Thanks for clarifying

Thanks, I never thought to look in the routing rules for the currency of a fare, but there it is:

But the conversion rate is off a little bit. Looking at the Sri Lankan fares, they are using a rate of 178.4 LKR/ US$, while the rate on Sunday was 179.4 and today it is 180.2 I believe that Calchas stated that the bank rates are only updated once per week. Is this still true? When I bought my ex-CAI ticket 4 days after the devaluation over a weekend, I got the higher rate. Just curious.

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/onew...-rtw-fare.html
;)

Must book RTW through 1st carrier...?
 

Just got off the phone with the AA RTW desk (well at least that's the number I called...) to make a new booking, and the agent I tried to book with refused to make the booking, saying that they've been told to tell customers that they must now make new bookings with the airline of the 1st flight. In my case this would be CX. (I want to start ex HND.)

Has anyone else had this experience? Or did I just get an inexperienced agent...

I may try againg in a few hours and see if I get a different response...

Thx in advance

Medicus

Sadly, the AA RTW desk was recently merged with AA Meeting Services, so it's best to ask for a long-time RTW agent by name, as otherwise one might be speaking with a Meeting Services agent. Those agents have a dreadful reputation even just for the simple stuff such as assigning seats.

What was “Meeting Services”?

Update
 

Just got off the phone with a very helpful agent. All booked.

I guess the moral of the story is if at first you don't succeed, try try again...

They're the agents who handled certain contracted travel and certain group travel. People I know who had to deal with them (because of their corporate contract) report that they are pretty much the worst of the worst.

Even when it was just the RTW desk, they made up rules like this from time to time. I recall a rule for a while that the first overwater segment had to be on AA metal for them to book it.

Any recent experiences with making chnages after the 1st flown flight? A couple of routes with 1st class are no more in the middle of my itinerary. Wonder what the effect of the CX New Year's day fare mistake will have on inventory ex-USA.

Are there any data points on changing or reissuing ex-SEZ fares (after first flght)?

i wont start my tickets until later this year.

No need to wonder. Premium cabin award tickets both ex-HKG and ex-U.S. will be harder to come by for the next year, or so.

From what I can see, F and J inventory is dramatically reduced. I have a CX flight booked in J. From the time it was booked many months ago until the mistake fare, the flight was F6. When the mistake fare his the blogs, it went to F0, and EF shows five of the six seats allocated.

Should have indicated after mid-Dec 2019 to Jan 2020. Only 355 days in advance, so Jan should be OK. I did check EF and noticed that A inventory is reduced ex-JFK but not F. ex-LAX/ORD seems the normal A2 or A3 except for a few random days. May have to use JL trans-pac if I can't get what I want.

That question is impossible to answer as asked.

1. Define "best."
2. Are you in a frequent flyer program? Which carrier?
3. Which cabin?
4. How many continents?

I assume the question is more "what is the cheapest city to originate a DONEX", hoping that the answer is the same for 3/4/5/6.

Hello, hopefully someone learned can help me with this scheudle - what's the best way of booking / pricing this up?

Looking to go FRA - BKK on Finnair via HKG, coming back from BKK via HKG but on Cathay Pacific direct to FRA. All in J
On the Finnair website I can book the outbound combination as follows:
Sunday 22nd December:
AY1412 FRA - HEL 11.35 - 15.20
AY101 HEL - HKG 16.55 - 08.40 (Mon)
AY5115 HKG - BKK 13.05 - 15.10 (operated by CX)
I quite like the look of that combination as it gives me a chance to try the Finnair A350.

Coming back I would prefer to connect from BKK to the direct Cathay Pacific flight from HKG to FRA rather than going Finnair via Helsinki, but Finnair obviously won't allow that option as all their legs go via Helsinki. The Cathay website will only show CX flights. Ideally I would like the following combination coming back (this flight is offered on the CX website - I am looking for a day in Hong Kong):
Friday, 17th of January:
CX700 BKK - HKG 08.25 - 12.10
Saturday, 18th of January:
CX 280 HKG - FRA 00.35 - 06.10

I have tried pricing this up in Google flights, but that only shows the Finnair flights - do I need to go through a travel agent to book this or can this somehow be done online? For context, the Finnair flight is around € 2,600 if I choose straight FRA/HEL/BKK and the CX flight is around € 2,800 if I go straight FRA/HKG/BKK.

My apologies for somewhat long post, but I am still new to the whole connecting / different legs on different airlines thing and I am just trying to find out whether I can book this online. Also, just for my personal reassurance, I can still all credit these to my BAEC account (mainly worried about tier points), right?

Thanks very much!

Thank you very much for the quick response, JAXBA. It makes sense, I'll try the one-way pricing just for a laugh but will probably stick with CX as the flight times are friendlier.

Thank you!

In addition to what JAXBA wrote, try using Matrix to price the specific flights you want. (E.g., from FRA to BKK, and in the routing codes field, enter the specific route you want, such as

AY1412 AY101 AY5115

on the outbound, and

CX700 CX 280

on the inbound. For the codeshare, can add a comma and the CX flight number.

That should let you know how it prices before you call the airlines.

I just booked a DONE3 through AA RTW desk. It's currently on hold. Pricing came back from the rate desk as expected, correct base fare plus various fees and charges. Almost all of those extra fees were less than USD $100, in fact, all but one were under $75. The exception was "CARRIER-IMPOSED FEES" which were $392.10. Is this fuel surcharges? Any way to reduce it?

Yes, these carrier imposed fees are what used to be called fuel surcharges
My understanding is that some jurisdictions started requiring airlines to justify their fuel surcharges; so the airlines just changed the name of imposition - to either YQ or YR or both

What you're seeing is the sum of the YQs and YRs for some/all of the flights in your itinerary. You can use The Matrix to:

• understand which flights have YQ and/or YR imposed
• see the effect of changing to codeshares

On a DONE5 in 2106/17 I was able to shave a bit off the charges by switching two flights to codeshare (AY's LHR-HEL switched to the BA codeshare and AY's HEL-MAD switched to the IB codeshare)

Thanks for your response. As it turned out, I ran out of segments for what I need to do on this trip, so I changed SXM-MIA-JFK to a land segment SXM-JFK and am flying SXM-MIA-DCA-HPN (where I really want to go; my cousin lives two miles from HPN) on an award ticket. Then I'll drive back to JFK to resume the RTW ticket. Removing the two segments dropped the price by around USD $100.

The local travel agency (https://www.estravel.ee/pakkumine/mi...-reisil-al-569) currently has an offer for AA, AY and BA flights from TLL to the US East Coast,
3 stops (one must be in NY) starting from 699€... is there anywhere where I could find the fare rules?

The oneworld website is advertising a sale on "select" L and A fares until 30 June but possibly only via this link from QF: https://rtw.oneworld.com/rtw/?origin=qf.

There is an add about the sale on the CX website but nothing goes into any detail about the sale.

From what I have found so far it looks like an AONE4 ex Australia is 1000 AUD cheaper than it was (EF showing 17399 but when I move date to mid June it shows 16399 fares loaded 02 June). I also tried ex Japan but it is the same price it has been for a few years now.

It appears the LONEx exAustralia discounts are also available via TAs. Now if I just had some $$.......

Happy wandering
Fred

I've heard a few scattered reports of some success, but also stories of QR and BA refusing. Have you tried, [MENTION=909]ajnaro[/MENTION]? Any luck?

Can anyone tell me what the LONEX discount prices are vs. normal prices? Many thanks!

Here’s a summary of what happened. Following suggestions, I tried calling the QR office in Hong Kong. The phone number is now an 800 and goes through to Chongqing. The agent there took down the date changes (no route changes) I requested and sent it on to Doha. The answer that came back was “I am sorry to inform you that we are not able to assist with the change as the publish fare not quoted on our system.” I then called the AA rtw desk. The agent there told me to get a release from the issuing travel agent. I was then able to make changes, paying the usual fees calculated by tariffs. Naturally, all depends on the good will of the AA agent.

I'm surprised that you got a QR HKG agent who sent it to QR DOH rather than do it themselves. Do you happen to know which agent you spoke with? I've had Henry handle date changes and reissue the ticket on the spot. The number I've called was +86 23 6037 1210. Has that changed?

I'm also very surprised and happy for you that you got an AA RTW agent who agreed to make the date changes, especially because you probably had to call or email your issuing travel agent and then call AA back. My experience with AA has been that even if the RTW agent agrees to do something, tariff or ticketing usually objects and refuses to issue the ticket, instructing the agent to put back the reservation to match the ticket. Do you know which AA RTW agent you spoke with? And roughly the time of day (I wonder if there might be a time period when one is more likely to get lucky with AA tariff/ticketing)? Also, if you don't mind, roughly how much did AA tariff want you to pay in taxes/fees?