-10 to that suggestion! The RTW desk can be fine, but that depends on the agent who picks up the phone. They will transfer you to a specific agent if you know who to ask for.

But the rate desk they must use to verify and price your ticket is nothing better than pathetic. Unless price is of little importance to you, you'd want an independent way to verify their price.

I recently finished an ex-JNB trip, making several changes along the way, and the only time the pricing was correct was initially. That was done by the agent in Capetown, after he'd waited several days for the official rate desk to do it. I've posted several times about their errors.

Booking and ticketing ex-JNB was by phone. The personnel who answered were always intelligent, professional, and competent. But time zones meant I needed to call around midnight my time, a bit inconvenient. There was (is, I believe) a very good agent in Cairo who handled a couple of previous trips by email.

On the subject of AA code-shares, such segments will have a YQ/YR chosen by AA which might be lower than the operating carrier's. I saved about $200 on JNB-LHR that way. But when I showed up for that flight, the agent said "oh, your flight was canceled. We put all our pax on the later flight, but you'll have to talk to AA. Didn't they call you?" I don't remember if the rtw desk was even open at that hour, but with a lot of pestering I did get a BA supervisor there to rebook us - it wasn't easy or fun, though.

In another thread here we discussed whose responsibility it was. I don't recall the consensus, but BA certainly thought it wasn't them and they were the gate-keeper at that moment.

A lot of happy-face comments may be from people who've been luckier than I, or haven't flown recently, or haven't checked to see if the Good Old AA ATW desk did it right. We've flown a dozen xONEx's over the past decade or so - a pittance in some lucky folks' history - and I can assure you it's not like it used to be.