AA's RTW desk still has some terrific agents who are helpful and knowledgable. Unfortunately, there are also some who aren't in the same league. Especially if you get a helpful agent, be sure to complete the two-question survey at the end of the call. In addition to rating the agent highly, take the option to leave a brief voice message. It can be a big help to the agent. You don't need to say much, just (for example) that the agent was friendly, professional, skilled, and helpful.

I don't think that's generally the case for BA fares.

You're saying that BA regular (not RTW) fares are not auto-priced?

I am saying the surcharges are not listed in the fare rules.

You're right. I thought I'd seen them in my BA fare, but I must have been looking at an AA fare. So from where does auto-price get it?

Thanks for the info.

Here's a new data point about my experience trying to ticket a DONE4 through AS. After Gardyloo's promising suggestion in post #1048 I called AS with my ex-TYO itinerary ready to book. The first agent said she was familiar with OWE tickets but they could only be purchased through the Oneworld website. HUCA. The second agent didn't know if it could be booked through AS and put me on hold, returning briefly afterwards to tell me that AS doesn't ticket RTW tix and I would need to use the OW website. The following day I chatted online with an AS rep and asked if there was a dedicated desk (a la AA RTW desk) that handles complex international itineraries - he said the "partners international desk" was proper group to talk with and gave me a phone #, It did not connect directly but rather to general reservations where I asked to be routed to the international desk. Spoke with a very nice woman who confirmed she was at Alaska's Oneworld desk and seemed to know there was such a thing as a RTW ticket but wasn't certain if it could be ticketed through AS. She put me on hold to ask around and about 5 min later she explained that the answer she got from several people at the international desk was that these tickets could only be booked through the OW website or an independent TA. I explained that AS has a published DONEx fare and gently asked her if she was willing to experiment creating my itinerary to see if it would work but she was not willing to try. Note: all the reps were equally friendly, polite...and apologetic. <sigh> I called AA RTW, spoke with Kelly (really knew her stuff and very pleasant to work with) and a short while later it was finished. Unsurprisingly each flight had to be booked as prime but no pushback about AA only playing a very small (4/15 segs and no transoceanic flts) role in the entire itinerary. She even went above and beyond by putting me on her tickler calendar to keep the itinerary on a rolling hold in order to get the Dec flights I wanted once the 330 day limit had been reached. A very positive experience with AA RTW desk and made me wonder: if I had been successful at booking it with the one rare AS agent who knew how to do it, what support would there be mid-itinerary if something needed to be changed? Perhaps this is simply part of growing pains after joining OW so we will see if others have a more productive experience as time goes on.

Quick question: after AA RTW booked and rated my ex-TYO itinerary, out of curiosity I went back to the OW website (where it had failed multiple times with unknown errors) and inputted the same itinerary as was booked by AA. Once again it wouldn't let me book but did price it $500 lower than the AA-rated ticket. In the fare breakdown all fees/taxes were identical, the only difference being carrier-imposed surcharges. I've read the various posts upthread (thank you JAXBA and others) about the black box of carrier surcharges but need to ask the following: keeping the itinerary unchanged, does the AA RTW ratings desk have any flexibility in coming closer to the lower-priced OW website fare? For ease of response, you can copy and paste this if appropriate: "Helga, you already answered your own question: one is an AA-plated fare and the other would not be"

Yes, Kelly is the best. She worked on several of my DONEx through the last several years. There was Leo who was very knowledgeable about RTW products. I had not conversed with him for last four or five years. Not sue if he had moved on or what.

I'm looking at a DONE3 departing from Budapest.

Something like (BUD-DOH-LAX)-MIA-MEX-DFW-ICN-HND-KUL-(DPS-HEL-BUD).

The online tool won't let me book BUD-DOH-LAX to begin with (aware is a problem with QR being the first carrier), but if I call the AA RTW desk would it price correctly?

And if I'm in DOH for less than 23hr would I be able to do add more segments in Europe at the end? Something like DPS-HEL-MAD-BUD to close with?

The AA RTW desk should be able to book. The only issue with your segments in EUR will be stopovers, as you are only allowed two in your continent of origin.

AA manually prices RTWs, and there's always a chance of human error. Given the opaqueness of determining carrier surcharges, it would be hard to know if they priced it incorrectly, and if so, if the error was in your favor or not. If you have a friendly travel agent, you could ask them to auto-price it, which should give you a good idea of what the price should be.

Transit vs stopover doesn't affect your segment count, each separate flight number still counts against your 16-segment limit. Doing a connection instead of a stop does help with the maximum of two stopovers in your country of origin, so in that sense may affect the validity of the itinerary.

I will be the friendly one this round. As carrier and X/O (transit or stopover) are not specified, I used my best judgement.

I think you could get that done during transit at DOH, if QR has an agent who handles xONEx products. I did something similarly in that I flew the FIRST segment and then make changes during my transit before the second segment. My FIRST segment brought me to HKG. AT the Wing First Lounge, I handed a spread sheet with my new changes to an agent. She contacted CX's agent who knew xONEx products. It took them about 4 hours to complete my request and re-issued new ticket.

Not sure if QR has such competent agent as CX. The key is to give them 100% legit flight info on a spreadsheet.

I wouldn't count on that. It will be a challenge to find a QR agent able and willing to make such changes. Also I don't think QR will make voluntary changes to a ticket issued by AA (or any other airline for that matter).

My experience has been that both points are the case. There was a time when most OneWorld airlines were willing to take over and make changes to an RTW ticket issued by another, and QR used to have competent agents familiar with RTWs available. My experience has been that neither has been the case for some time now.

That's very nice of you! If it isn't too much trouble, I'd be curious to see the affect on YQ/YR by changing the validating carrier from QR to, say, AA, BA, JL, MH, AY. We're always speculating in here about which carrier imposes higher or lower surcharges.

I calculated the previous quote specifying the validating carrier to be AA, since you were talking about AA. Validating it on QR would theoretically bring the YQ/YR lower than validating it on AA, as QR only seems (to my knowledge so far) charges YQ/YR on QR, BA, and MH but not other carriers. However, anecdotal reports that I heard from another FTer suggests QR (which uses Amadeus)'s quote does not conform to my Sabre quotes, as QR calculates an RTW part by part and, as a result, collect other carriers' YQ/YR. A Sabre travel agent might be able to issue using this quote by plating the ticket on QR (doable given QR has the first inter-TC segment), but given the small difference, it is likely not worth it after considering the agency fees.

Validating carrier QR:


Validating carrier JL (QR's YQ/YR are not charged):


Validating carrier MH (QR's YQ/YR are not charged):


Validating carrier AY:


I did not try validating carrier BA as the itinerary contains no BA segments. For this specific itinerary, validating it on MH results in the lowest quote. However, since there are no apparent long-haul segment on MH, I am not sure whether it is feasible to have this ticket issued by MH.

Awesome! Thank you so much! I think this will be very helpful for many of us as we plan our next RTWs, in seeing the difference in YQ/YR of the same route from different carriers.

Time permitting and access permitting, I can run these codes and paste the results here. Feel free to put the request here and I will take a look from time to time. I would appreciate if people give me the routing using the Sabre WQ (Will Quote) format explained below, but if it is too complicated to follow, just give me the routing and I will do it.

Note:
1. Sabre is not used by oneworld carriers other than AA and AS (all others use Amadeus whose RTW pricing ability is less robust), and I cannot guarantee the airline will provide the exact same quote as the one I generate.
2. Sometimes the system will not autoprice. I know this to be the case when you have an intercontinental open-jaw and when you max out intra-Asia segment (I think 3 is possible, but not 4?). Maybe there are other quirks that I have not yet seen.
3. I do not know how long I can maintain Sabre access. Maybe just a few weeks and it may only come intermittently. I always have Amadeus access, but Amadeus can only handle very simple RTW routing for autoprice.

Example:
WQBUD/AQR1FEB/CD/XDOH/AQR2FEB/CDLAX/AAA11FEB/CDMIA/AAA21FEB/CDMEX/AAA1MAR/CD/XDFW/AAA1MAR/CDICN/AJL11MAR/CDHND/AJL21MAR/CDKUL/AMH1APR/CDDPS/AAY11APR/CD/XHEL/AAY21APR/CDBUD-RW/MUSD/VAA/SDFW/TDFW

Explanation:
WQ[origin city code]/A[carrier code][date in MMDDD (mandatory only for the first segment, if the date is 1~9 the leading 0 can be omitted)]/C[booking class]#[city code] ... [final destination city code]-RW/M[currency code (not required but my default is TWD, or it will be defaulted to the sales city if specified)]/V[validating carrier code]/S[sales city code (not required, my default is RMQ)]/T[place of ticket issuance city code (in almost all cases, sales city = place of ticket issuance city code, and it can be omitted)]
# If stopover, put nothing. If transit, put /X. If open-jaw, put [city code before open-jaw]/-[city code after open-jaw], e. g., ... LAX/AAA11FEB/CDMIA/-ORD/AAA21FEB/CDMEX ...

that’s amazing, thank you.

One such quirk that I've run into is with intra-Australia segments. Autoprice chokes if there are transcons within Australia, and sometimes even without transcons. (The rules permit at least one transcon, possibly more than one if the routes are carefully chosen based on the rules and the person interpreting the rules allows it.)

I'm sorry to hear you may be losing Sabre access.

Awesome stuff! But, now I'm having PTSD flashbacks to the old online Sabre trainings with the trainers in Montevideo. "Don't forget the Cross of Lorraine..."

Can you ticket or only price?

Thanks! Actually, I'm glad I got it back, just not sure for how long. The previous agency I am affiliated with (which gave me Sabre access) no longer wanted to continue the kind of business I was involved in after the pandemic, so I changed to a new agency, which primarily uses Amadeus.

I took in-person classes in 2009. How time flies. I consider myself pretty good with Sabre commands :P (and hey, cross of Lorraine is not needed for WQ pricing for an RTW!)

My agency may be able to arrange ticketing, but it will be more expensive (1%~7% more, and even then that's if I do free service) than ticketing with the airline directly, and things need to be set up in a very convoluted way. FTers interested may PM me. Though I would rather not have to handle a case, I can and if someone really has no other way to get it done, we can try it.

That's the very reason I said this up-post: "Not sure if QR has such competent agent as CX. The key is to give them 100% legit flight info on a spreadsheet."

I’ve got a sort of interesting dilemma…booked and paid for a DONE4 ticketed by AA and after the latest ticket exchange I have eticket numbers from AA that don’t match online when I check for the eticket receipts on Finnair,Royal Jordanian and Qatar…..the one world alliance partners show the previous eticket numbers but not the current and yes, the itineraries are perfectly correct….On calling AA and requesting a call to the OneWorld help ticket i’ve had it confirmed that the alliance partners do in fact see the new eticket numbers….I’m concerned that I might had an issue on checkin on with the non AA flights….can anyone shed any light as to whether we will have any issues at checkin….many thanks

Call AY, RJ, or QR. Just need to check with one of them, as they are all on Amadeus (while AA is on Sabre). See if they have the new ticket number correctly associated with the booking.

Ok so I rang BA who said they couldn’t see the newly issued eticket…I know that’s bull as previously had confirmation of one sector of the new eticket confirmed by BA….then called AA back and they contacted the Oneworld desk who confirmed that all Oneworld members using Amadeus could see the new eticket….so even though when requesting eticket confirmations from those members of the alliance that show you the eticket there is no reference to the newly exchanged ticket….AA confirm that in the event of an issue at checkin the agent can see the latest eticket….hope that’s correct 🙏

Interesting to note that the BA app now has eticket numbers displayed and in my case the correct eticket numbers so now a happy camper

Hi, thanks for the offer to help.

I am looking at
OSL/LHR/BDA/MIA/LAX/SAT/LAX/HNL/NRT/KUL/BLR/SYD/PER/DOH/MAN/xLHR/OSL
starting in October but no fixed dates yet.

My attempt at SABRE code is WQOSL/ABA4OCT/CD/OSL/ABA/CDLHR/AAA/CDMIA/AAA/CDLAX/AAA/CDSAT/AAA/CDLAX/AAA/CDHNL/AJL/CDNRT/AJL/CDKUL/AMH/CDBLR/AQF/CDSYD/AQF/CDPER/AQR/CDDOH/AQR/CDMAN/ABA/CDLHR/ABA/CDOSL-RW/MNOK

I would welcome any comments on best ticketing carrier and if I should amend any carrier codes. I am also assuming that my second visit to UK is ok ??

Thanks in advance

Cheapest starting points
 

Hi,

Just begining to plan a first foray into ONE fares. Looking at the cheapest starting points, based on EF have I got this right?

Base fare, in USD, for a DONE4

OSL 5819
ISB 5360
TYO 6069
JNB 6882
CAI 4664

So looking like CAI the cheapest place to start?

Looking at this thread AS has been mentioned as an airline to book with but has anyone actually managed to book with them?

Thank you.

Yes, those are roughly what I saw last time I looked.
Dont forget that you will need to go to Cairo twice, though. Perhaps that appeals, perhaps not?

Not necessarily... but one would need to end in the Middle East. From the OWE rules:

The continent of Europe-Middle East consists of 2 zones:
o Europe (including Algeria, Morocco, Russia west of the Urals and Tunisia)
o Middle East (including Egypt, Libya and Sudan)

<snip>

(c) Travel may originate at any point for which fares are published and must terminate at the same point, except that origin-destination surface segments are permitted as follows:
a. within the country of origin
b. within the Middle East
c. between the United States and Canada
d. between HKG and China
e. between Malaysia and SIN
f. within Africa
g. between Maldives and Sri Lanka/India

Yes good point, I am so used to beginning in Europe that I forgot the special rule for Middle East etc.

Thanks for adding to this thread. Made me look agian at fares, CAI in only $4761 for a DONE 5

Are they actually selling it again? I thought most airlines (especially AA) stopping selling exCAI RTWs due to currency fluctuations there.

I thought they were now priced in USD, however, I just checked and they're still in EGP (a DONE5 is EGP 145,000.00). I don't see ex-SEZ for AA at all; BA has it but it's priced in USD (USD 9,315.00 for a DONE5) so maybe that's what I was thinking of.

The currency of fares filed from a particular city is set by IATA, I don't think(?) the airline can choose to file in a different currency.

In many cases the currency is not the national or local currency, though.