To visit 5 continents in business class (possibly including some of the worlds' best) for $4000 and/or to get OW Emerald from scratch? I'm not saying it's definitely worth the lunacy, but I ended up keeping mine.

They have not...I had one ticket an hour ago which was booked yesterday ;)

Exactly...and while it's painful...I now know not to waste my time with Fiji-based agents....I'll take 20 calls at 2 min each as opposed to one painful 60 min Fiji call that goes nowhere.

edited to multiquote

Here, let me rephrase my original post. The original point was assuming that we have a choice in ticketing.

​​​​​​So, is AA definitely not pricing out ex CAI itineraries?
I don't see why anyone would continue to subject themselves to the lunacy of QF agents if AA is willing to price it out using BA or RJ fares.

They pricing just fine. QR fuel surcharges make these trips really expensive.

I don't believe they are. As I noted, the *base fare* when I add a second QR longhaul leg is increasing by $3K, not the taxes.

I'm guessing that's a bug then - there's no RTW fare on OW out of CAI that's $3,000 greater than the other...unless it's taking the QR A segment and calling it an AONE suddenly?

DONE3 to AONE3 is roughly $2,700 and DONE4 to AONE4 is roughly $3,300 so I'm betting this is what's happening.

You are talking about Qantas developped web tool which adjust the price when you select various flights; the base fare does not vary unless you add a continent etc. American prices exactly what QF app shows, and you can get a breakdown if you email your itinerary from web app.

Because the first overwater segment is on QR, you’re getting ticketed on the QR DONEx fare, all of which are at least 3000 AUD higher than equivalent other oneworld airline DONEx fares. It’s been that way for the past week.

interesting - but I thought the tool couldn’t handle QR fares? Or can it handle them as long as QF tickets them?

I'm looking at the base fare change on the RTW web tool. The only thing I'm changing is the routing from one QR longhaul flight to two. I'm well aware that the base fare is not supposed to change unless you add a continent, but I'm saying in practice that is not actually happening.

Ok I’m new to RTW fares. I need some help just to make sure I understand something. The first to ticketed carrier manages the whole itinerary so if I need to make changes there who I call? If that’s the case how’s RJ support agents etc. Never flown them and I just want to make sure I’m not going to be unhappy with needing to talk to them and their call centers.

curious who do people think have the bast agents?

Not sure that's it. When I start building the itinerary, the default for the first overwater segment is AMM-LHR-BOS on BA, which is priced on the bottom section as $6545. When I switch that to QR, the price jumps north of $10000, which would align with what you're saying.

If I continue on with that fare where the the first overwater section is DOH and switch the final leg from AKL-DOH on QR to AKL-MEL-SIN-DOH with AKL-MEL-SIN on QF and SIN-DOH on QR, though, the price drops back down to $7398 AUD.

I'm sorry for miscommunication. American Airlines are pricing itineraries ex-CAI just fine. That's what I meant by "they". Whether RTW base fares change when including QR segments I don't know: all I know that if you create a valid itinerary using the web-tool and don't ticket on QF but on AA, they will price it correctly.

RTW base fares don’t change. Period. That’s the fare rules.

I’m not sure how you “know” that AA will ticket any itinerary when there’s been plenty of conflicted reports here about their willingness. Can we please stick to facts and not one-off speculation? That will be most beneficial to the community.

I was trying to add Australia onto my itinerary to make it a DONE5, but couldn't get it to work without the fare jumping to over 11,000 AUD as you're saying. That's using QR to SYD (or anywhere else in OZ) or using your mentioned trick of QR to SIN and QF to SYD. I don't however think this is QR's YQ / YR because I have a ton of QR segments in my itinerary, 2 of those long haul (DOH-CGK and SEA-DOH), and that's pricing normally.

The problem I'm having is that it seems to be saying the base fare for DONE5 is 8,133.00 AUD if Australia is included vs. 4,458.00 AUD for DONE4 (Without Australia). That's not what EF shows but something in the tool is triggering that much higher base fare. Oddly if I used South America instead of Australia it correctly prices a DONE5 at 4,585.00 AUD but that likely doesn't benefit me much mileage wise since I'd have to use AA to go to South America and they'd likely credit the flights as Revenue instead of Distance (in AAdvantage).