That's a bummer, I was thinking of ending one in TUN to link up to the good RJ fares out of there. Might then just leave CAI as the end point on it with a very long stopover in DOH and unsure if I'll ever use the final DOH-CAI or not.

I wouldn't rely on QF to call, and depending on the airlines on the itinerary some may cancel if not ticketed soon (CX is bad about this)

Did you get an e-mail with an e-ticket number?

not yet, but i got notification overnight that the credit card is now charged.

I just call the their hotline, agent said the flights are confirmed. Sent me 2 emails with 2 tickets number (13 digits - 2 digits) for 2 pax, i suppose this means all good then?

Yes, having ticket numbers assigned means it was ticketed/confirmed.

Yes. I don't think these QF tickets are confirmed until you get the Qantas e-mail with the 081 ticket number.

I am still waiting for the official email from QF regarding the ticket I purchased on Monday (see post 1719)
But I'm not concerned at this stage because I can see (on the Finnair site) that the ticket has been issued (and I have the ticket number)
The ticket cost shows a pending transaction on my credit card statement.

So I'll give it another day or so, and then contact QF it I still have nothing official from them.

I had just started my AONE3 ex-TYO 2 weeks ago and read about the devaluation while in the Bahamas. Though tempting, I've been through this before in 2017 when the EGP went from 8/$ to 16/$. I'm surprised that this is still alive. If I jump into booking another RTW, would you use the link from an airlines website or just go to the oneworld site? I would book a simple RTW, then adjust after flying the 1st flight.

But to my booking question. I have 6 flight segments in N. Am continent booked and want to add an open segment. I know that counts as 1 of my 16 segments, but the AA agent told me I that I could not have any additional segments in N. Am. I stated that the rules say flight segments, but she said that an open segment is still a flight segment. I did not push it. Is this a question of hang up and call again?

Definitely HUACA
The rule is quite clear, and it even emphasises the word flight:ETA: Provided the surface segment is not between Hawaii and the mainland - no backtracking allowed.

Just an FYI
All the Star Alliance carriers have pulled their ex-CAI RTW fares in all classes.
Oneworld carriers are the only ones at the moment with ex-CAI fares.
Good luck and hurry up.

You can book a RTW from the Oneworld site, which usually goes to QF, and then rebook dates after the first flight.

An open segment being an open-jaw that you're treating as a surface segment? eg flying DFW-BOS and then JFK-MEM without any flight from JFK-BOS? Yes, that does count as a segment like a flight segment.

But that begs the question, does a surface segment count as a flight segment? I know that it counts as a segment, but does it count against the x free flight segments allocated to a continent?

In case it helps anyone: adding DOH-CAI as the last leg in my ex-CAI DONE4 instead of finishing in DOH dropped my YQ but ~600AUD. The (il)logic of YQ is truly bizarre.

As someone mentioned upthread, these fares will vanish any time, so it makes sense to book now, the cancellation fee is not outrageous with such low base fares.

Back in 2013 I had four flight segments, two surface segments and two stopovers in my continent of origin (Europe/Middle East, where a max of four flight segments is allowed).
There has been no relevant change in the rules between 2013 and now.
Ticket was issued by AA.

FYI: KRT-xAMM-JFK...HKG-DME,LED-TXL,BUD-xLHR-DXB

And in a similar vein
- switching from BA to RJ for LHR-AMM would add ~400AUD to the ticket price
- PER-xHKG-PNH is ~250AUD more expensive than PER-xKUL-PNH

Flying MEL-KUL-DOH on QF/MH as opposed to MEL-DOH on QR for the final leg of an RTW I was pricing out dropped the price by about $1000 AUD and got me all the way down to 5317 AUD, which is the lowest I've been able to price out so far.

Seems the OneWorld site is now broken. Hopefully it's temporary, I was in the middle of making an ex-CAI booking earlier and it started getting REALLY slow when you get the OneWorld symbol with the airplane circling it while it validates flights. Now I can't even get off the cities page anymore. :mad:

I have one in "queue" with QF now but noticed mistakes on it after I booked as I was in a hurry. QF said they can't make changes on it while it's in queue, either had to cancel or wait until it tickets. (I know it won't ticket because I intentionally made a mistake in my credit card since I knew I wanted changes, but it's apparently not like CX where you can still make the changes before ticketing). Was going to just cancel that one in queue and make a new one but now the OW seems to not be working at all, tried different browsers, different PCs, different IP addresses, same issue. Quite frustrating when this ex-CAI may go away, at least for now the fare is still there.

There is a chance that they will call you if you cc rejected, and ask for alternative cards

Yes, I'm anticipating that, but I actually want to re-work it quite a bit and can come up with an acceptable itinerary if the OW site was actually working correctly.

TBH I love the way that the OW site does with CX issued tickets and requires you to get a payment link from them regardless, because it allows time to fine tune what the OW site can't do. (like change to codeshares, etc.)

Dealing with QF on these fares is never fun to start with, and considering that I have absolutely zero QF flights on this itinerary, they aren't going to be very keen to ticket it from a blind phone call starting from scratch. It is interesting how OW has delegated so many of these tickets now (not only ex-CAI) to QF, which is literally the worst OW airline to deal with on them.

Put another reservation using DGLOB34 ex-CAI through OW website (4395AUD fare+taxes) which seems to be working now. Tickets issued, but had to retrieve them from MH website, confirmation email only listed the PNR, and tax breakdown as well as total.

I'm six segments into my current DONE5 and trying to date change the last two segments JNB-DOH-CAI to a different day...same flights even...I've now called 8 times and spent 5+ hours on hold while they "try to manually reprice" it. They always promise to call back and never do...

My DONE4 was ticketed 2 hours ago and I'm already experiencing nightmares with Qantas agents. I'm trying to change a couple of flights by 1 day (same ticketed points, same flight numbers even) and the agent is adamant that there is a $125 or $150 change fee for this, even though the rules are very clear that there isn't a fee or repricing if changing dates (other than changing the first segment, which would trigger a reprice, in any case prices haven't changed).

Thankfully I booked dates that I can live with...

Does anyone know if *ONE*'s can be cancelled without penalty within 24 hours of booking? The inability in practice to make any changes due to Qantas incompetence is making me too worried to keep it.

Nope. Qantas doesn’t have the 24 hour policy. My first set of changes pre departure wasn’t bad, but post departure is proving a nightmare. Quote from today:

"I am going to need to call you back. I understand your frustration with the previous agents saying they would call back and never calling, but you have my word. I cannot tie up the line for the several hours this might take. I will be hanging up if you do not agree to a call back."

Oh dear. I'll HUCA and hope for the best. Good luck!

an agent in Fiji and Australia confirmed they had 24 cancel. Warning - DO NOT BUY online Qantas issue tickets but don't allow simple date change without "refaring" the system does not let them to do a simple date change. The have no dedicated RTW alliance desk and it's a toss up if you want to change. They also cannot "find" those fares in order to do a date change if your end point in different country (exmpl out of CAI, in to DOH)

Maybe the good part about this is that QF ended up issuing so many RTW fares this past week or two that their agents will finally learn how to handle them... :D HAHA, I'm sure that's wishful thinking.

I was finally able to get the OW site working again late last night and got an itinerary I'm satisfied with, nearly all QR and JL with the obligatory RJ to start and some AA and AS domestic, even got the new JL A350-1000 to JFK which I'm looking forward to. I will definitely need date changes on 2 parts later down the road but pretty sure I can fly 90% of it as is.

When pricing it, I thought heck why not make it a DONE5 instead of 4 since the base price is almost the same, but I still wanted JL if I went down to OZ. It kicked up the fare from 7,200 AUD to 11,000+AUD, OMG that's a LOT of YQ for JL on the Australia routes. If I would have used QF it actually would have reduced my total fare a bit from the DONE4, but my mileage earning on AA goes WAY down.

I guess there is no chance a different OW airline will accept to take over the ticket? (in the past AS took over a ticket from an OTA for a modest fee, but that was a simple one-way on AS... my RTW does have a couple of AS segments)

Reckon you’d be hard pressed to convince a *A carrier to ticket it.
but you definitely get others to ticket xONEx, just not via the online tool and it’s getting harder to ticket ex-CAI with anyone

Congrats, mind to share the segments and carrier? I only manage to get 2x QR (Vienna - KUL with xDoh) and (DFW - DOH), 1x CX (KUL - JFK), would love to learn how to get more QR.

My original was

CAI-AMM-DOH-CGK (RJ, QR, QR), CGK-NRT (JL), HND-BKK (JL), BKK-HND-JFK (JL), JFK-CLT-STL (AA), STL-SEA (AS), SEA-DOH (QR), DOH-NBO (QR), NBO-DOH-CAI (QR)

But I'm currently in the process of changing that, I'm dropping the RJ in the front and going CAI-DOH-CGK (QR) instead and trying to change the end now that I have the extra segments to NBO-DOH-TUN (QR) and TUN-DOH-CAI (QR).

It's a real shame that the OneWorld tool won't allow CAI-DOH on QR directly and still ticket with QF, because QF have no issues with that routing. I don't know by how much but they told me the YQ / YR goes down a bit as well by dropping RJ.

how do you plan to do CAI-DOH-CGK with QR? I thought the first segment cant fly with QR

There's no rule forbidding that, you just can't book it through the OW tool. QR doesn't issue RTW tickets, which is probably why OW has that limitation, but you can do a routing change ($125 fee) and remove RJ after it's ticketed.

There are plenty of reports of people using AA to ticket and had the first segment on QR as well.

my next segment is on AA so I tried them - answer is absolutely not. Tried QR since the segments I want to date change are on them - absolutely not.

and the QR agent who promised they absolutely wouldn’t do what the last five did and not call me back when they promised to? Well guess who never called back…

is there any way to get QF to do their job? I’ve lost nearly 10 hours on this now and it’s ridiculous.

Best of luck! I had to go through three call centers Fiji -S Africa- Australia and maybe 7 agents to cancel our ticket within 24 when the simple date change became impossible with them. It seems QF procedures are not up to par with rules of these alliance tickets - their story in my case (had surface segment at the end in Middle East so the trip ended in another country) was that they could not find applicable fare, and therefore change a date. Even a supervisor wanted "to give a call back" before checking with help-desk, but we went ahead with cancellation. Very stressful experience and hard to imagine what it means to be in the middle of a trip when they tell you fare rules do not apply because it is technically impossible to change the date.

Exactly - and their tactic seems to be to promise a call back to get you off the phone when they realize they don't have an answer...and tell you you're going to be hung up on if you don't agree to it. I'd risk escalation to the C-Suite on this one, but don't need these fares getting more attention. About to try call #8... (side note: I get Fiji every time...how do you tactfully ask them where they are? I usually use "ok, if you're going to call back where are you? what's the time there?)

I tried to get QR to take over a QF ticket last year and it also fell flat. Once you've called in enough times you'll recognize when you have the Fiji call center, and when you do it's best just to hang up and call again. The problem is I feel like I get the Fiji call center the vast majority of the time and it takes a while to get through the menus on QF's call system. I've had very good agents in South Africa before and perhaps Australia (but can't swear to that, maybe have never once gotten the OZ call center and just thought I did).

Basically though it's a tradeoff. For myself, I can't ask AA to ticket because they'll force me to have an overwater segment on AA with AA code, that wastes A LOT of miles for me since I credit to AAdvantage. Some others seem to have gotten AA to ticket but there was a rumor last year that AA stopped ticketing ex-CAI for anyone that wasn't EXP or higher. I don't know how true that is. For ex-Japan I've learned how to get CX to ticket and they're fine to deal with. But for ex-CAI, QF seems to be the necessary evil unless you can ticket with AA and don't care about drastically reduced earnings on your AA coded segment(s).

We've now been through this for a couple of years with the untrained Fijian agents, so hopefully things start to get better going forward, as I suspect they are dealing with quite a few more xONEx tickets now than ever before. The one big issue is that they need to 'reprice' everything and for whatever reason can never find the 'price'. I think that's an issue with whatever QF is using in their backend because an xONEx doesn't ever change the base 'price' after the first segment is flown, only taxes, YQ / YR change but the QF system seems incapable of handling that. There's also the issue that they don't seem to have a live support desk to help them, last year I was told quite a few times they have to send a message to the support team and wait for a response, often taking hours. That's the reason for the call backs that may or may not happen.

I do know they will insist you can't have 2 stopovers in the same city and I get the impression that their system won't allow it, regardless of the OW rules. I've not been able to overcome that one yet, but I found an alternate solution that makes better sense anyway.

As far as getting them to do their job, well you're generally dealing with agents in Fiji getting paid peanuts. Some try, some don't, but they're poorly trained despite their best efforts. I've had them do their call backs at terrible times when I couldn't answer, and they'll never call again after that, usually it's one and done. Of course there's no way to contact them again directly to actually discuss with someone familiar with your situation and seems no one makes PNR notes either for the next agent who answers your call when you return the call.

The phone system QF would drive anyone crazy with robot lady not understanding PNR, but i guess phone calls are routed randomly so one can theoretically keep dialing until getting through to people that are easy to communicate with. Yesterday I got Australia-Fiji-SAfrica-Fiji in quick succession. The worst was S African agent who instead of processing cancellation, was condescending and lying by giving me a random Qantas number in Middle East Oman assuring they can process the date change?! If I cannot establish their location through their accent, I ask them directly where they are based. But the bottom line - avoid Qantas if you can.

Hahaahah I knew today would be better when the robot actually understood my PNR pronunciation...and wow, for the first time got someone in Auckland. While it's not done yet, she's incredibly helpful, understands RTW fares....cross your fingers I can get this done this time so I can subject myself to another torture out of CAI...

i have recently successfully ticketed through BA Gold and whose agents are willing to give their email and call you back as promised. Also in the process of working with AA desk as a regular lowly Gold not EXP. Their agents are senior, have a dedicated desk and check and double check everything before sending off to price. The problem with QF is that it seems they developed the software, but didn't invest in support. Cf with Star Alliance........

DFW-SYD on QF vs LAX-SYD on AA in terms of YQ & YR?
 

Which is a better option in terms of lower YQ & YR? Any datapoints? This is for a DONEx itin.

TIA.