I've been quite curious about this whole issue. The Common Wisdom always was that the 'Canadian exception' was because of some condition in Canadian law ('free trade', or whatever) that required tickets to be available to be sold in that way. About five or six years ago, however, Star Alliance, which previously had the very same 'Canadian exception' in their RTW ticketing rules, all of a sudden eliminated the exception -- and went to the more liberal 'pay the starting point price no matter where you buy the ticket'.

If the prior 'Canadian exception' rule had been a consequence of Canadian law, the Star Alliance change would simply have made it moot in *A RTW ticketing.

But then, last year, oneworld also eliminated the 'Canadian exception' -- although not in the way that *A had. Oneworld decreed, 'starting point price or point of sale price, whichever is higher, worldwide'.

What I'm wondering about is -- how could they do that? Did the Canadian law that was protecting these tickets change? Or was it never a function of Canadian law at all, but something else? If so, what?

To repeat: how was oneworld able to (seemingly) arbitrarily make this change? I would be very interested to learn what actually happened.

cheers,

Henry