A slightly late but factual recap of my 2025 flying, pulled from my Flighty year review. The year totals: 48 flights, 157,505 km (3.9x around Earth), and 225 hours 47 minutes in the air across 25 airports, 12 airlines, and 20 countries and territories. I break down the longest sectors by distance and time, then look at which aircraft types defined the year, from an A330-300 workhorse year to an unexpectedly high amount of 777-200ER time. I also include a few flights that stood out: Emirates First Class (DXB–CAI), Qantas A380 (JNB–SYD), British Airways’ fifth freedom hop (EZE–GIG), and Cathay’s HKG–JFK, my longest flight of 2025.

What started as a simple family trip turned into a fully-built round-the-world itinerary across five regions—South America, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. This post unpacks how I designed the entire route using miles, premium cabin deals, oneworld lounges, and a series of perfectly timed connections.

Ever wondered how much flying it actually takes to earn oneworld Sapphire or Emerald status? In this post, I compare how the same London–Sydney trip earns across eight oneworld airlines — from American to Qatar — to see which program gets you there fastest and what it really costs in 2026.

No single airline can reach every corner of the globe — that’s where airline alliances come in. From Star Alliance to oneworld and SkyTeam, here’s how these global networks connect travelers — and which one I find the most rewarding to fly with.