Nice try, but for all practical purposes this seems usless to me. For example, in a whole week next May it shows availability in A on only 1 non-stop HKG-JFK. Expertflyer shows availability on every single flight except one.
By the way, has anyone noticed that AA seems to have removed A availability more or less entirely on JFK-LAX (the odd 6:45am flight excepted) even many months ahead?
And linking the ticket issue to the first airline makes it hugely unattractive for anywhere that the first flight isn't on AA.
And it is ludicrous that the "Select Flights" booking tool offers you connecting flights via London for a HKG-JFK segment.
So I really hope the AA RTW desk isn't going anywhere soon!
Ex-Philippines now seems to be priced in PHP for the booking, although the exchange rate (48.82 vs OANDA's current interbank of 48.67) isn't as bad as I'd feared.
However, for MNL-xHKG-JFK-LAX-DFW-ANC-DFW-SEA-LHR-DXB-LHR-HEL-CDG-HKG-KIX-xHKG-MNL the taxes come out at 17.6% even with the new reduced fuel surcharges. Booking the normal way through AA MNL the taxes were 6.9% so I'd have had to pay US$900 per head extra for using this tool rather than the AA GSA. I'm not sure the convenience is worth that much, even if the access to seats and MCT issues can be fixed. Even if I extract the fuel surcharges the tax rate online is 8.3% so it's still more expensive than the traditional way.
Now, if the AA RTW desk could set up an itinerary for me to then ticket online from AA without having to go through the credit card issues with a GSA then that would be most excellent.
Or even simply let me book direct with the AA RTW desk. Why not now that we have pricing by point of departure only?