This sounds like a matter of sheer incompetence.

No wonder they invented autopricing.

I had EXACTLY the same thing happen with my last DONE4 ex-CPT, there was too many lines for YQ (or something to that effect) and they ticketed it without the YQ, although it had already been paid.

The first time I made the change I got a lovely lady at the DFW desk to sort it out for me but with the second change I made she seemed to have less luck.

Basically on both occasions I was told I owed about $1500 AUD.

In the end after several calls to the CPT office I got a great bloke who sorted everything out for me in two hours and got it re-ticketed with the correct YQ. This was after two sectors had been flown.

It definitely sounds like the cost difference is due to the YQ rather than a change in the base fare from DONE4 to DONE5

Thanks heaps! Sounds very much the same, now I just need to find a person in DFW or CPT that can really fix it :)

The amount sounds very similar. We have already flow JNB-LHR-HEL-HKG-SYD of the ticket.

CPT is now looking into it, should hear back in 24 hours.

I did a dummy booking on oneworld.com for a similar routing and got 68020 ZAR + 20015 ZAR for the ticket now, which is in the same ballpark as our original ticket in September (the basic fare has increased a bit). Does this sound about right for such a ticket, with all the surcharged included?

Base DONE5 out of S. Africa should be ZAR 67880. Not off by much.

If for any reason the folks in CPT agree that there's some huge amount that needs to be collected for this routing change, do keep in mind that BKK and RGN are really quite close to one another. I recall booking an AirAsia flight between them for very few dollars, with flight time being only about an hour. IIRC the one-way flight cost slightly less than the $50 charged for the online Myanmar evisa...

Got a voice mail from CPT that the "YQ problem has been fixed in the ticket" and I should call them to pay the ~10000 ZAR (including the change fee) per ticket to have the ticket re-issued.

It's still high but 1/3 of what it was yesterday, so I took the hit and paid (plus the other lady I got when calling CPT didn't sound like she was going to do much help). AA ATW desk said yesterday that both YQ and YR were not paid so perhaps the YQ was fixed but I still paid YR twice. Thank you for jozdemir for his experience, it was the key get this issue on a right track.

That was the idea behind dropping RGN in favour of BKK, we'll get to our real destinations from HKG and BKK easily.

I have been bleating on this forum till people are sick of hearing my song, but my recent experience is that AA is now perhaps the most incompetent place to price a OneWorld RTW product.

The problem seems to be the rate desk (who may themselves be stuck with antiquated computers/software/procedures) but all but a few of the ATW desk agents themselves don't recognize a ridiculous pricing error (or have an 'it's not our problem' mentality).

And when a passenger points it out and asks them to double-check with the rate desk, the reply from the rate desk (days later) is "what we said is correct, if you don't like it, stuff it." The whole thing seems extremely unprofessional.

Capetown seems to be able to price correctly, but for many of us the time zone difference makes contacting them a bit more trouble.

If you're traveling on an expense account, don't worry about it. If it's your money and not insignificant, it doesn't take a great deal of effort to price your ticket (assuming that you trust ITA for taxes-and-fees data and e.g. ExpertFlyer for the base fares.)

Duplicate post

Thanks JohnAx.

Whom do you advise for oneworld ticket purchasing?

It's been great fun to solve this problem from Sydney, with 9h difference to Cape Town and 17h to Dallas. The ticket isn't re-issued yet so I'll be calling CPT again tomorrow if it's not done today. [ticket issued now, they were just busy in CPT]

I have to agree with your point of view, it took three times with AA to get a person that didn't think the $2300 fee was correct. She didn't provide a fix but at least was kind enough to figure out why they thought so and said that the fee we paid for a route change in November was more what it should be.

It might be of interest that BA of all airlines have made the process of booking RTWs ex-CPT a relatively simple process. Rather than using AA/Mindpearl, etc I decided to see if phoning the BA Gold line would produce better results.

The answer is a definite "yes". I was told that they are closing the South African BA desk and that Newcastle or Manchester are dealing with RTW requests. Since the first and last legs of my next AONE4 are on BA I decided to give them a try. I phoned the US BA Gold desk and was automatically re-routed to the UK BA Gold desk. The agent was located in Newcastle and explained that they could handle everything as if I was speaking to BA in Cape Town.

They did just this. Rather than waste time on the phone, I sent a pdf file of a dummy booking I'd made on the OW site, and, since it doesn't appear possible to choose code shares on OW, I annotated the booking with the code shares I wished to use (e.g. BA SAN-ORD on AA; AA ORD-HKG on CX). Bingo. The reservation was priced within 24 hours and confirmed in writing.

All very painless. I could probably have saved a few pennies on fuel fines by using the RTW AA desk + Mindpearl, but, since the Canadian exception which I'd always previously used is no longer a possibility, it seemed like a good compromise AND convenient.

Glad to hear it was so easy. I suspect the fuel fines BA charged that AA wouldn't have charged would be more like a few thousand dollars, but I could see how someone with ample resources could consider that "pennies."

The Newcastle staff are great but I had no idea they could do RTWs. ^ Any idea if they can price from other cities as well as CPT? If BA are simply ignoring the rule on the higher-fare-must-be-charged-in-different-selling-country it would be interesting to know. :D

But is that the case? Does Full Score have a true breakdown of the taxes and fees?

If Full Score would post trip details and cost I'd be willing to add up the taxes and fees using ITA data, in the interest of science, and compare 'native airline' fees with BA's.

I don't do rtw's as much as I used to so am a fairly unreliable source, but it does seem to me that a lot of 'fact' has become 'urban legend'. No one admits to doing the comparison but readily agrees that BA is especially guilty of abusing the YQ fee, but I believe you'll find most major OW carriers charge either YQ or YR on long-haul international routes.