I agree here as well, international codeshares on RTW tickets tend to be pretty easy to book depending on who is doing the ticketing. Even from airlines I've had both QF and CX book them for me on flights that certainly did not line up to prime flights. The domestic ones are more questionable, like booking QR codes on AA domestic flights, but it does appear that travel agents can do it. Thankfully AA has added QR codeshares to many of their domestic and regional flights, much to the benefit of us AAdvantage captive folks.

And the QR codeshares on AA domestic flights are sometimes a way to "break" AA's penchant for married segment availability.
HOWEVER, QFF took a very dim view on crediting those flights.
Yes the RTW was ticketed by a TA (UL) the only downside being that in a couple of cases, the code shares were NOT available during the initial ticketing and changing later proved "not feasible".
Also remember that surface segments can also be used to break married segments (e.g. you need more than 6 in the USA) and some I class AA flights are now "quite reasonable" as a surface segment filler.
Who knew about all the complications of wandering
Fred

I tried to change a QR (DFW-DOH) flight to AA codeshare to no avail. AA RTW desk said not possible.

..because it wasn't available?

I checked EF and it had D7 on my date. AA RTW agent simply said she could not see the codeshare.

Potentially dumb question - what are DONE3/DONE4 fares like ex-CAI nowadays? I�m glancing through the oneworld explorer without paying too much attention to D fare availability and its pricing at ~14k AUD. Looking at EF I don�t see fares filed.

They're quoted using QR as the issuer. Base fare is around A$12K for DONE4.

Trying to book an ex-HND DONEx. I have 6 domestic segments on AA for July 2026 timeframe. For examples: JFK-LAX (D0 for all flights with afternoon departures, as I will be coming in from HND, connecting at JFK to LAX); even DFW-YVR; DFW-ANC.

What happened?

Now I plan to book those segments in Y (in hope to have them changed to D later). Is this a workable strategy? Never had to do this before.

I've found really bad AA availability as well, but I'm looking for late December. Quite a few routes I looked at were entirely sold out in business / first, not even just a D problem. AS however seems to be wide open on the transcon, not that it's even remotely the same experience. But might help you for YVR and ANC to go from LAX on AS instead of DFW on AA.

Not sure if this is the right forum for this question, but …

Does anyone know if on a business class OW RTW, can one individual segment be a PAID upgrade to First Class (ie on a BA flight that offers true F)? Most of my itinerary doesn’t offer First, but a couple do, and I’d be happy to pay for upgrade.

Any ideas, and if possible, is it via airline directly?

Thanks!!

The relevant rule is:

16(c) 4. Upgrading by sector to Business/First Class is not permitted.

So the correct answer to your question is 'no', meaning that you cannot have an issued ticket with one sector showing First Class and all the other sectors showing Business Class.
But, if BA has issued your ticket then perhaps it will accept a payment for the one sector upgrade - no harm in asking.

OK, so the same problem as I had above then, and on a number of ex-HND DONE fares to be honest, even when not 9 months out.

I would observe that I have managed to get on the transcontinental in the end, but this required a lot of calls to see if anything opened up (since EF doesn't give an accurate result) and so you're basically shooting in the dark. To give an idea the last time I needed to change from JFK-LAX to BOS-LAX, about 3 days in advance. That meant a worse lounge but better flight. And with 25 hours in Boston to create a break in segments, I was coming from MIA.

Personally I'd just take the other flights in AS business and then see what happens closer to the time. I'd rather have a backup that isn't economy if I've paid for business.

To be honest with a DONE5 or 6 I'm amazed you have that many segments to want to do much in the USA, I'd have personally done something like into JFK/DFW from CX or JL, down to South America on a real international flight, back up and then out to Europe via QR/Doha? Better than any transcontinental experience by a long way.

It was not like that in the past (even 2023 when I was able to get all 16 segments in D from the get go. All NA segments had D availability and was easy to make changes.

Just to mention on this, as I was pleasantly surprised. I was able to get the "child" fare upgraded to an adult without needing to split up the ticket or issue a new PNR for either AA, AS or the other flights. I believe I'm due some money from AA from the wrong taxes, the final agent did mention a refund note but haven't heard of that. But at least I didn't have to waste time on a call dealing with this all. And happy we didn't have to start again with a big copy paste (though for all I know they did that in the background). There are new ticket numbers though.

Edit: The refund came through without me needing to take any action about a week later, so all fixed in the end.

To follow-up, the Cathay team have a way to search within a booking for date change availability and they believe this is asking the airline in question for availability. I'm consistently seeing D class availability discrpency, at short notice in case that matters, with both QR and now AA flights. I.e. when I can see availability on oneworld.com/rtw/ AND on expertflyer (several choices of POS), the Cathay agent often doesn't see it as available from within the booking. This is for a stand alone segment, no married connection issues. This includes an AA flight that shows D6 I6 on expert flyer with all relevant variations of POS -- it's showing as D0 I6 for the agent from within the booking.

The agent was kind enough to raise a query for the back office team on why I can apparently book on oneworld.com/rtw/ but not change to it via an agent so I might learn more in a bit.