Dear forums,

Tried booking using the online tool tonight and got an error at the very last step, error 9015. Seems that other people have been pretty stumped on this one so I hope things work out smoothly.

I'll call the AA RTW desk in the morning and hopefully get some help there.

Any advice welcomed!

Good luck with the AA RTW desk

Your original itinerary (in the first post of this thread) has no AA segments at all - and so AA might well decline to book it (as has been reported here a number of times)

(as I understand it, while any oneworld airline can make the booking, only the airline that has the first segment is obliged to make the booking)

Anyone oneworld airline can book any of the oneworld products. Some (like AA) don't like to do so if they don't have one of the long haul flights on the ticket under their own code.

The only way that the 'first segment' comes into it is due to a limitation of the online booking tool.

I got into this with CX last year when looking for a DAS13 quote. They said "go talk to QF", I replied quoting the fare rules. They replied with a quote.

Thanks for the community support!

I called AA RTW this morning 3 times looking for a helpful agent (also tried LAN once, that was a disaster). Once I got one, I spent about an hour on the phone with her getting the itinerary into the system. She never asked if we had AA segments, just was happy to help me. Score!

She emailed me the itinerary we laid out but said it takes them 24 hours to generate fare quotes. So I'm to call the AA RTW desk back tomorrow (hopefully their total number is not higher than what the tool gave me) and actually book the fare. I guess when working with an agent over the phone you actually have the booking on hold for several weeks before having to buy it.

She said that we can ask that they waive the $50 phone booking fee since the online tool gave me an error multiple times.

The agent did give me the choice to book and pay from the US or Argentina, and she said she thought the taxes and fees would be higher from Argentina. I'm hoping I'll hear both quotes tomorrow and I'll report back to you all.

Update to help people doing this in the future --

The AA RTW agents did have the itinerary priced the next morning when I called (overnight but less than 24 hours). The "US price" was significantly higher than what the online planner tool had given me, so I asked them to reprice it at the "Argentina price". This took another day. This time the price was what I saw in the planner. So the online tool is probably giving the price as if the ticket is bought in the country where the trip starts.

I'm now working to purchase the ticket in Argentina with a travel agent there.

Congrats Ashleyydiego

The main takeawy for me from your experience is that you managed to get AA to ticket an itinerary that has no AA segments

I tried to get them to ticket an itinerary that had single AA segment - but only a short-haul one (YUL-JFK). The agent insisted on an 'overwater segment'. So I changed one long-haul segment to AA and all went OK from there on.

Perhaps later I'll change it back to the way I really want it - I'll need to make another change too so I'll be up for the USD125 change anyway

Hey PandaPerth,

Yeah, getting AA to ticket it was a big deal since other airlines seemed pretty clueless about RTW fares. I just approached it with the attitude that I would be happy to call back as many times as needed until I reached someone in a good mood to help me get what I needed done, and that worked well.

Good luck making your change! :)

Thanks:D

If you have trouble finding an Argentinian travel agent, you could always get the ticket re-priced in Canadian dollars (the ex-Argentina price, converted to CAD) and pay through a Canadian travel agent - see the last few posts in this thread aone4-khartoum
This is how I've paid for our ex-KRT DONE4 tickets (and getting the great ex-KRT price;))

Cool, thanks for the tip!

Actually, my sister-in-law is a travel agent in Argentina so we'll have no problem getting the tickets going through her.

She speaks English and Spanish and will have booked this once before -- so if anyone in the future needs help from South America, search for Let's Go Viajes.

Remember, though, that you are not protected from a price increase while on hold. So if you leave it on hold for an extended period, you have exposure there. The RTW desk used to be very good at advising of upcoming price increases, -- they used to find out a couple of days in advance and let you know informally. (They always told me that they were not allowed to tell pax about upcoming increases, but they always seemed to try to help me out.) I haven't bought one since the faring desk moved out of Dublin, though, so I can't speak with authority on the current practice.