dvs7310

I suspect nearly all of these touch the US because of the AA or AS flights nearly required for North America. I suppose you could fly into and out of Canada, but it's not the most straightforward OW itinerary. I don't believe you can fly directly into and out of Mexico on any OW airline without touching the US (on a OW RTW itinerary) NH flies to Mexico but JL does not. I guess someone might have booked into Mexico on IB or BA and out of Canada on JL or CX, but that's a huge ground segment that isn't cheap, I think most would have used AA or AS to get between.

Having said that the DOT hasn't been very helpful on other fares in the past. While this isn't an error fare, I wouldn't put much faith in them to enforce an QF fare rule on a routing change that has nothing to do with the US part of the itinerary.

Just as a point of reference from my limited experience with them, I once bought a ticket from Expeida.com on a 'package deal' with airfare and hotel. It was from TYO-BKK-TYO however with no component in the US except the actual website. This was when JL and PG were trying to form a partnership. Well apparently PG kept selling tickets on JL when JL was actually sold out. They tried to cancel my ticket, I refused, took it to the DOT since it was the American Expedia site and finally they negotiated. This was A LOT of back and forth but finally they put us on NH on their very last few seats (this was New Years week so everything was sold out ex-Japan). The DOT actually said they couldn't do anything directly since the flight didn't touch the US but since it was Expedia they'd help as much as they could, which was apparently a strongly worded letter that the airlines involved were not obliged to do anything about. It was finally a senior person in PG that was in contact with me and made the final arrangements on NH, Expedia never took any ownership.

Dr. HFH

If before your first flight, on what basis? The fare rules (which you presumably read before purchase) are pretty clear:

slhu82

Thanks everyone for help. I finally manage to book 2 xTYO for DONE4 for $6,000 USD through AA. Base fare $5,300. Tax + Other charges 700. I did not try to optimize surcharges, perhaps it can be even cheaper than that.

Here are my itineraries

TYO -> xDFW -> BUR (JL)(Even though EF shows 9 D fare from TYO -> LAX, but AA is not able to book it) BUR works well for me because it has direct flight from DFW where I can catch long haul flights. Also online tool does allow me to select LAX twice unless visiting another north America city, so during planning I just use Burbank. Burbank can trick online tool.
BUR -> xDFW -> SCL (AA)
SCL -> xDFW -> LAX (AA)
LAX -> ANC (AS)
ANC -> LAX (AS)
LAX -> xDOH -> CAI (QR)
IST -> xDOH -> MLE (QR)
MLE -> CMB -> PEK (UL) may switch to QR later
PEK -> TYO (JL)

All flights beside the first flight are placeholders. I will need to call AA multiple time to change everything. If anything I need to watch out please let me know. So far it does not seem like I can select seats from QR by using record locator (same locator for all airlines) from AA. I can see all my flights through QR, but when I attempt to select seats, it also show something went wrong, please contact us.

dvs7310

Unfortunately you can't switch MLE-CMB-PEK to QR since DOH is in the Europe / ME zone and MLE is Asia, you'd have to take UL out of MLE to CMB but can take MH from there since you still have an extra segment you can use in Asia (4 max, so MLE-CMB-KUL-PEK is 3 and PEK-TYO is 1). MH apparently resumes direct flights to MLE in August, so if your trip is after that (which I believe yours is in 2025) then you could do DOH-KUL-MLE on QR and MH, and then MLE-KUL-PEK on MH, finishing off with the planned PEK-TYO on JL.

I don't recall who you're crediting to but if AA then to PEK you're slightly better off on MH. UL doesn't have a cabin bonus with AAdvantage. No matter who you're crediting to, UL is pretty much a direct route to PEK from MLE, so you're not getting anything additional by detouring a bit to the east first. via KUL is more miles.

Also I think you have a typo in your price. $6000 total sounds about right for a DONE4 ex-TYO, and I suspect you meant $700 instead of $1700 in taxes and fees, which is also about right ex-TYO, I think I've been in the range of $600-800 in taxes and fees on my last 2 ex-TYO DONE5s.

That's a really nice data point that AA still ticketed this without any TPAC or TATL flights on it. Good to know they'll do it with South America instead since I'm pretty sure going anywhere except GRU requires AA codes to / from South America, so they're unavoidable in that situation. I cringe thinking of using AA codes TPAC or TATL because of the massive penalty getting credit on revenue vs. distance.

**Edit on my original post, didn't realized UL is now the only Asian OW carrier in MLE, didn't realize CX stopped flying there and MH is only to CMB, not MLE but is apparently resuming MLE in August this year.

Alan T

From EF it looks like they are maybe in the process of doing so, as fares exCAI have gone?

zoombee

It went yesterday, the fares were removed (no fares filed).

zoombee

Anyone else having this issue?

I had an exCAI reservation held at the "old" price and called the AA rtw desk to have it ticketed on Monday before it cancelled out. I was told all was OK. Today AA called and say the fare was wrong all along and they need to use the new price. They even charged my card at this unagreed price (it bounced, mostly because they already had the previour cost held on my card). I think the claim is tha one of the mid-itinery flight holds cancelled out so ticketing decided to rebook anew which means the new price is now stored Trying a supervisor ... let's see.

Update:
* I called the RTW desk to ticket late on March 25th
* On March 27th it was cancelled and rebooked at the new price. Possibly due to one of the holds for one of the flights timing out.
* RTW desk was initially only interested in telling me the new price is the correct price and I'm doubly wrong for having a card that wouldn't clear this 2+ times charge on top of the hold for the previous price. I tried hard to be calm, polite and curious rather than frustrated or annoyed and in time it boiled down to: the ticket was repriced for whatever reasons and the original pricing is just gone so there's nothing ticketing or the RTW desk can do. Only customer relations can intervene and you can't call them so email.

LilZeppelin

Of course, the RTW-desk dragons are mostly accustomed to 10K+ prices exUSA, so their comments are understandable, if not to be taken personally.

dvs7310

I think this is completely normal. I've nearly always seen disclaimers that prices are not guaranteed until ticketed, holds mean nothing on revenue tickets like this. I think AA might promise to 'hold' their own fares but this wasn't an AA fare, they were booking on CX, RJ, and maybe others' fare basis. This was one that shouldn't have been sat on during contemplation, ticket it and cancel later for a minimal penalty if necessary, we all knew the fare wasn't going to last indefinitely and many members including myself posted warnings in this forum not to dawdle on it.

Unfortunately you have no customer service claim here, nor other like DOT, etc. You didn't ticket before the fare disappeared, end of story. Sorry to be harsh about it.

zoombee

That's very helpful info in there, though it's more likely to land and be useful if not packaged with a sugar coated rebuke. I'm happy to take this message: the only thing that matters if if you're ticketed. Any mistakes by the airline, any assurances by the agent, any assurances by ticketing are all meaningless. Especially if the airline has decided something is a mistake fare which is AA's line here. So if it takes an hour staying on the line asking for ticketing, do that rather than accept assurances if ticketing is important to you.

ironmanjt

Something interesting I think got lost in this thread: there are many reasons people choose a DONEx fare: some to maximize PQM/EQM and get elite status...some to go on one or more nice vacations...some because it's cheaper than buying 2-3 of the flights individually....but usually a combination. Wanted to remind that "earning status on the cheap" isn't everyone's reason

dvs7310

This was a very unique situation, so yeah basically all you said is true and it only matters once it's actually ticketed. It wasn't a mistake fare at all, but it wasn't an AA fare either, AA pulled their own ex-CAI RTW fares quite a while ago. That's the key to the puzzle. Once they no longer had another OW carrier's fare basis to issue on, that was the end of it on AA tickets.

They were using the fare basis of other OW airlines who still had the fare filed at the old price in EGP. Once EGP devalued it made the fare much cheaper in USD, but certainly wasn't a mistake fare. All airlines except QR and AA used to price ex-CAI in EGP (QR and AA had USD fares which were only a few hundred $$ different until the devaluation).

But definitely yes, there was an urgency on this to get it ticketed ASAP, and that was really clear when the Star Alliance fares were pulled very quickly post-devaluation. I want to say that *A folks only had one or two days to get theirs ticketed before that party ended. (it was also a good bit cheaper than our OW fares)

I disagree with what LilZeppelin said though about AA only being used to US$10k+ RTWs, a good number are issued ex- OSL, CAI, and TYO and are all well under the ex-North America price. I have a feeling that ex-South Africa may gain some popularity again soon as well as the base fare isn't bad and it allows more stopovers in each of the primary continents. (ex-OSL and ex-CAI limit you to 2 stopovers in Europe, and ex-TYO limits you to 2 stopover in Asia, Africa on the other hand no longer has a OW carrier so stopover opportunities are extremely limited... note all of North Africa is classified as Europe or the Middle East by OneWorld, so AT flights are to/from Europe and QR flights are to/from Middle East, we won't have a true African carrier again until RwandAir (WB) joins)

The good news is that ex-OSL and ex-TYO are still out there and are still very good deals (sure not sub-$5000, but still quite good). ex-OSL you have to be very careful about chosen carriers because of the sting on YQ, but ex-TYO you don't have to worry about it, it's YR only and they are quite reasonable. (about $600-800 total taxes and airline fees is normal ex-TYO on a DONE4 or DONE5). From what I've noticed over the last couple of years in this thread, ex-OSL is by far the most offensive if you're not choosing carriers to avoid YQ. ex-CAI didn't seem nearly as bad in that regard but still had a hefty amount of YQ.

Dr. HFH

That's both unkind and unfair. The AA RTW Desk staff are probably the most knowledgeable in the world of all airline ticketing staff on these fares. How many times do we see posted on FT advice to just call the AA RTW Desk. And has anyone here ever run across a rude agent there? I haven't. They have to work within the rules that AA sets. To call them dragons is uncalled for.

Correct. Here's the language from the first email I received a few minutes after I booked with the AA RTW desk last week: "The price quoted (inclusive of base fare, taxes and carrier charges) is not guaranteed until payment has been made."

Yes, especially if they're superseded by an email from AA which says that the fare is not guaranteed until ticketed.

izzik

This is my experience as well. I believe they are used to ticketing/pricing ex-US RTW fares at the AA desk, with other origin points being less common. After pricing out my ex-OSL DONE4, the AAgent went on to say that there was something wrong and how the base fare should be 10k+.
After I pointed out that this was originating in Oslo, not the US, and that the fare is legit.. she then corrected herself. I'm guessing that the AA RTW desk isn't aware of how terrible their Oneworld partners are with RTW ticketing.. otherwise, we would all be going through the carrier of the origin region. Times have changed.

slhu82

I am thinking to credit to either AS or AA. If I credit to AS, I can hit MVP50K with around 80k - 100k miles. It is a bit hard to calculate LP I can get for AA since I have 5 segments operated by AA.
Thanks for pointing out I can not do DOH -> PEK. This segment will happen in late 2025. I will see if MLE -> xKUL -> PEK is still available after my date change.

How was you experience for date change for AA? I assume it is unlimited and free of charge?

I saw news today JAL is starting to fly A350-1000 for HND -> DFW every other days from April, but JAL has not released winter schedule yet. I will need to watch out winter schedule closely and check if my first leg will be on A351. Do you know if changing first leg date will also trigger reprice? It will be very existing to try out new product.