We investigated two flight options for our first around-the-world trip, individual flights and around-the-world flights. Star Alliance (United in the US and a variety of international partners) and oneworld (American, Alaska and a variety of international partners) both offer around-the-world flights.

The price for the around-the-world flights was about 75% higher than booking ourselves. That is the price before selecting convenient flight times and decent seats. And they didn't include five additional in-country flights that would be needed to fulfill our planned itinerary.

We opted for planning the flights ourselves. The time and effort to book the individual one-way flights was high. Were we constrained by 9-5 jobs while planning this in the evenings and squeezing it in on weekends, I imagine it would have taken us three or four months to plan the full itinerary of flights, drives and hotels.

Our trip involves 9 separate airlines and 16 trip legs. We will be flying 35,412 miles (56,990 km) for a total of 76 hours and 55 minutes in the air. That's 76 hours and 55 minutes in metric (mild smirk and deep, knowing stare at the reader). Our longest single leg is from Newark to Cape Town at 7,317 miles (11,775 km), 14 hours and 20 minutes.

One key limiting factor on our flights is luggage. We are trying to optimize the cost of such a lengthy single trip, and to optimize our time and effort while touring. We have toted around the extra-large suitcases with carry-ons and personal bags through the streets and subways of London. It is not a challenge to be tackled by the faint of heart and definitely not by the faint of back (or knees or hips or ... you know what I'm talking about).

Moreover, more luggage means more clothes, more time doing more laundry, and less time having more fun (more is definitely less in this case). A friend tipped me off to a concept that I tried on our last trip to Italy and Spain. Rather than my typical cotton shirts and denim jeans, I traveled to Italy with dry-tech clothing--poly blends and synthetics that can be laundered, and that will hang dry within just a few hours.

Everything I had--underwear, socks, shirts, pants, even pajamas--everything could be washed off in the shower with me. They would drip dry overnight. No paying for laundry service. No trips to the laundromat. Granted, there was a bit of hassle with the laundry hanging about in the bathroom and the closets. The tradeoff was more money, and more time to tour.

I don't need clothing for two weeks. I need clothing for three days plus a spare. My pants are zip-off convertibles like the ones pictured. No ad revenue, here. This is one of the pairs of pants I actually wore in Italy. They are super-fast drying as I noted. And I can use them as either shorts or pants. They get a bit wrinkly. I call that a convenience tax. They flatten out after an hour or so of wearing each day. Mostly. Okay, I look a bit like a travel bum. Please refer the aforementioned "convenience tax" for more information on traveling around looking a bit like a travel bum.

The other trade-off with the luggage is related to the cost and logistics of having luggage on the airlines. The spreadsheet below shows a sample of the complexity of traveling with luggage internationally. I looked at Economy and Economy Plus for the most part. One of the airlines we will be taking is AirAsia. Their whole thing is pay for weight in 5kg increments. It was not feasible to show on the spreadsheet.

The meta-point is highlighted in yellow (the four differently shaded row sections on the upper and lower right for my friends who cannot distinguish yellow). The constraining flights were Thai Airways and Jetstar. The 20 kg checked-bag weight limit was common on many of the airlines I examined while selecting flights.

Between the two of us, we will be limited to 88 pounds of checked luggage. That is not a lot of weight, trust me. We are tipping 78 pounds with four changes of clothing. It is either 88 pounds, or another $100 for a single carry-on added to the Thai Airways flight plus a ripple across all the others as well. The whole Thai Airways flight was $300 including our carry-ons and checked luggage. One extra piece...1/3 the cost of the flight.

Notice as well that the in-the-cabin weight is 7 kg total for both carry-on and personal. Thai Airways was practically that with a 1.5 kg limit for the personal item.

At any rate, we have all our luggage packed, weighed and ready to roll. We are using Travelpro Crew Versapack luggage (about 6 years old now so Travelpro has some newer model names). We are taking two of the mediums, the larger of the ones pictured below which are 30.75 x 18 x 13.25 inches. We have the smaller ones and are opting to leave these at home. The smaller ones are an international version that fits within the parameters of most airlines outside the US. The standard carry-on bags that we get in the US are too large.

In addition to the bags, we have two backpacks that are also international Travelpros. They are the Executive Choice 3 Slim. They are specifically designed for international in-cabin standards. Though as you can see from the chart above, size alone is not a guarantee that the luggage will work with a given airline.

I am a bigger fan of the luggage bags than the backpacks. They are a bit too small and don't open all the way. The zippers that you see coming from the center down both sides go all the way to the bottom. And they open up to an inner liner that does not fold outward. Nevertheless, they will be useful for fitting size maximums on the flights where bag size matters most. And they are small enough that packing more than 7kg (15 lbs.) per bag is less likely.

That's it for this post. I expect my next post to be actual fun stuff. This seemed like an interesting logistical start.