skipaway

I wouldn't be surprised if QRs fees weren't as exhorbitant as BA's. I wonder if we will ever know. On Dec 8 I got this message from QR,probably the 5th or so in a series:
As soon as we obtain clear information from AA oneworld helpdesk we shall revert to you.
Thank you for your patience in the interim.
Best regards,

Having had no response in the ensuing week, I emailed last night that in the interest of "Going Places Together" (their new brand)I'd love to get ticketed.


Anabolism, I missed you on the multiquote, but regarding the billing address question, do you think that when you fill in the billing address at payment time, if it's a SA address on a NA or Aus, etc bank, it would be allowed? If you pay online, and especially if you're enrolled in paperless statements, your billing address shouldn't matter. And, of course, you'd change back once completed

JonNYC

Yeah, speaking for myself, personally, that's the kind of situation I'd definitely be willing to pay more to avoid-- endless back-and-forth emails with someone(s) who don't decidedly know how to just get it done. Appreciate the detail on that!

headinclouds

Routing: Johannesburg - Hong Kong - Los Angeles - New York - London - Cape Town

September 11th Security Fee 162.00 ZAR
South Africa Passenger Safety Charge 18.72 ZAR
UK Air Passenger Duty 3,089.00 ZAR
Hong Kong Air Passenger Departure Tax 223.00 ZAR
UK Passenger Service Charge 906.00 ZAR
UMSE 24.00 ZAR
U.S. International Transportation Tax - Departure 255.00 ZAR
International Arrival Transportation Tax (USA) 255.00 ZAR
Air Passenger Tax for South Africa 190.00 ZAR
U.S. Animal and Plant Inspection Service Fee 72.00 ZAR
Passenger Facility Charges 65.00 ZAR
Immigration and Naturalization Service Fee 101.00 ZAR
U.S. Customs Fee 79.00 ZAR
Airline Insurance Surcharge 6,102.00 ZAR
Multiple Carrier Surcharges/Fees 414.00 ZAR
Passenger Service Charge for South Africa 346.00 ZAR

Total Taxes and Carrier Surcharges/Fees: 12,301.72 ZAR
_________________________________________________
Johannesburg - Hong Kong - Los Angeles - New York - London - Doha - Paris
Doha - London - Cape Town

September 11th Security Fee 162.00 ZAR
South Africa Passenger Safety Charge 18.72 ZAR
Aviation Civile Tax 124.00 ZAR
French Airport Tax 199.00 ZAR
UK Air Passenger Duty 3,089.00 ZAR
Hong Kong Air Passenger Departure Tax 223.00 ZAR
French Airport Solidarity Tax 704.00 ZAR
PZSE 124.00 ZAR
QAAP 316.00 ZAR
Passenger Service Charge for France 455.00 ZAR
UK Passenger Service Charge 1,588.00 ZAR
UMSE 24.00 ZAR
U.S. International Transportation Tax - Departure255.00 ZAR
International Arrival Transportation Tax (USA) 255.00 ZAR
Air Passenger Tax for South Africa 190.00 ZAR
U.S. Animal and Plant Inspection Service Fee 72.00 ZAR
Passenger Facility Charges 65.00 ZAR
Immigration and Naturalization Service Fee 101.00 ZAR
U.S. Customs Fee 79.00 ZAR
Carrier Surcharge/Fee 5,756.00 ZAR
Airline Insurance Surcharge 6,102.00 ZAR
Multiple Carrier Surcharges/Fees 414.00 ZAR
Multiple Carrier Surcharges/Fees 116.00 ZAR
Passenger Service Charge for South Africa 346.00 ZAR

Total Taxes and Carrier Surcharges/Fees: 20,777.72 ZAR

Differences are bolded. Base fare stayed the same, 98K ZAR's AONE4.

20,778 - 12,302 = 8,476
French taxes 1,922
Extra LHR stop 682
Unknown Carrier surcharges 5,872
70% of increase due to additional carrier surcharges. Only extra flights were 4 QR flights in Europe, 2 on the A380. I did not minimize the use of LHR for this exercise.
Perhaps QR is not as surcharge friendly as we think.

Gardyloo

I just did three DONE4 bare-bones dummy bookings to see the impact of first/ticketing carrier choices. I tried a fourth, with JNB-DOH as the first flight but the tool balked as usual.

JNB-SYD-LAX-JFK-LHR-JNB (QF as first/issuer) - ZAR 76,279 (USD 5034) of which ZAR 7196 ($475) was carrier-imposed fees.

JNB-HKG-LAX-JFK-LHR-JNB (CX) - ZAR 68,536 (USD 4523) of which ZAR 3396 ($234) was carrier-imposed fees.

JNB-LHR-LAX-JFK-HKG-JNB (BA) - ZAR 71,782 (USD 4738) of which ZAR 3580 ($236) was carrier-imposed fees.

Note I used AA metal on SYD-LAX, JFK-LHR and LHR-LAX in these scenarios.

Curiously, the base fare was the same - ZAR 58,940 - in the first two runs, but was ZAR 59,020 in the BA run. Huh?

Anyway, bottom line, CX was the cheapest but not by much. Presumably if one populated the QF and BA itineraries with more flights a greater disparity would appear, but it's hard to say how big a deal it would be. Certainly $240 or so of spread on a $5000 ticket isn't a deal breaker in my mind.

JonNYC

Agreed and amazing research ^

pandaperth

It's due to the addition of HKG to the BA run. Hong Kong has some little nuisance tax, but which the authorities there say must be added to the base fare, rather than be separately identified.

Edited to Add:
Hang on - that nuisance tax should have been added to the base fare of the CX run too, because that of course also has HKG in the itinerary; now I'm confused

anabolism

I've not purchased a ticket with the online tool, but reports here are that if you can get it to agree to ticket you, then it doesn't care where your credit card is from. Adding an additional billing address would be only for those who want AA to set it up and ticket in South Africa (using AA's GSA, Mindpearl).

These look legitimate to me, aside of course from the "Carrier Surcharge/Fee" which comes out at $381 at today's exchange rate (per Google).

pandaperth

That is correct, and in fact at one stage the online tool warns you

skipaway

Agreed. I might have that in phone bills by the time (if and when) I get ticketed.
First the bad news: another response to my effort to go places together on Qatar from yet another lead agent saying the same thing: they'll get back to me.
And the good news? I used the online tool through the whole process last night using CPT-LHR-***-HKG-JNB-CPT. I called at midnight my time, spoke with an agent who seemed a little nonplussed and told me he'd have to do some checking and get back to me within 48 hours. He asked me why I hadn't paid online. I just received the following:
Hello Skippy,
This is with reference to your One World Round the World booking ref. no. *******.
I request you to kindly call us back and proceed with the payment for the same in order to issue the tickets.
Thank you and Kind Regards,

BA Dude
Core Sales Team.

I haven't called yet, just enjoying the anticipation and waiting for 0830 in JNB. Which brings up this point: when I consulted the BA website for the phone number in JNB, there was an international desk with a number and hours were 8-5. The domestic desk is open longer, not 24 h. The city code of one was 10, the other 11. I was not able to get through to the international desk, even with operator assistance. I tried the domestic number and it was answered and I was transferred to sales. Just fyi in case you're going this route, use the domestic number.

skipaway

Update: Ticketed! Took an hour at $3/min with BA. They said I first had to cancel a res I already had. When I looked on AAdvantage "my trips" there were two PNRs, I presume from Qatar. They had said they were working with AA's oneworld help desk. I had to call to cancel, could not do online. I wonder if I could have called the RTW desk with those PNRs and actually ticketed with QR as first airline. Anyway, I wish I had noticed them first and given it a try, but I didn't want to abort what was seemingly a good chance at finalizing a ticket.
Somehow, my domestic AA segments were cancelled from the PNR from BA. I'm assuming when those flights were cancelled from Qatar's itin, it carried over to BA's. So that was some of the interminable hold time. There were a couple scary moments, but he finally took my CC# and said I'd be getting a confirming email in 10 minutes or so. That has yet to show up, and when I went to BA's web site I had no trips listed. There was a button to enter trips, I plugged in my PNR, and the whole journey populated. Whew! Then later I got an email detailing changes to my trip (it was just contact info that I had entered). And there's a pending charge on my CC. I do NOT have a ticket number, just an itin (14 pages!) with status: confirmed. ^

og

I'd only start smiling when I received the ticket numbers ...

skipaway

Still no ticket number, but I did, just now, get this:

Your e-ticket receipt
Dear Skip, Booking reference: 7*****
Thank you for booking with British Airways.
Ticket Type: e-ticket
This is your e-ticket receipt. Your ticket is held in our systems, you will not receive a paper ticket for your booking.
If your itinerary includes an American Airlines flight, we recommend you contact us to pre-assign seats.
What to do next
It went on with various caveats and instructions re the booking. Do E tickets get numbers? Or is the 7 character booking reference it? It is the same as the "PNR" I got from the booking tool with the instruction to call BA to book.
I'm going to PIT to the Steelers game this weekend, so I pulled up my booking on AA, and there is no number, just the 6 letter record locator. So I'm still perhaps over optimistically hopeful, lol.
And also hopeful I can select my seats with a US BA phone number!!

pandaperth

I re-checked what I received from BA for my ex-CPT DONE5 back in January
and yes - no e-ticket numbers were received

So I must have gone onto checkmytrip.com to get them (in this tool you have to expand your details to see the numbers)
Since it's BA-issued the numbers will begin with 125- and depending on how many segments you have in your itinerary you could have up to four tickets and checkmytrip will show the sequence at the end of the number, for example mine shows 30-33 meaning the sequence of four tickets ending in 30, 31, 32, 33.

I of course noted the ticket numbers in the spreadsheet I have for the trip. I also took a copy of the fare rules from the Oneworld web site as these are the rules that will prevail for the life of the ticket.

Congrats and well done, your perseverance paid off

skipaway

Thanks!

TopGunner

JonNYC - the big caution here is that AA RTW is not to be relied upon handling changes to a mindpearl issued and ZAR priced ticket. I sound like a broken record, but the desk ended up repricing my ticket between USD and ZAR based to my detriment as USD/ZAR moved, I had add/collect of over $1300 moving to supposedly low cost YQflights. I should have stuck with Mindpearl on changes so that my ticket exchanges wouldn't be revalued in USD.

The other point I have is that QR is not low YQ and that includes AA issued tickets. On multiple occasions AA also confirmed YQ collection on almost all airlines, including their own TATL flights.

Given all that the pricing difference AA vs BA, the latter being more organized and transparent (cannot believe I'm writing that) if you need to go to Europe first just accept BA, forget QR and AA RTW desk.