Originally Posted by
pandaperth
As I understand it the second exception has in the past been interpreted to mean a transit of Asia is allowed - but only between SWP and Europe; and your transit is between SWP and Nth America.
However, the wording of the exception changed recently and it now seems to allow transits of Asia between any two continents (in practice the exception is only useful if transiting between SWP and another continent) - see this thread
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/onewo...sfer-rule.html
I don't recall anyone reporting that they had successfully booked an itinerary making use of the new interpretation. Perhaps
ProudWings can be the first
Unfortunately not
I called again to Cx reservations (not sure if YVR or California). An agent, who was very pleasant and trying to be helpful at first said "it didn't make sense that I would want to go back to Asia after having gone to Australia and ... of course it would be back-tracking" later she agreed to check with a supervisor.. but the response was the same. It just seemed that whatever the rules said there was no way they would allow a transfer. I still believe that as the rules are written a transfer from Australia through Asia to N. America without a stopover should be OK. However, there were only so many times I could read to the agent was was written. Their interpretation is that it is not allowed - whether they actually read the rules I don't know, but I think it would be hard to get them to rethink this one. The agent was pleasant but not going to budge
In the end I called AA RTW and an agent was very pleasant and booked me on the QF A380 from SYD to LA and I'll get a side trip to SEA which was my intended destination on this part of the trip (can be had for around C$220 at the moment. I must say that the agent at the AA RTW was very helpful (even told me about the 10% discount if booked by the 12th) and I didn't have to wait to get through.
Thanks for all your advice - this si my first Oneworld RTW (have been doing at least 2 *A per year for the past few years) we'll see how it works out.