I believe I have discovered why certain itineraries, that involve two departures/arrivals from/to Europe/Middle East, are failing – it is because there is a Zombie rule still lurking in the tool. It should have died NINE years ago but is still there.
Bear with me while I take you through my reasoning – it gets a bit complicated.
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The current rule is:
4(e) Only one intercontinental departure and one intercontinental arrival permitted in each continent except as follows:
1. Two permitted in North America.
2. Two permitted in Asia.
3. Two permitted in Europe/Middle East for travel to/from/via Africa. If travel is to/from Europe in both directions, itinerary may not include Mauritius/South Africa.
Exception 3. Refers to Europe. This is defined in Rule 0 (zero), as follows:
The continent of Europe-Middle East consists of 2 zones:
o Europe (including Algeria, Morocco, Russia west of the Urals and Tunisia)
o Middle East (including Egypt, Libya and Sudan)
These zones are only ever mentioned in the above Exception 3 to Rule 4(e), and in fact only the Europe Zone is referred to.
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Stimulated by a
post by
wandering_fred in
another thread, I have been playing around in the tool with various ex-South Africa itineraries. This is one I tried to price up:
CPT-LHR-HKG-MNL-HKG-PER-HKG-KTI-HKG-YYZ-LGA-ATL-LHR-AMM-CAI-MCT-ZNZ
This itinerary starts with an Africa-Europe Zone flight (CPT-LHR) and ends with a Middle East Zone-Africa flight (MCT-ZNZ). So it complies with Exception 3, and therefore South Africa can be in the itinerary. But it wouldn’t price, I was getting the usual “Exceeds 34,000 miles” error. After double, and then triple-checking every flight, I was stumped. I went back to the first screen on the tool and clicked on the “Fare Eligibility” button (at the top right of the “Build Your Itinerary” screen). The Oneworld Explorer showed as Invalid. It was the LHR-AMM flight causing the problem. The error message is:
”Your itinerary cannot include any flown or surface sector between Europe and the Middle East. Choose another route and update your itinerary.”
The wording of the first sentence was familiar to me. It is the wording used in a version of Rule 4(e) that was replaced years ago. The Rule back then (prior to May 2016!) was much more complicated and had the words “Travel may not include any flown or surface sector between Europe and Middle East”. (Yes, I have a copy of that old rule sheet.
)
So my conclusion is that there is a Zombie rule lurking in the on-line tool! To verify it I made two changes to my itinerary
- I changed ATL-LHR-AMM to ATL-DOH-AMM. This itinerary priced up OK. To me this means there is no problem with South Africa being included in my Africa-Europe Zone…Middle East Zone-Africa itinerary,
- I set the itinerary back to ATL-LHR-AMM and I changed the starting point to NBO (so the first segment is now NBO-LHR). The same error was flagged on the LHR-AMM segment, but now neither South Africa nor Mauritius is in the itinerary, so the “error” has nothing to with the current Exception 3 to Rule 4(e).
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So I am convinced I know what the bug is. But how to report it to Oneworld? There used to be a ‘feedback’ facility on the website, but that is long gone (IIRC they were getting requests to fault-check people’s itineraries, rather than flagging issues/making suggestions regarding the tool itself).
Does anyone have a contact within Oneworld?
Thoughts/comments/feedback welcomed 😊