RTW online tool question...
 

Anyone know why the online RTW tool isn't offering the direct CX flight between JFK and HKG?

I am trying to integrate it into a DONE4 going westwards and all the options are BA/AA etc via London, Chicago, Tokyo etc...

There are several flights every day: CX 845, 841, 831, 889 and they are available on the CX website for the day I need... but I can't seem to be able to force the OW tool to see them.

I guess I'll end up calling a OW office and getting them to ticket?

The RTW booking tool will only show a flight if it has availability in the booking class asked for by the ticket, eg D.

The CX website will show the flight if it has any availability in any fare class for that that class, eg J or C.

OK... thanks. Will keep looking. Seems odd that D is not available on any of their flights on any day across a whole week a month from now!

I checked Oct 13th +/- 3 days and there is plenty D available on almost every CX flight JFK-HKG, so I'm not sure why you are not seeing it.

Bear in mind that there is no OW office where you can book a ticket; you can only call one of the member airlines.
In many people's experience , the best one to call is AA's dedicated RTW office at +1-800-247-3247

Happy Travels.

Thanks for this. Out of interest, is AA's dedicated RTW office able to book D/AONE tickets out of any originating city in the world, or does one have to book and pay the originating country office?

Able to book or willing to book? I theory they can price and book to anywhere in the world, but the rules changed last year or so which means they will price as starting in the US if you want to book with them.

With that said I booked a DONE4 using the online tool but received an email from AA afterwards saying there was a problem. When I called it was just a problem with flight availablity, which they fixed. I then completed the booking and paid them the amount in USD for the starting location not the US.

The RTW desk can set up the ticket to be issued anywhere in the world. However, if you go ahead an actually have them issue the ticket, you'll be charged the US price.

You ask them to price it for issue in X, then go to the AA sale rep (or other travel agent using Sabre) in X and have them take over the booking and issue it.


If you use the online tool, it assumes you are where you are starting the trip from. Any manual intervention by an airline after that also assumes you are in that location. I've had ex-Japan tickets issued by both QF and CX. For the QF one, QF Tokyo had problems charging the card and asked QF Sydney to contact me. Once it was all sorted out, I was charged the ex-Japan price, despite QF knowing I wasn't in Japan (and according to the fare rules, should have been charged the ex-Australia price).
For the CX issued ticket, I had to get it rerouted and email CX Tokyo who had issued the ticket. It went through a refare to check for price/tax changes. They didn't try to increase the price to match the ex-AU price.

There have been no rules changes in this regard (at least as far back as 2008 when I first got into xONEx's).
The RTW desk always assumed you're located in the USA, and therefore priced tickets by the 'higher of country of origin/country of purchase (USA in this case)' rule

To get anything different you had to explicitly tell the agent where you would be purchasing the ticket - usually country of origin or Canada (due to the exception, which has now been removed).

Removal of the Canada exception was what I meant.

I've been quite curious about this whole issue. The Common Wisdom always was that the 'Canadian exception' was because of some condition in Canadian law ('free trade', or whatever) that required tickets to be available to be sold in that way. About five or six years ago, however, Star Alliance, which previously had the very same 'Canadian exception' in their RTW ticketing rules, all of a sudden eliminated the exception -- and went to the more liberal 'pay the starting point price no matter where you buy the ticket'.

If the prior 'Canadian exception' rule had been a consequence of Canadian law, the Star Alliance change would simply have made it moot in *A RTW ticketing.

But then, last year, oneworld also eliminated the 'Canadian exception' -- although not in the way that *A had. Oneworld decreed, 'starting point price or point of sale price, whichever is higher, worldwide'.

What I'm wondering about is -- how could they do that? Did the Canadian law that was protecting these tickets change? Or was it never a function of Canadian law at all, but something else? If so, what?

To repeat: how was oneworld able to (seemingly) arbitrarily make this change? I would be very interested to learn what actually happened.

cheers,

Henry

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/onewo...liminated.html
Check this.

Not too observant, are you skunker? I was the OP of that thread. :)

cheers,

Henry

:D I guess not.