Well, finally ticketed, it took a bit of chasing, but this sorts out a few holidays, via AA RTW desk, taxes & fees were an extra 1260USD, mainly from two large carrier surcharges, presumably for the legs over the ocean:
NRT-KUL-BKI // HKG-PEN // PEN-HKG-LAX // LAX-JFK-MIA // MIA-SKB (St Kitts and Nevis for Christmas), SKB-MIA-DOH // DOH-OSL //(I'll start another RTW ticket here) OSL-HEL // HEL-LHR-HND
As this is a DONE3 happy to get up to 13 segments, and the "land segment" between BKI and HKG was essentially a way to get a 3rd stopover in Asia, though I will need to buy my own tickets to get between them, likely on Royal Brunei airlines for a change

I see what you mean about the third stopover between BKI // HKG, but am wondering about your starting another RTW from OSL. Are you going to nest in OSL-OSL before proceeding HEL-LHR-HND?

Yes, see this thread for one of the reasons: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/37203440-post984.html

So broadly the ticketed DONE (from HND) has a six month "stopover" in OSL between Christmas and July. During that time I intend to book something along the lines of:
OSL-DOH-HKG // HKG-CMB // CMB-HKG // HKG-AKL // AKL-NAN // NAN-MEL/SYD-HKG // HKG-SIN // SIN-HKG // HKG-ORD // ORD-ANC // ANC-SEA-IAD // IAD-DOH-OSL

The benefits are: 1) DONE4 from Norway is about 20% less than Japan at the moment, 2) I don't have Europe as my "home" continent, so I get more stopovers in Asia (where I actually live). 3) This will then fill Chinese New Year, Easter, and Summer holidays - along with a few long weekends away, 4) It will use all 16 segments, even if some are US domestics..

The reason I didn't ticket yet is I want to wait until the AA/AS flights are available to book immediately, rather than have to do another change, so I will wait about another month till its about 330 days out. The Alaska flights particularly don't seem to have a great deal of D availability, so that part of the master-plan may need tweaking and I'd rather do it without paying a USD125 change fee if I can avoid, and I am fairly flexible about my routing to get to/from Alaska, and would prefer to get a Transcontinental in there if I can.. but would then need JFK vs IAD (my real destination is PHL, but QR doesn't fly there).

I'll report back how the actual booking goes at the end of August!

DONE3 with AA
(Marketing)/(Operating)
AA/JL HND-DFW
AA/AA DFW-RNO
AA/AA RNO-PHX-ORD
AA/AA ORD-PHX-RNO
AA/AA RNO-DFW
QR/QR DFW-DOH-VIE
AY/AY VIE-HEL-DUB
QR/QR NCE-DOH-MNL
JL/JL MNL-NRT

$5294 base + $555 taxes/fees + $444 carrier imposed fees = $6293

wow, 2nd one?
 

Thanks for posting the details of your 2nd?? Done 3. Just WoW, looks great! Your example makes clear the AA marketing of the Trans Pac for booking with AA. Examples are the best teacher IMHO.

These aren't my tickets.. I book/manage RTW tickets for other people (not as a travel agent.. more like a travel enabler :p).

Lap infant
 

Hi all,

Appreciate it's pretty niche but was wondering if anyone had any experience with lap infants. You can't book them online but it seems with many airlines you can add lap infants to bookings over the phone, does anyone know if this is possible with the oneworld explorer? I'd much rather make an online booking for the rest of us if possible to avoid a very long phone call finding each leg one after the other!


Thanks

no, only at time of booking.

Did have a fair share of trouble with it though, ticket could not be found at some point and took an hour to resolve while at the check in desk. Also Qantas found it useful to issue a separate ticket for domestic flights (as infants can be added free or charge in Australia (leaving me.with an issue when I tried to leave Fiji.

So make sure they actually issue the boarding pass on the correct e-ticket to avoid issues further down the line.

I would strongly suggest booking the lap infant at the same time so you are all on the same PNR. As a simple example (and it is hidden somewhere in these threads), I needed to add a lap infant part way thru a DONE, it was a nightmare (luckily only a one-off): QR point blank refused to do it (had to remove wife from the booking and buy separate tickets with miles after a denied boarding, that I knew was 90% likely to happen); The cost of adding a lap infant for some one-way BA/AA/CX across ocean flights exceeded the cost of the DONE. The intra-America flights are free though on AA.

Basically, these are complicated tickets, trying to add a lap infant is not necessarily going to happen. Rather than use the tool, and as someone who prefers self-service normally, I would recommend that the AA RTW desk is just excellent and can take care of this all. If you have your route already planned out you can make a booking via phone in less than 20 minutes by just reading out segment by segment.

Even with this, it isn't always smooth sailing: A recent AONE I had the lap infant added at birth, but for a couple of the airlines at check-in I needed to read out the ticket number (CX,JL,AA), as it didn't seem to 100% associate with the overall booking, though you could see the details on the PNR.

Thanks for the reply. In the end yesterday I rang the British Airways phone line to ask a few questions and an absolutely lovely staff member sent me her work email address and between a couple of calls and emails we now have it all sorted including getting us onto some very convenient flights that the online planner flat out refused to accept either existed or had capacity.

So as you have advised I would strongly advise others! I've heard a lot of people bash ba customer service but it turns out if you do it in UK working hours the UK based team are very good unless I just got lucky!

Any ideas/guesses about my change fees??
 

So I called to make the changes to the above booking. Changed DFW PBI DFW to DFW SJO DFW (stayed all on AA); ICN xHKG MNL to ICN KUL MNL ( carrier change from CS to MH); and ATH MAD OSL to ATH OSL (carrier change IB to QR).

The fees went up $315.44 then add the change fee of $125. I think change to SJO i.e. Costa Rica added about $93 in fees. But I can't figure out the rest of the fee changes. I already had QR for the MNL xDOH ATH and thought adding another QR would not be too costly - was that wrong?

Any guesses welcome.

The AA RTW desk could not see any breakdown of the fees. I asked how long I had to decide what to do and she said maybe until tomorrow. Then I asked what happened if I hadn't called back. She said the changes would be cancelled. I asked if the ticket would go back as before and she said no, the changed flights would just be cancelled and the rest would stay the same. Is that correct? I do plan to call back in a few hours.

Oh bother. I wish I were more clever....

Thanks.

So I did a HUCA and got what seemed to be a new person to the AA rtw line. She put me on hold for about 15 minutes and came back to explain the change in fees. She kept mentioning the fee on flights that I did not change i.e. Canada and MNL ATH.

Do they reprice all fees or just fees on the flights that are being changed?

Also could I fall back to the existing ticket (I have already flown the first two segments) with no charge?

Thanks in advance.

Flying via kul can add a little chunk of fees.

Humm, I had hoped that changing Cathy Pacific transit via Hong Kong to MH stopover in KUL would be about the same in fees. Unless I can dream up something else to try, I think when I call today I will just ask them to go back to CX.

If the fees stay high, then I will just pay them; it's still a good value.

We will see.

Just connecting the dots here -- if you need the ability to compare taxes/fees/surcharges across multiple itineraries, a travel agent may be the better route for you.
Unless you are working with a very experienced AA RTW agent, you are unlikely to access that level of detail with AA.