Originally Posted by
Dr. HFH
I'm still trying to understand why anyone would use QF when the AA RTW staff is so competent. Yes, yes, I know. Many tickets booked using the online tool are routed or assigned to QF for ticketing. That raises the question of why anyone would use the online tool given its history of documented and undocumented bugs, most of which OneWorld management is aware of.
Originally Posted by
ironmanjt
Because AA doesn't fit into our transatlantic or transpacific plans, and AA will only ticket with an AA operated (or sometimes AA coded) flight across the water.
Precisely, plus AA codes for AAdvantage members are highly risky. They seem more than likely to credit as revenue base, since AA insists on at least one long haul AA code (whether AA prime or codeshare), it's detrimental to AAdvantage earnings on these tickets. Some AAdvantage members don't really care, maybe they're getting plenty of LPs elsewhere but I feel like it's leaving money on the table to have any long haul AA codes at all when there are other alternatives available. I generally can't find any codeshares on AA flights to South and Central America except Brazil so those become acceptable inefficiencies, but no way I want an AA code on a TATL or TPAC. (Not to mention that AA codes aren't available on CX anymore since CX prefers to overfly Russia and it's forbidden by the US govt. for US carriers to codeshare on those)
Originally Posted by
Dr. HFH
AA marketed (coded) flights on other carriers do qualify.
There are also other options. Some travel agents are well versed in these tickets, IIRC there are two who are regulars in these threads. Also, doesn't BA do these tickets, too? They used to. Years ago I used Mindpearl in South Africa, but I don't know if they're still around. The Travel Centre in Australia also does these tickets (I've bought several from them).
I'm inclined to use a travel agent on my next one. (I'm aware of at least one of the agents that are active posters in here, not sure the other though... DM me if you wouldn't mind) I typically know exactly what I want, my priority is often getting the most advantageous codeshares for AAdvantage earning, but I already have that information from my planning. My fear had been before that I'd need a change or some kinds of service urgently while mid-trip.An airline being 24 hours has appeal for that reason, but QF's call center, at least had been, so bad that you can't consider them to be 24 hours anyway, no one can do anything without spending ages researching the rules, consulting support, etc.
That actually did happen when I had an accident in Georgia (the Republic of) on a QF ticket but still had 2 days to get the changes made, and even if it was more urgent could have accomplished it with a no-show. This was the first time I ran into the dreaded, we can't get a price from the call center when I needed to make changes to ticketed points to accomodate my injury. This was also before I knew about their Twitter team. In the end I did end up getting the change made, but it took many hours of effort, where a travel agent could have done it without the stress and likely within 12 hours even if I had emailed them just after they went to sleep.
I know it's always possible that something would happen where you really need a change on the spot and your travel agent may be sleeping, but you can't rely on QF to be able to handle it anyway. So keeping that in mind and trying to do any changes with at least a few days to spare is in my opinion the best way to approach these. Just be ready to pivot if something is super urgent and be prepared to no-show, pay the fee and let your agent deal with it in their morning.