oneworld Explorer

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How does it work ?

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When travelling you naturally meet other people who are using the same round the world fare, which in the Southern hemisphere quite often turns out to be the One World Explorer ticket. The ticket works on a sector basis where you fly around the world using all the One World Alliance Airlines (BA, Iberia, Finnair, Aer Lingus, LAN Chile, Quantas, AA, Cathay Pacific) as well as their local subsidiaries (see the PDF OneWorld_Explorer for details). In total there are six sectors, namely Europe and Middle East, Asia, Africa, South America, North America and Mexico, Southwest Pacific, of which you have to use a minimum of 3 for a Northern (Europe, Asia, North America) and 4 for a Southern Hemisphere itinerary (Europe, Africa, Oceania, South America).
The base fare includes 4 flights within the respective sectors plus the inter-sector flight as well as two within the originating sector. (Which gets you to a one world hub in London or Madrid and back home)

Example

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To illustrate this concept here a sample itinerary for sector Africa:
1. Cape Town - Jo'burg
2. Jo'burg - Windhoek
3. Windhoek - Jo'burg
4. Jo'burg - Cape Town
Inter-sector: Jo'burg - Sydney

As you can see from this example backtracking is allowed within a sector, whereas the inter-sector flights have to follow one direction around the world.

Flight Availability

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The class you are flying in is M class which is a scaled down version of the Y tourist class, So you often need to plan ahead or waitlist to get where you want to go (especially true during peak seasons)

Changes of Routing and Dates

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Date changes are free of charge, choosing a different route (within the sectors you have chosen) requires your ticket to be re-issued at a cost of US$ 75. In case you elect to re -route / issue make sure you keep the original blueprints so that you don't get charged airport taxes twice.

Extra Flights

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You can buy two more flights within each sector for EUR 100 each, plus the re-issue fee for your ticket of US$ 75. These additional flight can be bought whilst you are already in the sector. (In North America/Mexico you can purchase an additional 4 flights)

Air Miles

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M class is only eligible for miles on the respective company's mileage scheme, which means that if you are a member of British Airways Executive Club you only qualify to accumulate miles on the flights operated by BA or their subsidiaries. Also experience has shown that LAN Chile will actually credit air miles flown in M class on their network to your BA Executive Club account. Where this is not the case, one way around this problem would be to become a member of the LAN Chile, Quantas, etc. frequent traveller programmes and use these to accumulate miles within the service realms of the respective companies.(Lots of hassle though)
Another option may be to go for the business class ticket which isn't that much more expensive and gives you more flexibility in terms of dates of travel.