How we book our flights

The frequent-flyer internet

There is a whole world of YouTube devoted to flying well — cabins, lounges, fares, loyalty schemes — and much of it is very good indeed.

We are fond of Matt’s Planet, a British channel much of it turned towards British Airways, which reviews cabins and airport lounges and digs, in real detail, into ticket prices and airline reward programmes. Matt is not alone; there is a small industry of frequent-flyer creators, and between them they know an extraordinary amount. We enjoy watching, and we have learned a great deal.

But a question sits underneath all of it, and it is the real subject of this piece. Most of this advice is built for the frequent business traveller and the points-chaser. How much of it is any use to the rest of us — people who fly long-haul for pleasure a handful of times, and want the trip more than the tier status? Some of it, it turns out. Not all.

The eye-opener: where you start matters

The single thing that genuinely surprised us is that it can be markedly cheaper to fly a premium cabin if you begin your journey from certain European capitals rather than from London. Not a different flight — often the very same long-haul seat — simply sold for less because the journey starts somewhere else. The current consensus among the people who track this points to Oslo as one of the best places to start a long-haul premium trip; in our own hunt, as you will see, Amsterdam won.

Much of it comes down to tax. The UK’s Air Passenger Duty falls far harder on premium cabins than on economy: in 2026 the duty on a long-haul economy seat is around £106, but on a business seat it is around £253 — and that gap is before the airlines’ own pricing decisions, which tend to compound it. Start the same trip in a country with lighter charges and the difference can be real money.

It sounds slightly mad. Flying to Australia from the UK by way of a positioning flight to Oslo — possibly with a night in a hotel there — is not most people’s idea of efficiency. But the savings are genuine, and for a premium long-haul fare they can more than cover the detour.

A word on the numbers. Tax rates, the best starting cities and premium fares all move about — a lot. Treat everything here as our experience in 2026, not a live quote. Which capital wins, and by how much, is worth re-checking each time you plan; it changes.

The round-the-world temptation

The rabbit hole goes deeper. The airline alliances — Oneworld and Star Alliance — sell round-the-world tickets, and once you understand the rules they are a genuinely clever thing. For a single business-class fare you fly in one direction, eastward or westward, stopping off across several continents, and you have up to a year to complete the circle. For anyone with a bucket list of far-flung places reachable on the alliance’s airlines, it is close to ideal.

And there is a second prize. A round-the-world ticket, if the flights are crafted the right way, can vault you to the top of an airline loyalty scheme — the sought-after tiers, with their lounge access and priority everything — and hold you there for a year or more. Planning a 2026 trip to the far side of the world, we found this intoxicating. Why not gather a year of status we could enjoy well into 2027? Why not route through North America to see family on the way, and catch a few dreamed-of islands while we were at it?

The route we very nearly flew

So we crafted one. On a single round-the-world business ticket — a little over £5,000 each at the time — it ran like this:

One ticket · westering all the way round

Oslo
→
London
→
Barbados
→
Miami
→
San Francisco
→
New York
→
Tokyo
→
Singapore
→
Sydney
→
Auckland
→
Hong Kong
→
Kuala Lumpur
→
London
→
Oslo

Family in North America, a couple of dreamed-of islands, and a year of airline status at the end of it. On paper, it was glorious.

Why we didn’t

What we had forgotten, in all the crafting, is that a body is not an itinerary. You cannot step off a plane after eight hours in the air and simply go sightseeing; the recovery is real, and jet lag on that scale is not a footnote but a state of being. Every stop we had drawn in — Barbados, New York, Tokyo, Singapore — wanted days, not hours, if it was to be anything more than a blurred nap near an airport. And the longer the stops, the more the trip cost, precisely in the places where a night is dear.

Practicality took hold of us, as it tends to. We abandoned the round-the-world plan — at least for the moment. There is a version of us, some year, who flies it properly, with a week in each place. It is not the version with this trip’s dates and this trip’s budget.

What we did instead

We changed the whole shape of it. Rather than stretch the long-haul flying across a fortnight of hops — and stretch the jet lag with it — we decided to get to Australia as fast as we sensibly could and take the time-zone punishment in a single dose. Get it over with, then enjoy the trip.

Then we went hunting for a good business-class multi-city ticket, and we tested it from several starting points — London, Madrid, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and more — to see which the fares favoured. Amsterdam won, comfortably, and we still cannot entirely tell you why; some quirk of how that route was priced. From there we booked two business-class multi-city tickets: Amsterdam to Sydney via Hong Kong, on to Auckland, back up to Hong Kong, and home to Amsterdam. A positioning hop to Amsterdam, and the rest fell into place.

And here we did check the alternative honestly, as we always do: we took it to six or seven of the well-known companies that sell round-the-world journeys and tailored trips to Australia and New Zealand. Not one could beat the price we had built ourselves — and, as importantly, their itineraries would have fenced us in, denying us the licence a trip like this needs: room to wander, and to simply be with family and friends on the other side of the world, on no schedule but our own.

Buy from the airline, not the middleman

One practical thing is worth stating plainly, because it saved us grief. We found the Amsterdam fare through Momondo, but at the point of buying it handed us over to Cathay Pacific, and we bought the ticket directly from the airline. That is a real advantage, not a detail.

When one airline owns the whole ticket, that airline owns the whole problem. A delay, a cancellation, a missed connection down the line — it is theirs to put right, and you are not left standing between two carriers who each blame the other while your onward flight leaves without you. On a long, multi-leg journey that single point of responsibility is worth a great deal. Ours, as it happened, worked out beautifully.

So — is any of the frequent-flyer advice much use to the rest of us?

Yes — selectively, and on the big trips.

The answer to the question we started with is a qualified one. A long-haul journey to the far side of the world genuinely does justify the expense and the planning time: the European starting point, the comparison across origins, the discipline of buying direct. These are the frequent flyer’s tools, and on a trip like this they repay the effort handsomely.

But the same tools are absurd on the wrong trip. We do not take a positioning flight to save money on a hop to Spain; we still fly Ryanair without shame; we do not fly everything in business class, or anything like it. The trick — as with all of our planning — is to match the money and the effort to the journey. Some flights are worth an evening of research and a detour through Amsterdam. Most are worth a fare alert and ten quiet minutes.

Where this becomes a trip

The tickets above were only the way in. The trip itself lives in the guides.

Australia
The long-haul that started all this — where we took the jet lag in one honest dose.


New Zealand
The far end of the multi-city ticket, and worth every hour of the flying.


Hong Kong
The hinge of the route — and a place we keep finding reasons to return to.


How we plan a trip
Where the flights fit in the wider method — booking is only one piece.