My understanding is that it is to hold the seats to stop anyone else taking them.

there is no contract before it is ticketed. u really should have ticketed when u get a good rate. aa had done the same to other mistake fares.

Ummm, there was no "mistake fare", alleged or otherwise, here.

we all know the price is too good to last.

(i set up my pnr and paid within 1 hr knowing the fare was gone soon.)

aa can basically do anything it wants before aa sells u a ticket. and aa probabaly dont care if anyone boycotts them over it.

i am sure that when there is a next great deal that can only be bookable by aa, i will book.with them without thinking twice. there is really nothing u can do.

Which is quite different to "mistake", particularly in FF terminology.

Reservations and tickets are separate processes.

The reservation on hold means that you have confirmed seats on the flights in question. Your seats were taken out of the inventory available on those flights.

AA is free to re-calculate the fare, although usually they will not do so.

The point of the hold is to give time for the tickets to be issued.

i guess aa cant cancel a ticket claiming it is a mistake price. but u unfortuntely dont have a ticket.

Airlines can and do cancel tickets where the fare was a mistake. IIRC in the US it was held that an airline could do this if the mistake was an obvious mistake (I don't remember if that was a DOT decision, or if the case actually went to court)

BUT these ex-MPM fares were no mistake, they had been there for ~3years ever since QR joined the alliance. It's just that the local currency has been in steady decline with the result that the fares became very cheap to those of us outside Mozambique.

As regards an airline re-pricing - yes they do that if the fare has been held for more than a certain length of time (and I guess also when the fare has changed significantly). I was in the situation where I had phoned AA and paid on Friday (July 29). I was not ticketed and my credit card had not been charged when the fares went up on Monday. Yet I phoned on Tuesday and got it ticketed at the pre price rise fare.

It was a DOT ruling. In general ‘obvious’ unilateral mistakes cannot be enforced in contract law but let us not go down that rabbit hole.

Normally once a PNR has been fare-quoted the quote will survive changes to the fare rate and even the unscheduled removal of the fare from the tariff. If the fare has a scheduled expiry then the PNR's TTL (ticketing time limit) will be set to expire together with the fare. Otherwise the TTL is set to the most restrictive ticketing condition implied by any fare on the PNR. For BA fares on the public tariff that is usually three days.

Probably in this case AA actively requoted the ex-MPM itineraries knowing that the price had materially changed.

Seventy-one minutes on the phone to Qantas with this itinerary:

MPM-xDOH-CMN-DOH-CPH-xDOH-GRU-SCL-BOG-LIM-EZE-JFK-CUN-PHX-DFW-SYD-JNB.

The agent said she can't price it because there are too many flights to and from DOH. She says travel must be in a continuous direction.

Thank you for reinforcing my understanding. I knew the backtracking rule was wrong but the harder I looked at the itinerary the more I became concerned that the three arrivals in DOH conflicts with rule 4(e)(3):
I feared that I was actually arriving into Europe/Middle East three times (MPM-DOH; CMN-DOH; CPH-DOH). But then I thought harder and realised (I think) that my itinerary only has one intercontinental arrival (MPM-DOH) and one intercontinental departure (DOH-GRU), as DOH, CMN and CPH are all in the one continent.

So I'm waiting to speak to a supervisor. The agent who told me no go has had me on hold now for almost 20 minutes.

(Incidentally, as noted above, AA priced it without issue.)

book something simple and change later. the fare can be gone anytime

your routing is fine.

Yes your thinking is correct. CPH and DOH are both obviously in the continent of Europe/Middle East. CMN is there by definition (The Europe zone of the continent is defined to include Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.)

AA priced it, but you are talking to a QF agent?

Edited to add:
FWIW my last DONE was very similar to your itinerary:
CPT-JNB-xDOH-EZE...BKK-xDOH-CMN-DOH-OSL-xDOH-NBO
So 4 times through DOH (I know the airport quite well now)

his aa quoted had refared. qf has yet to update the fare. only aa ba cx jl ib have the new fare.