Whilst it doesn't help you very much I can confirm I was having a similar issue on CX recently like that as well (in my case it was HKG-LHR at Chinese New Year), the leg you are taking is around a Hong Kong public holiday (1 July), so perhaps that explains the problem. I was unable to fix it and had to take a different route, which in your case may end up needing to be via Tokyo or Osaka. Mine didn't change closer to the time, and in fact CX were "Right" to block the seats as the plane organically went down to D0 and then J0 before takeoff (I watched). Suggest if you have the time you raise a ticket to ExpertFlyer to try and get them to fix their data feed, the more complaints the better:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/onew...king-tool.html

Availability and what is available for purchase are two separate things. Airlines may choose to block inventory for yield management purposes, for example, which is impossible for Expertflyer to verify. Stop making the false connection that what you see in EF equals what is available for your RTW ticket. We all recognize that these tickets can deliver value that outpaces buying point to point tickets. Why would the airline allow all of the available inventory to go to these discounted fare products? There are many types of discounts in play for airlines and they have to figure out what maximizes their revenue and fills their planes.

And I have encountered married segment issues with
AA, AS and CX when trying to get a TA to build a DONEx ticket.

Specifically:
DEN to TUS not wanting to go through PHX and
KUL to CMB where a long transfer time (10-12 hours) was desired in HKG

Did not improve my disposition or my wandering
Fred

That doesn't make any sense to me. If an airline doesn't want to make D class fares available to a paid D class ticket in an alliance don't put them into the D "discounted fare" bucket - the extension of what you say is that ultimately all oneworld airlines could say that no D class seat in their inventory is available to be used for a DONEx ticket. Cathay and others are not playing fair in the alliance here and I suspect talking to the AA desk that it is being pushed up chain as a significant concern by at least the AA RTW desk.

For my 2 cents I had very similar issues on the same route with CX, in particular married segments for the onward CX flight were causing issues for AA. They were able to solve it ultimately by breaking the married segment, I don't think it was easy but they got there. Also note on EF there are 3 CX flights a day on that route at the moment (demand from skiing, CNY, Sapporo ice fest etc) dropping to your just one in June but as I recall for a long time when I was trying to book mid last year only 2 flights showed in Jan/Feb so possible CX may well add at least one of those back? CX gurus would be better to ask about that.

Nobody is saying that. Now you are creating a hypothetical scenario that is so extreme (no D inventory can be ever be used for a DONEx) it's nonsensical. All I am saying is that airlines can block inventory but Expertflyer cannot distinguish what is available for your specific ticket. Even travel agents using Amadeus may encounter similar situations where inventory is blocked, for example.

I think the complaint here is not that airline are restricting availability (of course they can), but rather that there is no way for people to see what the real availability is (apart from checking specific dates one by one).
And sometimes it is so limited (and/or non-transparent) that it defeats the purpose of certain fares, e.g. AONEs where you end up flying in D (or lower) half of the time because you can't find availability in A.

As with any deal, you make it work and stop drawing attention to it. It's not perfect - you can't get everything you want- but it is going to be cheaper than p2p tix.

Don't complain about it to the airline or some stupid blog because it can be taken away. Remember ex CMB biz fares? Or more recently, ex CAI RTW? That died and never came back.

I don’t get this. I’m a travel agent, but admittedly a new one, and class availability is class availability. If I ask my gds to take 2 seats from D with my POS and destination, it will take them, and the airline will sell them if there’s a fare listed.

Now clearly there is a fare, but the issue is that one GDS/company is seeing D and the other isn’t. This discrepancy is the issue. It could be a point of sale issue, or married segment, but it’s worth asking the question- why the difference. This helps plan your xONEy in the future.

You can add ex-SEZ fares to that list as well as ex-MRU where the fares were as officially published but the tickets were issued by the BA office there and the staff didn't know the rules, so you could get all sorts of non-compliant itineraries by them.

Just wanted to provide an update on this as a few people had commented.

I noticed today that the aircraft type had changed on Flyer Talk from Airbus 330 to Boeing 777, so I said I'd chance calling AA RTW desk again in case it opened up availability and bingo, she was seeing loads of availability, which was in line with Expert Flyer.

Not sure what that means to be honest in terms of strategy for finding D seats, but at least I'm sorted now!

Booked another AONE to do a weekend trip to the UK once more
NRT-KUL-HKG // HKG-LAX-JFK-LHR-MAN // MAN-LHR-DOH-HKG // HKG-HND (Was really struggling to get a better option here, and since this will be after the year tier point reset, it doesn't matter that much - tried HKG-KUL-HND or HKG-BKK-HND, I may change later)

What I wanted to observe was:

1. NRT-KUL-HKG caused a lot of angst, the poor agent took about 20 minutes to get a combination that worked. That did actually end up with the route that ExpertFlyer suggested to avoid married segments, but its a long 10 hour stopover now rather than 2 hours
2. Agent was able to get this priced & ticketed in less than 10 minutes. Very impressive, considering I once waited on hold for two hours for a minor destination change
3. Though I have some AA codeshare remenant on the underlying non-AA ticket for the NRT-KUL flight. Hope that fixes itself without intervention...

After making a booking using the OneWorld tool, it defaulted to QF to ticket despite there being no QF segments.

I unfortunately did have to make a change before departure and wow...

On the plus side:
- I didn't have to wait more than 10 seconds for a human to pick up the phone
- everyone I spoke to was polite and tried their best to be helpful

On the downside:
- every agent I spoke to seemed terrified as they brought up my ticket.
- availability differs significantly from EF, and other OW carriers sites. I tried to make connection point changes, but availability wasn't showing to any agent I spoke to - even after hanging up and calling again
- when I resigned myself to just date changes, with same flights, same route, same everything, but a few days +/- it took over an hour on the phone to this poor agent who struggled at every step. She was lovely, and clearly trying very very hard, and then seemed remarkably surprised that there was no change fee.

I am understanding now the issues that more seasoned flyers have here with QF, and in future I'll definitely phone another OW carrier or a TA to get these booked.

AA has a team of reps trained in and dedicated to this product. IME, over more than a decade at two or three A/D-ONEx itineraries per year, I have found them knowledgeable, helpful, and friendly. +1-800-247-3247.

Ditto that 👍