There were anecdotal reports of AA stopping ex-CAI tickets, but then a few people came back later and said they've had some issued recently. So YMMV but it's worth a try and perhaps even a HUCA.

From personal experience and others who have dealt with QF, just don't do it for a RTW. Changes are painful as it's really hard to find an agent who has any clue what they're doing. Most calls get routed to Fiji which seems to be their most incompetent call center. I did have a lovely representative in South Africa once who was pretty awesome, she knew nothing about the ticket but took the time to learn and got everything done in a few hours. If you get lucky enough for Hobart (which seems rare) they are also suppose to be fairly good, but when I would call I'd get Fiji like 90% of the time. In the end the only way I could get anything done was using QF's social media team (I used Twitter, but another poster mentioned FB Messenger too). They actually have a clue and get things to the right people to get them done but it may take a day or two.

BTW, if you go via the OW tool online and your first carrier is RJ to Amman, my understanding is that QF is the ticketing airline, so definitely find a travel agent or try AA.

I just ticketed my most recent one with CX and have heard mostly great things about their ability to service the ticket later as well. I have only had the one experience making a minor change to a codeshare before ticketing, so can't say firsthand yet. But whether you can get CX to ticket or not depends on your itinerary, they like to be the first carrier on the ticket but have also heard at least one person say they've gotten CX to do their even without being the first carrier.

Thanks to this board for the help with trying to book my DGLOB34. They were able to get it to ticket in the end, however I declined to proceed.

Ex-OSL fares are approx. £4330 on BA right now. BA quoted £6.7k, adding £2.4kpp of YQ. Almost all is fuel surcharges. As they were adamant they couldn't book codeshares, meaning I needed a few long QF legs, there was no alternative but to give up.

I'm now trying via AA.

Might want to look at booking ex-TYO instead and doing a positioning flight with miles or just another cheapish deal. You'd be in the range of 900,000 - 1,000,000 JPY which is ~£5000-5500. Ex-TYO has much lower fuel surcharges than other points of origin.

If you go to AA to ticket what you have currently, get rid of any BA segments and have them on AA or QR codes, neither of which draw as high of YQ / YR. BA and QF are likely to be the highest on both, assuming you stick with ex-OSL, but QF doesn't have YQ out of TYO, only YR which is small.

I've been trying to use the online tool to book an ex-HND itinerary. I keep getting errors stating "There is an unexpected issue when requesting a price for this itinerary. Please try changing a flight, date, cabin or city/destination."

If I pare down the itinerary I can get it to price, but I have yet to be able to generate a 16 segment RTW without that error.

Any experience or suggestions on getting it to work better?

You can try the new AI enabled site, if still no good post the itinerary here if you aren't sure it's valid then you can probably get 90% of the way there using ITA Matrix to calculate the taxes

Just curious, do you have any BA or IB long haul segments? That's always caused it to not price for me for some odd reason on built itineraries ex-Japan. Doesn't mean the segments are invalid, just seems it can't price them on what would be a CX or QF issued ticket and you'd have to call in to get it priced. I haven't found any other airlines that cause the error so far but have never attempted to have any AT, AY, or RJ long haul segments on the itinerary to test.

ITA will give you accurate taxes but not YQ / YR. From my experience there is no YQ on ex-Japan xONEx, only some YR. Though I've never been able to get a price from the OW tool when it included BA or IB long haul, which could be why.

Just JL/CX/AA/QR/AS. I thought it might be the AS segments causing the issue, but I removed them and it is still not pricing. I know I can just call AA to do it, but then I need to use AA intercontinental which I don't want to do for a variety of reaasons. I'd call CX or JL to have them try to issue it, but it sounds like they are all just using the oneWorld tool now - which isn't working for the itinerary.

I stripped out a lot of segments, and even this isn't pricing: HND(JL)-SIN(CX)-HKG(CX)-LAX(QR)-DOH(QR)-CPH(QR)-DOH(QR)-HND

CX has a OW desk, just not one you can call yourself. You still have to talk to a regular person, many of who have no idea how to put it together nor where to send it for pricing once they have it assembled. HUCA is necessary from what I've heard from others. On the one I just ticketed with them, I at least got it to price on the OW tool the had their Whatsapp team make one change before I ticketed it. You could try sending them an itinerary on Whatsapp and ask them to send it to the OW desk for pricing as a OneWorld Explorer DONEx ticket. They seemed to know what they were doing in my single interaction with them, and with other airlines as well I find the SNS teams are better equipped for some reason.

BTW, I had no problem at all getting the OW tool to price the above itinerary. You didn't specify where you wanted stopovers vs. transit. But I put stopovers everywhere except between CPH-HND (transit DOH), got 733,330.00 JPY on the tool. I do not use the AI function, that's a disaster in my opinion. Post up your full itinerary what you're trying to achieve and I'll see if I can't get it to price somehow, I've had a good bit of practice manipulating that tool to make it work now. Make sure to indicate where you want a stopover vs. transit. Also if you have a free segment I'd recommend CX TYO-HKG-SIN to get the tool to send it to CX instead of JL. JL has both a ticketing fee and service fee for any changes, even if they'd be free in the fare rules.

Thanks for the advice on this thread. Unfortunately, positioning to TYO to start a RTW ticket is not affordable for us in terms of time or cost. I'm happy to report a good booking experience with AA for our ex-OSL paying in GBP.

It did take 5 calls - from the UK the number is free via Skype without credit. The initial booking took over an hour, I was given a week for rating and ticketing and I called on the 6th day when my rating was confirmed and price given in USD. I asked for a conversion to GBP, and was advised to call back the next day. I did this and paid - about 8h before the ticket expiry.

The next day I saw some segments missing so called once more, and turns out some of the partner airline segments had not tickets and had dropped due to time expiry. The agent was able to re-add these while I held, and get the rating and payment processed in around 50 minutes this time. The price did drop from what I was told the day before, all YQ, so I'll take that.

Overall a fare of £4324 and YQ of £1041. I reduced this by £1.6k per passenger compared to BA's version, this was done by using AA for SYD-HNL on a codeshare instead of prime QF, and unfortunately switching to BA15 from SIN-SYD instead of QF2 - noisy 777 over the A380 is a shame but worth it for the saving.

As a BAEC member the booking is a mess in my BA app as Sabre and Amadeus do their awkward dance, but it's all valid in the AA app and reserving seats via Royal Jordanian seems to have worked.

Wow - just spent a few hours reading this thread and LOTS of great info in here. I'm looking to book a DONE5 on very short notice (within the next week) and had wanted to start from CAI, but given the limited options out of BA and RJ may just start it from OSL. Priorities are:

• get the QF nonstops SCL-SYD-JNB....because yes, I'm a nerd and want those lines on my map
• squeeze in a DCA-EYW-DCA trip since buying that in business is ridiculous on its own
• maybe a sidetrip on QF to NLK or AYQ?

Advice how to improve (and quickly ticket? I assume OW website is quickest - is there any way to guarantee AA tickets it?) this:

OSL-HEL
HEL-JFK-DCA
DCA-EYW-DCA
DCA-XXX-DCA (not sure where yet)
DCA-MIA-SCL
SCL-SYD
SYD-NLK-SYD
SYD-JNB
JNB-DOH-OSL

...looks like 15 segments so pretty much optimized, but would love advice...

Couple of questions, do you 'need' the HEL stopover right after leaving OSL? You're not optimizing mileage that way, better to go OSL-DOH-JFK, it's a lot more miles and a much nicer ride across the Atlantic. Then continuing on your planned route and tag HEL to the end, JNB-DOH-HEL, then HEL-OSL (or for that matter just throw that segment away if you don't need to go back to OSL otherwise). Other option if you indeed need that HEL stopover right at the beginning, OSL-HEL, HEL-DOH-JFK. The HEL-DOH is unfortunately on the AY plane, but you'd get QR metal for the trans-Atlantic at least, that would be right at 16 segments and that version would ticket with AY on the OW tool.

The OW tool won't ticket on AA unless they're your first segment. It also won't ticket the recommended amendment I posted above because QR cant' be the first carrier. For AA to ticket you'll have to call them, but likely could get it all done in less than a day.

I guess DCA is home? LOL.

I just priced out your version in the OW tool, it's 103,682 NOK (~$9400) with a whopping 37,497 of that in taxes and surcharges. (~$3390). Of course that would be ticketed on AY so don't know how much you might trim off by ticketing with AA (if any, I suspect a lot of the surcharge is coming from the 2 long QF segments and the AY one, and pretty sure AA charges those too unless you're going ex-TYO).

Here's something to ponder. (Too much time on my hands tonight) I tried to build something ex-TYO but you can't get both the SCL-SYD and SYD-JNB flights if you originate in Asia. So I built one ex-CAI that is pricing between US$6500-6900 all in. Currently this is ticketing with QF because it starts on AT and apparently they don't ticket from the OW tool. The final 2 flights can easily be switched to QR but I can't do it in the tool, you have to call and get AA to issue. I had to drop your DCA-xxx-DCA because this itinerary uses all of your segments but for a potential $3000 savings, you can certainly add in whatever you want nested in on a separate ticket.

(line breaks are stopovers)
CAI-CMN (AT)
CMN-JFK-DCA (AT AA)
DCA-EYW (AA)
EYW-DCA (AA)
DCA-DFW-SCL (AA) (MIA would also work fine here, just I was finding DFW connections easier on the placeholder dates I used)
SCL-SYD (QF)
SYD-NLK (QF)
NLK-SYD (QF)
SYD-JNB (QF)
JNB-LHR-HEL (BA AY) - this can be changed to JNB-DOH-HEL but the OW tool can't do it with the QR code DOH-HEL, have to call, with AY code it adds $300 over the LHR connection)
HEL-LHR-CAI (AY BA) - this can also be changed to HEL-DOH-CAI but the OW tool can't do it with the QR code HEL-DOH, have to call, with AY code it adds $300 over the LHR connection)

In the OW tool you're at AU$10,345 or AU$10,957 (US$6531 or US$6918). That LHR connections to HEL vs. DOH. However once you call and get the codes changed to QR then it might actually be less than the LHR connections. BA LHR-CAI is an A321 with Eurobiz so would avoid that even if DOH is still higher with QR codes. And you'd get the Al Safwa lounge on your HEL-DOH-CAI transit, so that also adds value to going that way if you build in a sufficient layover to enjoy it.

Unable to purchase CAI origen from AA
 

Reckon the underlining of the entire post was an accident, I've corrected that in the quote box here. :D Quite interesting though that they're limiting ex-CAI only to EXP and CK. Too many people I guess using them to book when not enough segments are on AA to justify it.

But the RJ part doesn't surprise me, when I was messing around and building that sample itinerary I posted above yesterday, the OW tool also would absolutely not allow RJ for the first segment. I got it to work only with AT as the first carrier, so you may want to look at that. I tried every non-QR OW carrier that flies to CAI (which isn't many, IB once a week but that didn't work either despite them publishing a fare still), and the one and only I could make work was AT. Who knows, that may not even last long (so grab it while you can if it works for you) but you'd think if so many OW carriers were getting fed up with the CAI fares then OW would just change the ex-CAI price... that's "de facto" what appears to be happening with several OW carriers pulling ex-CAI fares only and leaving literally every other market alone and AA now specifying that they'll only book ex-CAI for EXP and CK.

What we really need is a good independent travel agent on here who's willing to issue on QR stock. ernestnywang, who posts in here a lot and very generously helps people figure out places to cut / trim YQ / YR said that an agent with Sabre could plate on QR stock and could avoid most of the fuel surcharges from the ex-OSL and ex-CAI fares. (Could also plate with QR as the first carrier on the ticket which OW won't do). Problem is, so far no one been identified who can do it (or at least no one is coming forward). For ex-OSL tickets alone, that could quite easily save people $1000-2000+ so even a set, livable, commission to manage the ticket would be justifiable. Ex-OSL tickets regularly have well over $3000 in YQ / YR, compared to ex-TYO with ~$200-400.

I will also mention that ex-CAI and ex-TYO DONE5 are almost exactly the same price after YQ / YR are figured in. It's 40,000 AA miles one way from CAI to TYO on QR or EY in business. (ok, actually both QR and EY availability to TYO is quite tight but ICN is usually available and it's a 2 hour flight that costs nothing to get from ICN / GMP to TYO.)

Thank you SO much for all the input - it's validating what I've more or less found. The two long QF segments are the only "real" non-negotiable - basically I've wanted those two segments for so long that it makes sense to buy an ex-CAI just for those - everything else is gravy.

If I want to ticket ex-CAI with the tool it seems it's going to be a QF ticket - which also tells me I'd better get my dates and everything right the first time since changing it would likely be an absolute nightmare!

Yup, bolding in your text where needed! :D I've personally just finished a QF RTW and it was a nightmare right up until I figured it out.

QF is absolutely horrible to deal with on a RTW, hands down, that's the end of the story. But if you must do changes with them it seems it's completely useless to do with their call center. I finally found out their social media team can make things happen. I used Twitter DMs, the other poster who brought it up used FB Messenger, seems it's the same team. If you end up ticketing with QF, Godspeed but go that route, and any changes to direct to the SNS teams, don't even pull your hair out with the call center.