Thanks, JohnAx. ^ I think I'm getting the message. But I don't hold out too much hope for local agents being prepared to go "beyond the call of duty". Maybe I'm selling them short. I take your point about a straightforward routing. Though there was nothing very fancy about mine, I thought a good strategy might be to get the ticket issued, come back to CPT and sort out anything unresolved from here.

But here's some progress I've made to date. Phoned the charming lady at BA in MRU and she was "just about to reply" (I believe her! ) because she had to wait for London to respond to her as MRU have never seen a *ONEWC* before. (Totally plausible. Am I the only person in the world who likes this product?)

Unfortunately it's not the reply I wanted: they can't sell the *ONEWC3. At first I thought she said they only sell the *ONE*. But when I said I didn't really want to route via N America it turns out they can sell a *ONEWC4! But do I really want to add on a gratuitous leg via SYD on a routing that already totally underutilises this ticket?! (SO already thinks I'm completely mad.) We'll see when she sends me the price.

She also said my routing of MRU-JNB-LHR had to be MRU-LHR! I politely queried the basis of this given the allowance of 4 legs in continent of origin and she quickly realised something didn't add up, conferred with a colleague and came back agreeing it was perfectly legit.

So, I can confirm that the BA office is delightful to deal with, but needs a lot of patient coaxing through the byzantine complexities of these fares.