Originally Posted by Gardyloo

I've tried communicating with several South African TAs in the past and have met with silence. One is a multinational TA firm, Flight Centre, that advertises RTW expertise in other countries where they're present, e.g. Canada - http://www.flightcentre.ca/flights/round-the-world - so maybe they would have some means of developing the itinerary and communicating with a South African branch for processing.

The Oneworld Explorer rules have the usual "not valid for autopricing" lines, which seems logical since most xONEx tickets will have both Sabre and Amadeus airlines present, so I expect that whatever agent sells the ticket will themselves have to interact with some airline's tariff department, with unknown outcomes.

I know SAA pays commissions to South African travel agents on *A RTWs (5% I believe) so it could well be a good line of business for some local TA to master. So good luck with your pursuit.

Oh, one thought. Has anybody tried using the online tool to book a ticket with CPT-JNB-DOH (or JNB-CPT-DOH) as the first segments, thereby having BA issue the ticket (which we know is doable) but using QR for the first longhaul flight? It might be burning a segment with low yield, but could be a work-around.

Off topic, but FWIW I've been helping a friend plan a family RTW, and because of their schedules and positioning costs, flying to SA or Egypt for ticket origination was out.

So I priced out DONE4s and *A RTWs ex-Japan for him using the tool, and then on a hunch did the same but originating in YVR (he's on the west coast.) The results were a little surprising; the final cost ex-YVR for a DONE4 was around $1200 more than ex-NRT. Not peanuts, but if one applies even a basic cost metric for FF miles to get to Japan, never mind a purchased ticket, it's not a terrible deal. His itinerary had a lot of Asia targets, so starting in Canada also gets around the two-stopover restriction in Asia. Just a data point, but thought I'd mention it.