christep - I checked in for a CX flight last year in HKG (to SIN) with an AA paper ticket, OPEN segment, and was not charged. I will be testing this again (from HKG) next week and will report back then! I would certainly open a debate with the ticketing staff if they tried to charge on an open paper ticket.

As an aside, I did not know that with open segments on a paper ticket, you may have to travel to the ticketing desk to book the relevant flights (as the airline can not "see" the ticket). This is happening to me now with AA as the last flights were used a long time ago (10 months or so).