ticket, but I can easily drop $300 to travel the world far and wide and experience Brazil for the first time!
