That certainly used to be the rule. No telling what snag might have crept in - e-ticketing gets the blame for a lot of new behaviours - but if you're comfortable with locking in that first flight, go for it.

Reading the oneworld website and fare rules on EF, it appears to still be the case.
I'm looking at krt-amm-mct-lhr-san-ord-mia-bgi-jfk-hkg-nrt-cgk-nrt-sin-lhr-dxb as a DONE3. Hmmm...

In case you intend to set this up online, my understanding is that there is currently a bug that will prohibit the itinerary from pricing correctly with the last leg ending in DXB. If you run into this, try CAI instead as your final destination, to see if the correct price gets computed.

I noticed that bug earlier. Thanks for the tip.

One more question. The rules that are in effect at the time of booking carry forward through the life of the ticket, right? So, you couldn't book now and add MH flights later?

Correct
I took a copy of the rules (from the Oneworld site) when I paid for my tickets last week
Sadly, this is also correct
I am hoping that the ex-KRT fares do not change before MH joins
because I then want to book another DONE4 to commence immediately after my current one - and to include RGN and MLE:D

Can´t price it online ex krt
 

I have been getting the following error for a few days now. Both on a saved one and a new one. It validates the itinerary then the error comes up.


The following error(s) occured
Our lowest fares are not available for the destination and date requested. Please return to the homepage and click on the ?search by schedule? button to find our most attractive fares. (5685 - 2201)

Try eliminating intra-continent roundtrips i.e. JFK - BGI - JFK, and see whether this helps. There's a good deal of discussion of this error in the online tool bugs sticky thread above.

Is the price you get from the OW site cast in stone when you go to e.g. AA to have the ticket issued, or does AA give it to their rate desk for the last word? If the latter, other than for initial blue-sky trip planning what's the point of flogging the OW site over known-bug isssues?

If you for example phone the AA RTW desk to book an itinerary, AA doesn't even look at what the tool is saying or not saying w.r.t pricing - AA does its own pricing
(and the word is that for ex-KRT itineraries at least, its pricing of taxes and fuel fines comes out lower than the tool's pricing)
Because it would be nice wouldn't it be able to actually purchase using the tool, rather than having to:

• phone the AA RTW desk to book the ticket
• include an AA over-water (i.e. long-haul) segment, so that AA will even countenance ticketing
• use a Canadian TA to pay for the ticket (even though Gala Travels is great, it does take a bit of time and there is a service fee though minor compared to the savings by purchasing in Canada)

And in any case - the tool is supposed to work, so why shouldn't customers keep pointing out that is doesn't?

The issue is whether you want to deal with the AA RTW desk over the phone from start to finish, or whether you want to have a priced itinerary with locator, and then call the AA RTW desk just to make changes. The tool currently kicks out errors that prohibits one from getting anything reserved at all unless you deal with its bugs (i.e. avoid intra-continent RTs) or misprices if you end your itinerary in certain cities. With a 16-segment trip I prefer the DIY approach, with discussion limited to one or two issues/improvements, so that an agent can see the overall trip without my having to spend an hour or so on the phone with them to get it to that point. YMMV

My mileage did vary on this score
Setting up a 13 segment itinerary took all of 15 minutes on the phone with an AA RTW desk agent. I of course spoon-fed the agent the date, origin, destination and flight number of each segment

And that 15 minutes included an initial discussion of the fact that the tool would not ticket my itinerary, and a discussion at the end to the effect of me saying a firm 'No Thank You' to an ex-USA price for my DONE4 tickets, and me explaining that I would be purchasing in Canada through a TA and so I expected the ex-Sudan price, converted from SDG to CAD - which is what I got when I rang back 48hrs later.

I don't think that's how the tool is supposed to work, is it?

It's supposed to take you payment, and ticket
In which case, any changes you want to make will be subject to the change rules (in particular routing changes will be subject to the USD125 change fee)

Of course - the tool should allow you purchase the exact itinerary you want, as long as it complies with the rules of course, in which case there would be be no post-purchase tweaks required.
We should be so lucky...:rolleyes:

Okay, I'm catching up. If we don't want to save the world from defective websites we do what we always did - plan our trip, make sure it meets the rules, and call the AA rtw desk to price it. The only differences are that we now have a buggy OW tool that can be either helpful or frustrating in rule-checking, and now we're allowed to tell AA to price it at country-of-origin rates for Canadian ticketing.

If the OW tool gives frustrating answers, we take a slight detour and (as always) post here and receive generally-excellent guidance.

And given a motivated and well-trained TA we might just as well have read the trip to the TA in the first place, and let him read it to AA, thus avoiding waiting in the queue for an AAgent and any personal involvement with AA regarding point of sale. (I hear there's a TA well-experienced with ex-KRT ONE's, otherwise I would cringe at my own suggestion.)

Meanwhile, the real point is to hurry along. They've probably already pulled the fare. (As usual 100% blame on FT for doing what we expect it to do, i.e. spreading the word far and wide.)

If you're thinking of the TA that is referred to elsewhere in this thread, well I can tell you that s/he was quite firm with me and insisted that s/he would do nothing until AA (and only AA) had booked and I could provide the PNR. From there on was a breeze
(I have only been in email touch with the agent, and my knowledge of Indian given names is not good enough to divine the TA's gender;))

The fares are still showing in KVS. They've been known for some time, at least here on FT. But as someone posted just recently an AAgent commented that they were receiving a lot of enquiries regarding them. That could be the trigger for action

Isn't it a shame that because a fare is perceived as being good value for money, the airlines' flag goes up and we look down the barrel of a price hike.