When you get invited to fly a round-the-world trip in business class it’s difficult to say no. And that’s why I’m about to set off on a oneworld explorer ticket in order to document the trip and help celebrate oneworld airlines (and their destinations) too.

Why celebrate? The oneworld alliance is marking its 25th anniversary this year. Plus when you’re flying, that’s always reason to celebrate, right?

So what’s the plan for this round-the-world?

• I’m going to be shooting a jam-packed-with-excitement video for our YouTube channel about the entire trip. I’ll be stopping in 6 cities along the 30,000 mile trek (that’s about 48,000 kilometers), stopping through 11 airports, flying on 7 oneworld airlines and on 7 different aircraft types.
• I’ll be posting to social media as well of course. Look out especially for live updates on our Instagram stories. Aside from the fun of following along, I’ll also be carrying 100 of our very-in-demand Flightradar24 “remove before flight” keychains, and I want to give them all away to you over the course of this 10-day journey.
• That means that in a few of the destinations I’ll be announcing when and where I’ll be, hopefully with a bit of advance notice, and we can do a meet-and-greet, talk planes, and if you’re one of the first to show up you’ll get a keychain too. I’ll also post about those meetups here in this post.

Where in the world are we going?

We’re keeping that a little bit of a mystery and not revealing everything all at once, but I’ll be updating this post with the routing as well as interesting info about the flights and airlines in question (and tracking links of course) as I go over the next week and a half. So be sure to bookmark this post and in case you don’t follow us on the socials already, you should do that too.

Win a Gold Subscription!

If anyone’s out spotting and photographing at one of the airports I’m flying to or from and you manage to snap and post a photo of us on Instagram, we’ll get you upgraded to a Gold Flightradar24 subscription (while supplies last). Make sure to tag @flightradar24 and @gabeleigh (so it doesn’t get lost in the many tags Flightradar24 sees in a day).

Flying day 1 (Nov 3 2024):

On November 3rd I kicked things off flying Helsinki (HEL) – London Heathrow (LHR) – New York (JFK) on Finnair and American Airlines respectively.

Today’s flights are:

AY1335 HEL-LHR 14:00 – 15:15

This is operated by an Airbus A320 and usually takes just under three hours to reach its destination.

AA141 LHR-JFK 19:00 – 21:44

This is on a 777-200 (which incidentally is my most-flown airline and aircraft combo since I spent so much time on AA long-haul back in the early 2000s) and typically has a flying time of a little over 7 hours. For more of my flight stats check out https://my.flightradar24.com/gwleigh

Fun facts: did you know that on a typical day there are currently about 21 flights (daily!) from LHR to JFK? And generally 12 of those will be on oneworld airlines BA and AA. It’s effectively an hourly shuttle service.

If you’re around any of these airports and catch a shot of us make sure to post it and tag us for a chance to win a Gold subscription on us!

Flying day 2 (Nov 5 2024):

Up next is a flight on Alaska Airlines on their transcontinental service from Newark to Los Angeles, on November 5th.

AS289 EWR-LAX 07:30 – 10:38

Originally due to be operated by the Boeing 737 MAX 9, it looks like the aircraft has now been swapped to the 737-900ER.

Flying day 3 (Nov 7 2024):

Up next we’re headed to Tokyo Narita on Japan Airlines flight JL61, today, November 7th.

JL61 LAX-NRT 11:45 – 16:40 (Nov 8)

This flight is operated by JAL’s 787-9. JAL also serves Tokyo Haneda (HND) on the 777-300ER. That flight departs just a little bit after the NRT service.

Flying day 4 (Nov 9 2024):

We’ve lost a day crossing the international dateline so now after a short night in Tokyo we’re headed onward. This time it’s Tokyo Haneda (HND) to Hong Kong (HKG)! Onboard Japan Airlines and its 787-9 again, but this time with a different business class product onboard. Stay tuned to our Instagram for more real-time updates from the road.

JL29 HND-HKG 9:40 – 13:40

Flying day 5 (Nov 11 2024):

On this leg we’re headed down under, with Cathay Pacific on the A350-1000 from Hong Kong (HKG) to Sydney (SYD).

CX139 HKG-SYD 8:45 – 20:50

Flying day 6 (Nov 13 2024):

Today we start the long trip back to the Nordics where we started with three sectors pretty much all in a row, on the Qantas 787-9, the Qatar Airways A380 and Finnair’s A330. It’ll be a long but hopefully fun day of oneworld airline discovery, covering around 10,500 miles inflight. Here are the flight details:

QF33 SYD-PER 15:30 – 17:20 (789)

QR901 PER-DOH 22:45 – 05:20+1 (380)

14 NOV AY1982 DOH-HEL 08:05 – 14:20 (333)

The oneworld alliance: a little background

Oneworld is made up of 15 airlines including Fiji Airways (a oneworld connect member that’s due to become a full member in due course) and Oman Air (a very-soon-t0-be fully-fledged member). The 13 current full members are American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Iberia, Japan Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Qantas, Qatar Airways, Royal Air Maroc, Royal Jordanian and Sri Lankan Airlines.

If you’d like to play around with some round-the-world routings you can do it on oneworld’s RTW booking site. It’s pretty fun.