The round-the-world business class ticket is the travel industry’s formal acknowledgment that the world is circumnavigable by air and that the person who wants to circle the globe on a single ticket deserves the premium version of the product.
The Star Alliance Round the World business class ticket starts at approximately €8,000 to €12,000 depending on the routing, the number of stops, and the booking timing. The Oneworld Explorer business class RTW starts at similar pricing. The premium airlines’ own long-haul flat bed products, Singapore Airlines Suites, Cathay Pacific The Residence, Qatar Airways Qsuites, price the individual long-haul sectors at €2,000 to €8,000 per flight depending on the route and the cabin product.
The RTW business class ticket provides: the flat bed on the overnight sectors, the business class lounge at the departure and arrival airports, the priority boarding and baggage handling, the meal service designed by the consulting chef at 35,000 feet, and the arrival at the destination in the condition of the person who was in the flat bed rather than the economy seat for the preceding eight hours.
These are genuine benefits that the frequent flyer who has earned the status and the points has been using correctly for the years of their professional travel career. They are also, in aggregate, the delivery mechanism for the destination, the airport infrastructure that the airline uses to move the passenger from the origin to the destination as comfortably as the premium product allows.
What the RTW Ticket Does Not Provide
The RTW ticket provides the arrival. It does not provide the journey. The twelve hours between London and Singapore in the Singapore Airlines Suites flat bed is twelve hours of the premium cabin experience — the meal, the bed, the movie, the service. It is not twelve hours of the experience of covering the distance between London and Singapore.
The distance between London and Singapore, experienced at 35,000 feet in the flat bed, is the distance that is covered rather than the distance that is inhabited. The destination starts at the arrivals hall. The flat bed is the transition between the last destination and the next one, made as comfortable as the premium cabin product allows.
The RTW ticket budget, €10,000 to €15,000 for the business class global circuit plus the accommodation and meals at each destination plus the airport transfers, produces a total spend of €20,000 to €40,000 for the person who circles the globe by air in the premium cabin.
The total spend per day of travel, at an average of three weeks of actual travel across the RTW itinerary: €1,000 to €2,000 per travel day.
The Naora Coastal membership at €1,286 per day for one week per year is in the same cost bracket for the travel day, with the critical difference that the Naora day is the day in the offshore sailing life rather than the day in transit between destinations.
The Arrival That the Ticket Cannot Produce
The Marquesas from the Singapore Airlines Suites flat bed on the Papeete approach is four minutes of descent through the cloud layer and the volcanic peaks visible through the window. The Marquesas after three weeks of Pacific crossing in the Eighty2 is the landfall, the smell of the island arriving on the wind before the mountains are visible from the bow, the depth reading changing as the ocean floor rises toward the island, the anchorage earned by the passage rather than the destination purchased through the ticket.
The RTW business class ticket is the most efficient possible delivery mechanism for the world’s airports. The Naora circumnavigation is the most inefficient possible delivery mechanism for the world’s anchorages, and the inefficiency is the entire point of it.
