are you using oneworld page to book?
i am getting the below, still finalizing some dates, yet to book

No, the tool is doing my head in. Multiple errors like the 'over 34K' one and it will only offer me RJ via AMM when my first segment is CAI-DOH.

I've spoken to Qantas in Hobart. It's being pieced together manually. That's a very good fare, though. Very cheap taxes. Was it done using the tool? Would you like to share your routing?

I am using the default page https://rtw.oneworld.com/rtw
CAI - xMAD - PRG (IB)
PRG - xDOH - KUL (QR)
KUL - NRT (MH)
HND - GMP (JL)
ICN - KUL (MH)
KUL - xHKG - LAX (CX)
LAX - SFO (AA)
SFO - JFK (AA)
JFK - DFW (AA)
DFW - DOH (QR)

Very nice. Your low taxes got me looking into mine. If I've understood them correctly, CAI-xDOH has a combined YQ and YR of AUD1060, but having a stop in DOH drops it to just AUD655.

You can't fly QR as the first leg of your RTW.

I am new to this, what is YR and YQ?

What rule is that?

Carrier surcharges, typically fuel fines.

Yes, the tool did the booking with QF (I'm yet to get the ticket)

From the rule sheetI have always taken this to mean 5% of the base fare and full refund of the taxes and surcharges., Perhaps I'm mistaken? (I never cancelled a RTW ticket before)

It's not a rule, meaning part of the fare rules
but it is a known restriction of the on-line booking tool

So, you can have a QR flight as the first flight, but then you cannot book it using the tool.

My guess it's open to carrier interpretation, but I hope you're right.

That's an important clarification to steveholt's comment.

So I've been playing around with this quite a bit, with the online tool, SABRE and with the AA desk. ex-CAI different airlines have published different fares. It appears QR and AA have published fares in USD while the rest are publishing in EGP. Further, it appears that the fare selected is based on the "dominant" carrier, which seems to be the first overwater/long-haul carrier OR the first carrier. For me here's what I saw:

CAI-xDOH-DXB-xLHR-PMI-xMAD-DFW-GRU-JFK-xHKG-DXB - priced out at USD $6K+
but changing it to
CAI-xLHR-PMI-xMAD-DFW-GRU-JFK-xHKG-DXB (and ensuring that I only use BA, IB and CX for the over water segments) - priced this at $3442. (validating on CX)

If I used the AA flight from MAD to DFW - it prices using AA base fare (>$7k), if I use QR in the first segment it uses QR base fare (>$5k).

With these restrictions in mind - I was able to get the AA desk to price the itinerary at around $3,800 (validating/ticketing on AA) - higher YQ and taxes but perhaps worth it to deal with the AA RTW.

Good luck

Based on your finding, with my routing below, the major carrier would be QR (PRG - xDOH - KUL) or CX (KUL - xHKG - LAX)?
CAI - xMAD - PRG (IB)
PRG - xDOH - KUL (QR)
KUL - NRT (MH)
HND - GMP (JL)
ICN - KUL (MH)
KUL - xHKG - LAX (CX)
LAX - SFO (AA)
SFO - JFK (AA)
JFK - DFW (AA)
DFW - DOH (QR)

I asked Qantas to price the following DONE4:

CAI-xDOH-DFW-xANC (AA codes)
ANC-ORD
ORD-SJU
SJU-CLT
CLT-MEX
MEX-JFK
JFK-SYD
SYD-BLR
BLR-KUL
KUL-HKG (CX)
HKG-xLHR-CDG (BA)
CDG-xDOH-AMM (QR)

First, Qantas said CAI-DOH had to be on the QR code if I wanted A. I could book the AA code, but I'd be in H.

Second, Qantas said I must end in CAI. The agent I spoke with was fully aware of the Middle East exception (among the others) but he insisted five "senior ticketing agents" had all looked at the rules and said I must in CAI. More concerning, he said the oneworld desk also supported that position.

It was priced at AUD8403. The highest YQ charges were $1394 and $636 and the highest YR was $715. The agent I spoke with didn't know where exactly they came from, though.

This is true, from what I found in Sabre. It looks like the QR flight number is allowed to be in A for the DONEx fares, but not the AA flight number. If you use the AA flight number, it prices as AONEx. Of course any airline can override that, but apparenty QF does not want to.
We all know that isn't true, but not much you can do if QF says that and you want QF to ticket it.

Hold up, which itinerary were you able to get AA to price at $3800? I was looking at one yesterday that QF would have been ticketing for closer to $4800 so didn't bite. For $3800 I would. Would be looking at a DONE4 just like you have posted but would be doing Africa instead of South America. But I'd want JL and QR for my long segments intra-Asia and to/from Asia. Will have to suck it up and take an AA overwater, maybe MAD or LHR to get AA to ticket it.

Need some advice
I am almost done with my itinerary, just pending one final date confirmation.
I reach the booking page with credit card details, am I right to assume once I click submit, the payment will be automatically effected? or i still need to talk to airlines to get it ticketed?
When you guys mentioned ticketing, does it mean you are talking to airlines service agent to get the ticket issue instead of through the rtw page?
thanks a million

on the RTW tool, directly ticketed. Won’t even ask for VbV (I had to call QF and wrangle for a cancel)

As soon as I hit enter on cc payment it said your flight is booked. I got an email messgae from QF Later asking to complete mY US stopover address details and residency etc but it went through. I only spoke to a qf agent today out of an abundance of caution to triple check it had gone through OK.

Few points:

When I was dealing with a medical issue a few weeks back QF confirmed to me the refund charge is 5% of the base fare - 100% of taxes would get refunded. So you might need to HUCA, but right now looks like refund charge is < 200 USD.

Does anyone have a list of what jacks the YR/YQ charges? So far, it seems to be:

• any BA segment (using AT or IB out of CAI lowers it significantly)
• any QR segment
• any QF segment - especially longhauls

Depends on the ticketing airline, QF will ticket immediately, CX requires a phone call and website payment, but you have to have CX as your first segment to get the tool to use CX.

this last part is key -- if Qantas misinterprets the fare rules, you are stuck. I gave up on ex CAI because of ridiculous QF agents and now I'm basically paying "extra" to book ex OSL with AA .. I consider it a knowledge surcharge.

Just sharing update, once I click "Book Itinerary" with credit card details, it send me to confirmation page with PNR.
It mentioned that e-ticket will be issued upon payment finalized.

Using the Oneworld tool, I've seen higher costs with BA/AA CAI-LHR-USA vs BA/BA. The OW site was also telling me it was more expensive to pick AA/AA for ORD-LAX-SYD than AA/QF. I'm sure it's buried in the fare rules somewhere.

I was playing around in the manual page,
- BA certainly add a few hundreds AUD
- QR add as well, but lesser than BA
- when I switch from RJ to IB in CAI - Europe, almost 1k reduction
- for my KUL - TYO segment, switching from JL to MH save about 300
- taking any segment that requires QR to upgrade to first class, will add 6-7k.
all these on 2 pax pricing

Changes to existing RTW with CAI fares
 

Hi all.

I booked a DONE5 out of OSL for later in the year (Oct/Nov) in December, with BA.

I am considering asking them to price a change both to starting from CAI and an upgrade to an AONE4 given the fares available from CAI.

From reading the fare rules this looks possible but just wanted to get the view of the experienced RTWers before I try, assuming the fares last that long?

Cheers.

I'm not sure. My first overwater flight was on BA, and my routing began CAI-LHR-JFK (or CAI-AMM-DOH-JFK originally), but I was always pushed to QF by the tool, which always initially began the pricing process as I would start picking flights in AUD. The longest flight in my itinerary was on QF, so perhaps that's why they chose QF, but my read has been that the tool seems to prefer QF as the default ticketing airline.

I was able to get CAI-LHR-JFK-LAX-DFW-JFK-SYD-DOH-DXB booked for $6021 AUD, which is about $3975 US.

Lowest I've seen is about 5400 AUD, and highest is around 7500 AUD...the difference is all YQ/YF...

The QF fuel surcharges are on ex-US flights on AA-ticketed RTWs. I didn't experience the same inflation (about $1K) on my QF-ticketed RTW. I also found that CAI-LHR-JFK on BA was several hundred dollars cheaper than CAI-AMM-JFK on RJ and a thousand dollars cheaper than CAI-MAD-JFK on IB as opposed to CAI-LHR-JFK on BA.

FYI, I've found AY to be the absolute lowest charges for transatlantics. I'm a bit surprised everyone seems to be skipping stops in Europe...

The rules define Middle East as Egypt Sudan Libia not Jordan.I suppose Jordan is in Asia.
"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) "

Jordan is in the Middle East for purposes of these tickets and as part of IATA TC2; "Egypt, Libya and Sudan" are listed as included in the Middle East as they geographically would normally be part of Africa.

To that point, it's the entire band of countries across North Africa including Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia as well.

Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia are part of the continent of Europe/Middle East, but in the Europe zone, meaning you can't begin in, say, Egypt and end in one of these countries.

Qantas FAQ page for RTW bookings
 

FWIW I see QF has an FAQ page for RTW bookings.
Questions about your round the world (qantas.com)

There isn't much on the page, but does provide an SMS number (0477QANTAS) to use when making enquiries (I think it's only for existing bookings, not to discuss planned bookings)
Note: if you are outside Australia, then the number is +61477QANTAS

Given that the on-line booking tool appears to default to QF for bookings, this may be useful.

Quick question on DONE5. If I change a transfer to a stopover does it trigger a reprice? Trying to get CX CTS-HKG-PER but the CTS-HKG flights in early Feb that connect with HKG-PER are all showing D0. Not sure why maybe Chinese New Year?

I believe so. Done maybe once (aa RTW desk) and it was reprice with a fee due for doing so. I would expect it to given taxes and/or surcharges often increase and the airline mindset is it's a big difference: think how they price/treat AAA-BBB-CCC vs AAA-xBBB-CCC if buying that as a stand alone ticket.​

I usually avoid ticketing with any transits unless that makes things much more expensive or impossible because I have always (~10 times, via ba and aa) been able change a stopover to a transit without repricing even though that too probably should reprice and i suspect you could demand it in the cases it reduces cost by enough to more than cover the fee.

OK yeah thanks Murphy's law it is the only transfer left on the itin. I'll keep an alert on EF for avail opening up.

Question,
I got my PNR with complete list of itinerary in QF website. I checked my cc statement, it yet to be charged.
Should I call QF to follow up the payment, or just wait for them to call?

CX is a pain with married segment availability from Japan to Australia and New Zealand anywhere remotely close to a holiday. I got extremely lucky on my last one and snagged the one and only CX D fare from anywhere in Japan to New Zealand the entire week after Christmas, NRT-xHKG-AKL, but I had to keep an eye out for it for a while. Really thought I was going to have to do a stopover in HKG which would have cost me a day in NZ.