After 7 days and 8 phone calls, was finally able to get a price from the AA Cape Town office. And it was almost accurate to the BA-codeshares quoted on the Oneworld Explorer app - identical YQ charges of 6689 ZAR, in total about $50 more (Iberia codeshare would have been $300 less though). In the meantime, the AUD-ZAR depreciated about $200, so there's added value in skipping MRU and flying JNB-xLHR-wherever on available AA codeshares like most here do - in total $900 less! And I suppose MRU or SEZ can be visited after the latter bookend. The US desk priced the taxes, so booking ahead with the RTW desk and later paying with the Cape Town desk would be save a lot of headache.

I spoke to the AA DFW office once and my experience with them was that they were generally more knowledgeable about the rules but were transfer-trigger happy. I needed to call the US desk on the weekend to extend my hold time and it was sort of amusing because it became a circular thing where one department would transfer me to the other department and it became a back-and-forth between the RTW desk and a general reservations desk. It was a raffle, so eventually I got hold of someone who would help me, who also informed me that Cape Town booked me into the wrong booking class for my AB Economy segments.

A few issues: At least two operators at the Cape Town desk are under the impression that LAN Argentina and LAN Ecuador cannot be booked on a RTW. And another two operators are under the impression that if D isn’t available, you must be booked in Y (It’s actually L, but if W is available, it’s that).

But they had access to flights unavailable on the OW app (including the regular EZE-GYE and GYE-SCL), so I had no way of booking this online if I wanted to.