Maybe the good part about this is that QF ended up issuing so many RTW fares this past week or two that their agents will finally learn how to handle them... :D HAHA, I'm sure that's wishful thinking.

I was finally able to get the OW site working again late last night and got an itinerary I'm satisfied with, nearly all QR and JL with the obligatory RJ to start and some AA and AS domestic, even got the new JL A350-1000 to JFK which I'm looking forward to. I will definitely need date changes on 2 parts later down the road but pretty sure I can fly 90% of it as is.

When pricing it, I thought heck why not make it a DONE5 instead of 4 since the base price is almost the same, but I still wanted JL if I went down to OZ. It kicked up the fare from 7,200 AUD to 11,000+AUD, OMG that's a LOT of YQ for JL on the Australia routes. If I would have used QF it actually would have reduced my total fare a bit from the DONE4, but my mileage earning on AA goes WAY down.

I guess there is no chance a different OW airline will accept to take over the ticket? (in the past AS took over a ticket from an OTA for a modest fee, but that was a simple one-way on AS... my RTW does have a couple of AS segments)

Reckon you’d be hard pressed to convince a *A carrier to ticket it.
but you definitely get others to ticket xONEx, just not via the online tool and it’s getting harder to ticket ex-CAI with anyone

Congrats, mind to share the segments and carrier? I only manage to get 2x QR (Vienna - KUL with xDoh) and (DFW - DOH), 1x CX (KUL - JFK), would love to learn how to get more QR.

My original was

CAI-AMM-DOH-CGK (RJ, QR, QR), CGK-NRT (JL), HND-BKK (JL), BKK-HND-JFK (JL), JFK-CLT-STL (AA), STL-SEA (AS), SEA-DOH (QR), DOH-NBO (QR), NBO-DOH-CAI (QR)

But I'm currently in the process of changing that, I'm dropping the RJ in the front and going CAI-DOH-CGK (QR) instead and trying to change the end now that I have the extra segments to NBO-DOH-TUN (QR) and TUN-DOH-CAI (QR).

It's a real shame that the OneWorld tool won't allow CAI-DOH on QR directly and still ticket with QF, because QF have no issues with that routing. I don't know by how much but they told me the YQ / YR goes down a bit as well by dropping RJ.

how do you plan to do CAI-DOH-CGK with QR? I thought the first segment cant fly with QR

There's no rule forbidding that, you just can't book it through the OW tool. QR doesn't issue RTW tickets, which is probably why OW has that limitation, but you can do a routing change ($125 fee) and remove RJ after it's ticketed.

There are plenty of reports of people using AA to ticket and had the first segment on QR as well.

my next segment is on AA so I tried them - answer is absolutely not. Tried QR since the segments I want to date change are on them - absolutely not.

and the QR agent who promised they absolutely wouldn’t do what the last five did and not call me back when they promised to? Well guess who never called back…

is there any way to get QF to do their job? I’ve lost nearly 10 hours on this now and it’s ridiculous.

Best of luck! I had to go through three call centers Fiji -S Africa- Australia and maybe 7 agents to cancel our ticket within 24 when the simple date change became impossible with them. It seems QF procedures are not up to par with rules of these alliance tickets - their story in my case (had surface segment at the end in Middle East so the trip ended in another country) was that they could not find applicable fare, and therefore change a date. Even a supervisor wanted "to give a call back" before checking with help-desk, but we went ahead with cancellation. Very stressful experience and hard to imagine what it means to be in the middle of a trip when they tell you fare rules do not apply because it is technically impossible to change the date.

Exactly - and their tactic seems to be to promise a call back to get you off the phone when they realize they don't have an answer...and tell you you're going to be hung up on if you don't agree to it. I'd risk escalation to the C-Suite on this one, but don't need these fares getting more attention. About to try call #8... (side note: I get Fiji every time...how do you tactfully ask them where they are? I usually use "ok, if you're going to call back where are you? what's the time there?)

I tried to get QR to take over a QF ticket last year and it also fell flat. Once you've called in enough times you'll recognize when you have the Fiji call center, and when you do it's best just to hang up and call again. The problem is I feel like I get the Fiji call center the vast majority of the time and it takes a while to get through the menus on QF's call system. I've had very good agents in South Africa before and perhaps Australia (but can't swear to that, maybe have never once gotten the OZ call center and just thought I did).

Basically though it's a tradeoff. For myself, I can't ask AA to ticket because they'll force me to have an overwater segment on AA with AA code, that wastes A LOT of miles for me since I credit to AAdvantage. Some others seem to have gotten AA to ticket but there was a rumor last year that AA stopped ticketing ex-CAI for anyone that wasn't EXP or higher. I don't know how true that is. For ex-Japan I've learned how to get CX to ticket and they're fine to deal with. But for ex-CAI, QF seems to be the necessary evil unless you can ticket with AA and don't care about drastically reduced earnings on your AA coded segment(s).

We've now been through this for a couple of years with the untrained Fijian agents, so hopefully things start to get better going forward, as I suspect they are dealing with quite a few more xONEx tickets now than ever before. The one big issue is that they need to 'reprice' everything and for whatever reason can never find the 'price'. I think that's an issue with whatever QF is using in their backend because an xONEx doesn't ever change the base 'price' after the first segment is flown, only taxes, YQ / YR change but the QF system seems incapable of handling that. There's also the issue that they don't seem to have a live support desk to help them, last year I was told quite a few times they have to send a message to the support team and wait for a response, often taking hours. That's the reason for the call backs that may or may not happen.

I do know they will insist you can't have 2 stopovers in the same city and I get the impression that their system won't allow it, regardless of the OW rules. I've not been able to overcome that one yet, but I found an alternate solution that makes better sense anyway.

As far as getting them to do their job, well you're generally dealing with agents in Fiji getting paid peanuts. Some try, some don't, but they're poorly trained despite their best efforts. I've had them do their call backs at terrible times when I couldn't answer, and they'll never call again after that, usually it's one and done. Of course there's no way to contact them again directly to actually discuss with someone familiar with your situation and seems no one makes PNR notes either for the next agent who answers your call when you return the call.

The phone system QF would drive anyone crazy with robot lady not understanding PNR, but i guess phone calls are routed randomly so one can theoretically keep dialing until getting through to people that are easy to communicate with. Yesterday I got Australia-Fiji-SAfrica-Fiji in quick succession. The worst was S African agent who instead of processing cancellation, was condescending and lying by giving me a random Qantas number in Middle East Oman assuring they can process the date change?! If I cannot establish their location through their accent, I ask them directly where they are based. But the bottom line - avoid Qantas if you can.

Hahaahah I knew today would be better when the robot actually understood my PNR pronunciation...and wow, for the first time got someone in Auckland. While it's not done yet, she's incredibly helpful, understands RTW fares....cross your fingers I can get this done this time so I can subject myself to another torture out of CAI...

i have recently successfully ticketed through BA Gold and whose agents are willing to give their email and call you back as promised. Also in the process of working with AA desk as a regular lowly Gold not EXP. Their agents are senior, have a dedicated desk and check and double check everything before sending off to price. The problem with QF is that it seems they developed the software, but didn't invest in support. Cf with Star Alliance........

DFW-SYD on QF vs LAX-SYD on AA in terms of YQ & YR?
 

Which is a better option in terms of lower YQ & YR? Any datapoints? This is for a DONEx itin.

TIA.