In the process of assembling a DONE3 ex Japan commencing late Sept.
It is amazing the lack of D class on long haul exLHR on QF..... or on the AA code shares of JL / IB
Both of which would supply nice status bonuses in our QFF accounts. But I digress.

Does anyone have an information point on the length of time allowed between reservation and payment?
I understand this could vary by the issuing airline and whether a TA "sits in between"
It is apparent with my long time off I have forgotten the amount of effort required in finding inexpensive wandering

Fred

Since the Oct 2023 changes at BAEC, BA marketed segments on oneworld fares credit as fare generally to BA, irrespective of ticket stock used.

I can also attest to this ... the number of times people send me ITA dumps that aren't correct is almost infuriating. I've also seen instances of ITA making up fares that don't actually exist, that is, say a sale fare is filed on city pair A only, ITA will then price up an itinerary for city pair B using city pair A's sale fare despite that sale fare not existing for city pair B.

Out of the majors, QF, AA, BA, JL, CX and to an extent MH generally give a reasonable amount of time before you have to ticket. QR gives you strictly 1 week.

For this reason, you could hold most of your segments but skip the QR segments and then add the QR segments closer to when you plan to ticket.

Given you are in WA, consider making it a DONE4... the positioning cost of getting to/from Japan may tip the scales a little.

Hi, Fred,

Rule 5(a).

Rezzie made 29+ days before departure, ticketing must be at least 25 days before departure.
Rezzie made 8-28 days before departure, ticketing must be no more than 3 days after booking but no fewer than 7 days prior to departure, whichever comes first.
Rezzie made 7 or fewer days before departure, ticketing must be no more than 24 hours after booking but in any case no later than one hour before departure.

I think I got that right, but you'll want to check the wording just to make sure.

This right, but despite these rules, some airlines will still cancel unticketed segments anyway. (See the post prior to yours).

That's problematic with CX I know, it happened to me once on my first QF DONE5 during date changes, and have heard it from other FT'ers. It seems the period in which they'll cancel unticketed segments is pretty short. I know that's counter to what madrooster mentioned, so I wonder if it's different if a travel agent is doing it vs. QF themselves? I don't have that answer.

I'm still trying to understand why anyone would use QF when the AA RTW staff is so competent. Yes, yes, I know. Many tickets booked using the online tool are routed or assigned to QF for ticketing. That raises the question of why anyone would use the online tool given its history of documented and undocumented bugs, most of which OneWorld management is aware of.

Because AA doesn't fit into our transatlantic or transpacific plans, and AA will only ticket with an AA operated (or sometimes AA coded) flight across the water.

AA marketed (coded) flights on other carriers do qualify.

There are also other options. Some travel agents are well versed in these tickets, IIRC there are two who are regulars in these threads. Also, doesn't BA do these tickets, too? They used to. Years ago I used Mindpearl in South Africa, but I don't know if they're still around. The Travel Centre in Australia also does these tickets (I've bought several from them).

Precisely, plus AA codes for AAdvantage members are highly risky. They seem more than likely to credit as revenue base, since AA insists on at least one long haul AA code (whether AA prime or codeshare), it's detrimental to AAdvantage earnings on these tickets. Some AAdvantage members don't really care, maybe they're getting plenty of LPs elsewhere but I feel like it's leaving money on the table to have any long haul AA codes at all when there are other alternatives available. I generally can't find any codeshares on AA flights to South and Central America except Brazil so those become acceptable inefficiencies, but no way I want an AA code on a TATL or TPAC. (Not to mention that AA codes aren't available on CX anymore since CX prefers to overfly Russia and it's forbidden by the US govt. for US carriers to codeshare on those)

I'm inclined to use a travel agent on my next one. (I'm aware of at least one of the agents that are active posters in here, not sure the other though... DM me if you wouldn't mind) I typically know exactly what I want, my priority is often getting the most advantageous codeshares for AAdvantage earning, but I already have that information from my planning. My fear had been before that I'd need a change or some kinds of service urgently while mid-trip.An airline being 24 hours has appeal for that reason, but QF's call center, at least had been, so bad that you can't consider them to be 24 hours anyway, no one can do anything without spending ages researching the rules, consulting support, etc.

That actually did happen when I had an accident in Georgia (the Republic of) on a QF ticket but still had 2 days to get the changes made, and even if it was more urgent could have accomplished it with a no-show. This was the first time I ran into the dreaded, we can't get a price from the call center when I needed to make changes to ticketed points to accomodate my injury. This was also before I knew about their Twitter team. In the end I did end up getting the change made, but it took many hours of effort, where a travel agent could have done it without the stress and likely within 12 hours even if I had emailed them just after they went to sleep.

I know it's always possible that something would happen where you really need a change on the spot and your travel agent may be sleeping, but you can't rely on QF to be able to handle it anyway. So keeping that in mind and trying to do any changes with at least a few days to spare is in my opinion the best way to approach these. Just be ready to pivot if something is super urgent and be prepared to no-show, pay the fee and let your agent deal with it in their morning.

Given that my favourite Perth TA closed during COVID, I contacted my TA in Colombo (issued my first DONEx in 2005)
I will be crediting to QFF with a chance I can earn WP on the trip. The real justification for the DONE3 was the number of segments needed for the USA (7 so one is surface to be replaced with a purchased ticket - will a 4 hour connection in DFW be long enough on separate tickets?)
Seems UL is in the strictly 1 week category. Though her comment that UL normally had lower "extra charges" than QR or AA was interesting... Though given QF has no D class the entire week that I wish to return to SE Asia/Oz from MAD->LHR, it looks like QR will get the flight segments direct from MAD. It will hurt the point accumulation but not all that much different on the SC Front.
It remains to be seen if UL will insist on a relatively long flight (CMB-NRT) to ticket since I had the segment available to do CMB-xxx-HND at the end instead.
But I do not have enough in the way of segments to justify the approximate extra US$900 to make a DONE4 useful. Re:earlier comment on no QF D class ex LHR. And continuing with a (new) LONE(4/5) at the end is about US$600 cheaper in Japan than Australia.
I did find PremY award tickets to get Mrs QF and I from SIN to HND to start the trip. I am still mulling whether to spend the $$ to ensure Mrs WF has the 4~ for QFF before starting the DONE3 since her flying days will be limited.
Happy wandering
Fred

What month / season? Normally it's more than plenty. Immigration (if international) tends to be one of the best of US airports in terms of wait times. But just be cautious if you're going through during thunderstorm season as they does cause a bit of disruption at DFW. (Tends to be spring time)

Very interesting on the UL notes, please update once you have answers on the fees and requirements to ticket a UL flight.

For your desired QF flight LHR-SIN, just ticket what you can get for now, QR in your example, but keep an eye on inventory. A lot of airlines will open up inventory close in (same with award tickets) unless the cabin is currently nearly sold out already. There's a decent chance of getting what you want within a week of departure, but would require the change fee. Your travel agent might even watch that for you so you don't have to check constantly. EF is a great tool for it, but won't show you married segment with an alert, you have to manually check that yourself.

Fred,

FWIW, I've flown UL a lot over the past decade, both as part of DONE3s and as stand-alone tickets, mostly BKK-CMB-BKK, certainly not long flights. I've never heard of UL insisting on a long flight on an xONEx, and I've never been subjected to that requirement or anything remotely similar. (I'm flying them again a week from Saturday, BKK-CMB-NRT, the last two flights of my current DONE3.)

I'm very new to RTW tickets. Never purchased one before, although I'm researching my first. What do travel agents typically charge a customer for assistance on RTW tickets, or are travel agents paid by the airlines instead? Thanks in advance.

Each agent will determine their own price to issue and service a RTW ticket for you, it's up to them what they think it's worth based on the amount of work involved in them, especially if you're new to RTWs and likely to have a lot more questions and require guidance more than others who know the rules already and do their own planning. I've been told that the commission from the airline isn't very much on these tickets, so I'd anticipate all agents to have some fee on it, but it should be well worth it depending on which OW airline you end up ticketing with. Some are very hard to work with (QF for example), some don't issue their own RTW tickets (QR for example), some charge their own fee every time, even for otherwise free changes (JL). An agent can also help you optimize for YQ / YR (fuel surcharges) by using certain carriers to ticket on and certain carriers codes on long haul flights, that can easily make a difference of $1000 on a ticket.

To get started though, you will need to decide what your priorities are for your ticket. Do you want to maximize mileage or status point earnings in a particular program? Do you want to see exotic places that are expensive to get to on normal tickets? Do you want to spend a bunch of time in the top premium cabins in the world? Or just get a good deal for a bunch of flights that you might need to take anyway, and would certainly be more expensive booked a la carte. (None of those are mutually exclusive, just something to consider when starting your planning)

This is one of the main reasons I stopped crediting to AA, and now credit everything to QRPC. 95+% of my flying is on xONEx tix.


Sorry to say that I don't remember. If I see a post that jogs my memory, I'll let you know.