My apologies for the misspelling. I always love the curtness from FlyerTalkers.! ^

This trip right now is indeed 'hypothetical'. Vacation time next year is already booked for us (which ended up being SWO-DFW-LGA, three nights, LGA-CDX 7 nights, CDX-JFK 3 nights, then LGA-DFW-SWO; we wanted to go to Paris, but found that book-ending JFK-CDW in the middle of roundtrip SWO-LGA was $600 cheaper than straight up SWO-CDX bookings, and we would like to visit NYC anyways). What I am doing is bookmarking some appealing options for 2019, trying to get some idea of destinations/costs for a 2 week trip in early June (my preferred time to travel, as the kid is out of school, can be sent to grandma's house, and summer-travel premiums are not quite yet in effect). It's been enlightening thus far on both what combinations of air-routes, fares and hotels seem appealing both in terms of fun, price, and convenience. Wife and I are in our mid 30s, finally have money, time, and career stability for serious travel. We have limited international travel experience, but searching this forum I couldn't find a similar thread to this issue.

So the dates and prices I am looking at is the first full 2 weeks of June 2018 if you want to verify.

The timings are not an issue. QF 8 leaves at 10:15PM. SWO-DFW arrives at 8:05AM and 1:45. Layover is long, but within parameters of the searches.

Return flight QF7 SYD-DFW arrives at 1PM. Last flight of SWO-DFW leaves at 8:45PM. Perfectly fine on that front as well. These are times for those dates in June.

I can't seem to find a pattern that will offer a reasonable explanation on AA.com. I just went back to searching--- If I search SWO-SYD on AA, the first several flights of course want me to do SWO-DFW-LAX-SYD all on AA flights. After that, the flights are all a complicated SWO-DFW-a choice chinese or japanese airports-- (all on AA) and then a QF (or japanese airline) flight to SYD. So, I am thinking, fine -- AA wants to 'own' the overseas flight perhaps if you book on aa.com. Searching direct from DFW-SYD only produces options on AA DFW-LAX-SYD flights, but I wouldn't necessarily expect them to have a 100% non-AA flight anyways, I will let that pass as booking the flight I want on qantas.com DFW-SYD is a cynch. I search a TUL-SYD flights, and of course, there are the 30 first all AA flights, mostly TUL-DFW/ORD/etc-LAX-SYD on AA, but then there ARE INDEED TUL-DFW-SYD flights with QF8 (with three options to go TUL-DFW). So I stand CORRECTED -- AA will bury QF 7/8 but they do indeed exist on AA.com and this shoots down the theory that AA won't show overseas QF flights. So it exist, but it only exists if you start from certain airports (TUL) and not from others (SWO)?? Again ...?. Think they are buried beyond the 40 results in my SWO-SYD searches? -- I don't think so as the flights they are showing are upwards of 51 hours of travel time! Surely, this IT blip is a mistake. Does it exists if I call an agent? I don't know, I kind of assume they don't see much different than what I see when searching for flights. If I was serious about booking this now I would call but I won't waste their time on a hypothetical. My gut tells me they will be able to find the Qantas ticket option I found through the back door for $2200 roundtrip and that is that, simply because of some 'bug' in the system.

I can also accept booking through Qantas these flights if possible, but they are missing part of AA's network in the US on their site, even if it exists somewhere as evidenced through my 'backdoor method' of having Qantas produce flights to SWO only if oneworld.com comes up with it first and directs it. And even through this odd way, I can come up with a Qantas.com flight that does what I want, but why then is it literally $1000 more per roundtrip to fly from my airport vs any other in my region that exists on Qantas's front-door search tool.

It's all a matter of convenience and price. 1000$ by booking on qantas through the back door isn't reasonable for the convenience of leaving from my home airport on a single ticket and flying the route that is the shortest! in terms of travel time. Flying on two different tickets (by booking on qantas and aa separately) means 250$ in extra costs (I can accept that) but then also means spending a couple of hours in Dallas claiming and rechecking luggage and having risks if IRROPs occur. Flying through TUL works in a way, but is $150 more expensive and less convenient as well and hurts a little as I want my tiny airport to succeed and expand someday beyond our limited service. If I was set on this trip, I would book the two different tickets and hope for the best (thinking, that if my Noon SWO departure gets delayed, I have enough time to panic-drive 4 hours to DFW and have enough time to still make the QF flight). It works, these are first world problems, but it makes me lose faith that OneWorld means anything at all if it doesn't act as a real network like their marketing claims it does. It makes me think that EVERY international trip will need 4 hours of pulling tickets/flights on different oneworld airlines with different airport inputs in my region to actually get any idea of what my options really look like, instead of spending 10 minutes of plugging in SWO-Destination on AA and see those options up front.

This is the type of thing that would make me say screw the trip to Australia and do a South American or Thailand trip that can be booked upfront with a sane route.