I've never understood it to mean that. I've always understood it to mean the place ('office') from which the ticket is issued. If I call the AA RTW desk, it's issued in the U.S. at the U.S. price (because that's where the AA RTW desk is physically located). If I call AA in Japan, it's issued in Japan (at the Japanese price). Neither of them has a clue where I am when I call them.

Of late, there have been stories about AA insisting that the credit card used (if you call Japan) have a Japanese address. The suggested way around that was to call AA Tokyo when they were closed, which routes you to some ticketing desk somewhere else. That's what I did for our last ticket. The agent asked if the credit card had a Japanese address. I said no ..... and we just carried on from there. In the event, they screwed it up by issuing only my ticket and not Mrs. tt7's so I had to call again to get her ticket issued.

It's unclear to me why AA cares about the credit card address. In the past, when we've managed to do tickets using the online tool, the credit card address was never an issue. However, using the tool has become harder and harder because of the various 'problems' with it (discussed in other threads).

As to the ticketing carrier, my understanding has always been that it's the marketing carrier of the first leg ....with some exceptions, one being that AA issues tickets on behalf of JL (or at least they used to and, by the sound of it, still do). If the first leg is on BA, then BA would issue the ticket though I seem to recall there being some issue with having to call them to give them the card number.

Clearly, if you can get the online tool to work, that's the easiest approach. Given its problems (e.g., it refuses to display any QF flights between Oz and NZ even though QF has multiple flights a day from/to multiple locations) that's not always possible. There appears to be no way to contact oneworld to get these issues resolved - the online tool appears to be the orphan stepchild for which nobody accepts responsibility.