Originally Posted by
skipaway
Just a heads up
Finishing up CAI-CAI and had such a great time I tried to start another RTW to get home and flesh out later. AA RTW agent says not selling anymore unless CK or EXP (I am the latter). But she could not get it to accept first flight, CAI to AMM. She tried 2 approaches.
Said to call RJ. But time is so tight and I'm leery given I will fly 3 segments and have to rework everything else. 😪
Reckon the underlining of the entire post was an accident, I've corrected that in the quote box here.
Quite interesting though that they're limiting ex-CAI only to EXP and CK. Too many people I guess using them to book when not enough segments are on AA to justify it.
But the RJ part doesn't surprise me, when I was messing around and building that sample itinerary I posted above yesterday, the OW tool also would absolutely not allow RJ for the first segment. I got it to work only with AT as the first carrier, so you may want to look at that. I tried every non-QR OW carrier that flies to CAI (which isn't many, IB once a week but that didn't work either despite them publishing a fare still), and the one and only I could make work was AT. Who knows, that may not even last long (so grab it while you can if it works for you) but you'd think if so many OW carriers were getting fed up with the CAI fares then OW would just change the ex-CAI price... that's "de facto" what appears to be happening with several OW carriers pulling ex-CAI fares only and leaving literally every other market alone and AA now specifying that they'll only book ex-CAI for EXP and CK.
What we really need is a good independent travel agent on here who's willing to issue on QR stock. ernestnywang, who posts in here a lot and very generously helps people figure out places to cut / trim YQ / YR said that an agent with Sabre could plate on QR stock and could avoid most of the fuel surcharges from the ex-OSL and ex-CAI fares. (Could also plate with QR as the first carrier on the ticket which OW won't do). Problem is, so far no one been identified who can do it (or at least no one is coming forward). For ex-OSL tickets alone, that could quite easily save people $1000-2000+ so even a set, livable, commission to manage the ticket would be justifiable. Ex-OSL tickets regularly have well over $3000 in YQ / YR, compared to ex-TYO with ~$200-400.
I will also mention that ex-CAI and ex-TYO DONE5 are almost exactly the same price after YQ / YR are figured in. It's 40,000 AA miles one way from CAI to TYO on QR or EY in business. (ok, actually both QR and EY availability to TYO is quite tight but ICN is usually available and it's a 2 hour flight that costs nothing to get from ICN / GMP to TYO.)