Pacific islands as a part of RTW ticket

Hi,

I'm planning to go on a RTW trip for about a year starting October. Among other issues regarding the flight tickets I'm not sure whether to use and RTW ticket by "Star Alliance" or book separate flights as I go.

I'm planning to visit some pacific islands (Samoa & Tonga then continuing to the USA) and wanted to know if someone has experience using a "Star Alliance" RTW ticket for this purpose.

Since the RTW ticket price is calculated by miles (only an estimation of the price ticket is given in the website) then stopping in those islands shouldn't be much different then booking a Australia->USA direct ticket. The fact is that air-travelling around the pacific is very expensive so I'm not sure whether the ticket price estimation given in the website is even remotely close to the final price. Any advise will be much appreciated.

Thanks
Yuval

I believe the Star Alliance carrier serving the Pacific Islands is Air NZ.
They do serve various islands, but connect these to NZ or sometimes the US, not to each other.
So to visit say Samoa after Tonga, you'd have to fly via NZ, which would cost a lot of miles!

It may be cheaper to fly within the region using the cheapest OW tickets you can find on regional airlines.

I bought a Star Alliance RtW ticket, and used Air NZ to get to Fiji. At the time there was a direct flight from LA, so in effect it didn't cost me significantly extra miles to route through Fiji on my way to SE Asia. (Within Fiji I took a couple of domestic flights not on RtW ticket).

My strategy, by the way, was to use the RtW ticket only to fly in and out of a few hubs, such as to Bangkok for SE Asia. Once on the ground I used local land transport (Fiji flights excepted) for regional touring.

Note that the most direct flights to Samoa and tonga are from Fiji to each island, i.e you will need to go back to Nadi every time. If you take a star alliance ticket, you will have to go back to Australia or NZealand, which makes a much longer flight. There is no longer Bula pass on Fiji airways.

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