I need to be in MEL in Jan and instead of redeeming miles I am trying to arrange a business trip to London and tack MEL onto the end of it.

Normall LAX-LHR we fly in F - full fare F less corp discount (which is substantial). So I asked the corp TA to price a AONE4 -
LAX-LHR (AA)
LHR-HKG (CX)
HKG-MEL (CX)
MEL-LAX (AA)

(clearly would make some here cringe, but I don't have the time - I am doing this in the minimum 10 days allowable). The published AONE4 fare ex-US is $10,400. The pricing came back $10,500+ (taxes should be minimal since only stopovers are LHR and MEL). I don't see that they are applying the corp discount. Seeing that AA is getting the trans-pacific and trans-atlantic segments, I would have though at least the corp discount would apply to the majority of the fare. As it is, the price for the AONE4 is almost 2.5k higher than the LAX-LHR r/t F fare - which surprises me no end.

Has anyone had experience buying xONEx fares through corp TA with corp discount? I now NM bought DONE4s and DCIRxxs. Anyone ex-US? I need some hints on how to get this down to at least the same as the LAX-LHR r/t F fare.

Thanks