My personal motivation is not having to suffer from terrible customer "service" with QF agents that range from incompetent to liars ("I'll call you back") to somewhere in between. If people are insistent on not having a long-haul AA flight, then that's what other booking channels are for, yes. But the value here is for people to know that there are other options. What's with all this judgment about why people are booking these fares? Irrelevant. :confused:

Zero judgement. I feel you’re judging people who book with QF because they want routings AA won’t ticket. *shrug*

Well, I'm sorry but that's incorrect. I'm judging QF the airline because I had a series of bad experiences with them. The point is solely to let people know that there are other ways of booking DONEx that don't involve QF. As always, YMMV. End of story. Have a nice day.

I'm not sure about that theory to be honest because I just changed mine and dropped RJ. The price went down about AU$250 from lower YQ and taxes going QR to DOH directly. I know QF adamantly reprices everything so if that were the case wouldn't they now be using the QR fare instead if the RJ or QF fare? I do recall the QR fare being at least $200 more than the ones priced in EGP.

If this was your original routing: 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)
Then my hunch is that dropping AMM in the beginning and going CAI-DOH-CGK does not change the fare basis that your ticket is priced on.

While not the same, I experienced a dramatic price increase by adding a simple transit. On a DONE4, I originally had ... SYD-BLR-KUL-HKG-CDG ... Changing it to SYD-BLR-xCMB-KUL-HKG-CDG caused the fare to go from AUD6554 to AUD7469.

Since I'm BA silver this might be the way to go. Just call BA and feed them the flights and see what happens because I will start CAI-LHR-USA... on BA.
Regarding several comments about using AA for an overwater segment, I would not avoid using them if they offer a flight to where I want to go. Just look at the other forums here on FT and you will find that all of the airlines have 'bad' service/seats/etc. Just a matter of degree. Remember, this is a great deal and I have been flying RTW from the paper ticket days.

But then why would the base fare drop by several thousand dollars if I switch the final leg from AKL-DOH to AKL-SYD-SIN-DOH, given that they're both QR DONE4s?

There's a QR A segment from AMM-DOH. That could be the bug the tool is battling, but it shouldn't be that way: having the end be AKL-SYD-SIN-DOH as opposed to AKL-DOH shouldn't make it a DONE fare again.

I have no idea what your itinerary is, let alone what fare it's priced on.
This is all speculation and so I cannot answer your question with certainty. Again, YMMV.
I would suggest contacting a travel agent with GDS access to understand why your trip is pricing the way it is.

The itinerary is here. I understand that you can not answer my question with certainty, but this is a thread to discuss Oneworld pricing and is often used to discuss the RTW tool. I've identified what appears to be a significant bug and so I'm trying to discuss it so we can understand it and see if there's any way for us to benefit.

Absolutely! I hope you get an informed answer to your question, because it would be yet another data point in this crazy experience of xONEx booking.

Because QF didn't understand that CAI / DOH / TUN aren't Africa, I ended up changing it quite a bit. I converted from a DONE4 to a DONE5, because it literally cost me $200 and took some flights to South America on a JL code (for the benefit of AAdvantage crap earnings on AA codes) But yes, when I still had the DONE4, changing from CAI-AMM-DOH-CGJK, on RJ and QR to CAI-DOH-CGK on QR alone significantly reduced my YQ. About AUD250 according to my QF agent.

Because there's something broken with Oceanic destinations in the OW tool. Some seem to work, others definitely don't.

I have zero issue with those, have had a fair number of them in my itineraries including the current one. That doesn't cause issues in my own experience. This includes the current ex-CAI I've been working on, and also my currently in progress ex-TYO CX issued.

That's not the easiest thing in the world to do. No one (or very few) on FT are raising their hands willing to book these for fellow FTers. Similarly not many B&M agents are up to speed on them either. Are you one? That would be great for the good of the FT community.

I actually tried to go through an agent the first time I booked one of these but they couldn't get my routing to work when I could 'rig' the OW tool to do it. Much to my dismay that was a QF issued ticket and I learned many lessons along the way.

There are A LOT of QF first timers in this thread now with the ex-CAI fare, but trust me do your research and you'll learn how to manage QF.

I'm with izzik on this.

I priced DONE3 ex-CAI with AA RTW desk. I started with CAI-DOH-HKG all on QR and the base price was close to the image that izzik posted above. I asked AA to replace with CAI-AMM-BKK on RJ as the start and it reduced to the base fare that the Oneworld Explorer tool quoted. Saving some $6000 of my CAD pesos for two of us.

Though this is my first *ONE*. So...

Because AA was using the QR fare vs. the RJ fare to price it. As far as I know only QR and AA have higher ex-CAI fares, I believe all other OW carrier use the EGP base fare.