Originally Posted by
steveholt
Not sure that's it. When I start building the itinerary, the default for the first overwater segment is AMM-LHR-BOS on BA, which is priced on the bottom section as $6545. When I switch that to QR, the price jumps north of $10000, which would align with what you're saying.
If I continue on with that fare where the the first overwater section is DOH and switch the final leg from AKL-DOH on QR to AKL-MEL-SIN-DOH with AKL-MEL-SIN on QF and SIN-DOH on QR, though, the price drops back down to $7398 AUD.
I was trying to add Australia onto my itinerary to make it a DONE5, but couldn't get it to work without the fare jumping to over 11,000 AUD as you're saying. That's using QR to SYD (or anywhere else in OZ) or using your mentioned trick of QR to SIN and QF to SYD. I don't however think this is QR's YQ / YR because I have a ton of QR segments in my itinerary, 2 of those long haul (DOH-CGK and SEA-DOH), and that's pricing normally.
The problem I'm having is that it seems to be saying the base fare for DONE5 is 8,133.00 AUD if Australia is included vs. 4,458.00 AUD for DONE4 (Without Australia). That's not what EF shows but something in the tool is triggering that much higher base fare. Oddly if I used South America instead of Australia it correctly prices a DONE5 at 4,585.00 AUD but that likely doesn't benefit me much mileage wise since I'd have to use AA to go to South America and they'd likely credit the flights as Revenue instead of Distance (in AAdvantage).