The Flight Deal had an interesting Twitter conversation with the real_jetsetr (aka Michael) yesterday talking about a way to fly just Low Cost Carriers (LCC) to 6 of the 7 continents. It sounded interesting enough to write a blog post about the potential journey. Further more, see the end for a further enticement if the idea of a Round the World (RTW) trip, LCC style, strikes your fancy.
Starting Off: North America to Europe
I’m starting off with the assumption that you’re originating from the East Coast of the US. Why? Because that’s where I’m based, and, you know, most of the cool people, like Matt (Saverocity’s noble founder and leader), Billy Joel, and As the Joe Flies, among others. So, taking the inverse of Horace Greeley’s advice, I am proposing that you Go East Young [Person] (because, this is the 2000’s).
There are two “true” LCC’s that fly trans-atlantic (TATL), despite Ryan Air’s threat’s by Michael O’Leary’s assertion in March. Those carriers are Norwegian Air Shuttle and WOW Air. So lets take a look at where you could fly via those airlines:
Red = Norwegian Air Shuttle; Navy = WOW Airlines.
I haven’t flown either Norwegian, nor WOW Air, but, I have to be honest, if I were to choose one, it would probably be WOW Air, but in full disclosure, I’m hoping to fly WOW to Iceland next year.
Continuing On: Europe to Africa
You could fly a variety of low cost carriers, including EasyJet, Vueling, and Air Arabia Maroc. In fact, there are other low cost carriers, like FastJet and Kulula that fly to other areas of Africa (in addition to Air Arabia Maroc):
Continuing On: Africa to the Middle East
Here kind’ve throws a bit of a wrench in the works. The primary airline, FlyDubai flies from Alexandria to Dubai. So in order to continue this RTW, you’d have to fly Air Arabia Maroc to Alexandia, Egypt, then from Alexandria, Egypt to Dubai.
Continuing: Middle East to Asia
You can take FlyDubai to India, but then you’ll need to connect to either an Indian or Asia airline. AirAsiaIndia flies from Hyderabad, Chennai and others. AirAsia seems to be the thousand pound gorilla, flying to Kuala Lumpur (who knew?!), you can see some options here, but, they’re getting a bit thinner:
Are you getting tired yet? Continuing: Asia to Australia
For Australia, I narrowed things down a bit, now we’re trying to fly Jetstar and Air Asia from Kuala Lumpur to Australia (mind you, if you repositioned to Singapore, you could fly Scoot, if you went to Indonesia, you could fly AirAsia, A bunch of airlines if you went to Thailand, and maybe Jetstar if you flew to Vietnam).
Now that you’re Down Under, gotta get to the Western Hemisphere: Australia to South America and the US.
Here I went with JetStar to get to Honolulu, then to make things a bit more interesting, WestJet to Vancouver, onward to Trinidad and Tobago via Toronto, and connecting to Brazil’s GOL to get to Sao Paolo, Brazil. Then, to get home, I figured Azul was the right option, flying from their hub at Campinas, Brazil to Fort Lauderdale.
Wrapping Up
So, surprisingly it is possible to hit 6 of 7 continents, only flying Low Cost Carriers. I’m pretty sure that it won’t be comfortable though!
Would you actually fly something like this? All LCCs?
What? No final price tag?
@Scott – I thought about including the price but in all candor, doing it right would have been a significant effort, because I’d have to research each airline to determine all of the added fees, to properly calculate the cost.
You can often get to Europe from LAX on Norwegian as well. So you can start on either coast!
@Jeff – a very valid point!
Westjet flies to dublin and glasgow and provided you travel on a select few days it is pretty cheap http://i.imgur.com/QjYinTa.png (not sure of their ancillary fees though).
Another route for mid east to asia is cebu pacific which flies from dubai/doha/kuwait/riyadh to manila and from there onwards to australia/japan etc https://www.cebupacificair.com/Pages/route-map.aspx
Cool – thanks! So apparently you can make it at least partway over both the Atlantic and the Pacific!