I certainly think AA was aware of the issue, but this also wasn't really a mistake fare that would qualify for "don't call the airline" status. There was a currency devaluation and repricing was always going to be inevitable. Maybe the volume of calls/bookings accelerated the issue, but it's not as if OW turned the fares off within 24 hours of the devaluation. Probably fairer to frame this as an opportunity that was always going to be limited-time.

I have to imagine that a significant percentage of RTW tickets on AA are either ex-OSL, ex-TYO, or ex-CAI. If OW felt like they weren't getting good value out of these fares, they could reprice them at any time, as we saw with CAI.

Correct to point out that there's no precedence for refaring these after first leg has been flown. I will be relatively conservative with my changes and leave myself plenty of time to battle with QF, but I don't think there should be any issues with these tickets versus, say, ex-OSL fares.

I priced out an RTW on the online tool that came out at $6000 AUD with a $4700 AUD base fare, submitted it to AA, and got a base fare of nearly $8K USD. Not a surprise, but CAI is finished for now.

Looks like only BA and QR fares filed for CAI now.
Results from https://www.ExpertFlyer.comResults from https://www.ExpertFlyer.com

hm, MH not yet re-priced.

xTYO from AA or xCAI from AA 8000?

Airline Insurance Surcharge
 

Hello:
I am currently building another ex-TYO DONE3 using the Oneworld tool and it is pricing as JPY1,070,980 which is about $7067, which is a lot higher than my current one, also ex-TYO which cost $5600 in Sept 2023.
Looking at the taxes & fees, the largest amount is for Airline Insurance Surcharge of JPY186,320 which is about $1230. I don't remember seeing this item before; is it something new?
I'm fairly sure I am using the same mix of airlines: JL, CX, BA, IB, AA

Thanks.

JL imposes fuel surcharges and airline insurance surcharges as detailed here:
​​​​​​https://www.jal.co.jp/jp/en/inter/fare/fuel/detail.html

The airline insurance charge is per segment while the fuel surcharge is imposed on each segment to and from Japan. The insurance surcharge alone shouldn't be that much, I would expect that some other surcharges or taxes are being lumped in with it.

not just BA and QR.

I did a couple of date changes on my (not yet started) ex-CAI DONE4 through Qantas twitter - simple and efficient (although a bit slow - it basically took the whole day).

QF says that there is no D space on JL despite EF showing availability. It seems to me that in practice one needs I availability on JL, at least this seems to match what QF sees.

The agent mentioned - without me asking - that itinerary changes will not be permitted on ex-CAI bookings, only date changes. Before departure I understand this since there is no longer a QF fare filed ex-CAI, but after departure this would go against the fare rules... in any case it seems that all OW airlines got the same memo.

I don't think it should matter that QF no longer files an ex-Egypt fare. When you purchased the fare, it did and the rules allow for changes.

I strongly suspect that after some time passes changes will happen but since it's fresh right now and I get the impression that the Twitter team is pretty small then maybe not at the moment.

The problem with QF is that people have been told already they don't really care about th the fare rules, and there's no one to really hold them accountable to. I'm sure Egypt doesn't have any consumer protection bureau, and have heard Australia doesn't have a strong one.

I think it's best to expect to fly these with nothing more than date changes, especially the next few months.

I was actually looking for something at the time from DOH to TYO (had a couple of days to play with so stopover somewhere cheap-ish) but wasn't getting anything under $2500 r/t on OneWorld (DOH, AUH, CAI, and TUN fares to Asia plus an addon), so timing on this was very good. Sure it's more expensive but I've now got a second and third trip built into it. But I'm grateful now I got in earlyish and was agressive with QF getting my changes done ASAP as I knew the old fare's days were numbered.

Yes but itinerary changes before departure trigger a refare according to fare rules. But there is no fare to refare (or it could be many thousands more expensive). After departure, it should be a $125 flat fee so denying this is more clearly against the fare rules. But as others have pointed out, if QF says no, there isn't much we can do. Thankfully I booked an itinerary I can live with.

Per fare rules not all changes. only routing or the time of the first flight. Here is the extract from fare rules:
BEFORE DEPARTURE
CHARGE USD 125.00 FOR REISSUE.
WAIVED FOR ILLNESS OR DEATH OF PASSENGER OR
FAMILY MEMBER.
NOTE - TEXT BELOW NOT VALIDATED FOR AUTOPRICING.
LOCAL SERVICE FEES MAY APPLY ON REROUTING/REISSUE
-------------------------------------------------
REROUTING PRIOR TO DEPARTURE
CHANGES TO TICKETED POINTS ARE PERMITTED AT A
CHARGE OF USD 125.00 PER TRANSACTION.
IF THE FARE LEVEL HAS INCREASED SINCE TICKET
ISSUANCE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW
FARE WILL ALSO BE CHARGED. IF THE FARE LEVEL HAS
DECREASED SINCE TICKET ISSUANCE NO REFUND WILL
APPLY.

BEFORE DEPARTURE
CHANGES PERMITTED FOR REVALIDATION.
NOTE - TEXT BELOW NOT VALIDATED FOR AUTOPRICING.
LOCAL SERVICE FEES MAY APPLY ON REBOOKING
-------------------------------------------------
REBOOKING PRIOR TO DEPARTURE
CHANGES ARE PERMITTED PROVIDED TICKETED POINTS
REMAIN THE SAME. IF THE DATE IF THE FIRST FLIGHT
COUPON IS BEING CHANGED AND THE FARE HAS
INCREASED SINCE TICKET ISSUANCE THE DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW FARE BE CHARGED.
IF THE FARE LEVEL HAS DECREASED SINCE TICKET
ISSUANCE NO REFUND WILL APPLY.

Could you file a DOT complaint if your ticket touches the US/you're based in the US? Hoping it doesn't come to that, of course.

I suspect nearly all of these touch the US because of the AA or AS flights nearly required for North America. I suppose you could fly into and out of Canada, but it's not the most straightforward OW itinerary. I don't believe you can fly directly into and out of Mexico on any OW airline without touching the US (on a OW RTW itinerary) NH flies to Mexico but JL does not. I guess someone might have booked into Mexico on IB or BA and out of Canada on JL or CX, but that's a huge ground segment that isn't cheap, I think most would have used AA or AS to get between.

Having said that the DOT hasn't been very helpful on other fares in the past. While this isn't an error fare, I wouldn't put much faith in them to enforce an QF fare rule on a routing change that has nothing to do with the US part of the itinerary.

Just as a point of reference from my limited experience with them, I once bought a ticket from Expeida.com on a 'package deal' with airfare and hotel. It was from TYO-BKK-TYO however with no component in the US except the actual website. This was when JL and PG were trying to form a partnership. Well apparently PG kept selling tickets on JL when JL was actually sold out. They tried to cancel my ticket, I refused, took it to the DOT since it was the American Expedia site and finally they negotiated. This was A LOT of back and forth but finally they put us on NH on their very last few seats (this was New Years week so everything was sold out ex-Japan). The DOT actually said they couldn't do anything directly since the flight didn't touch the US but since it was Expedia they'd help as much as they could, which was apparently a strongly worded letter that the airlines involved were not obliged to do anything about. It was finally a senior person in PG that was in contact with me and made the final arrangements on NH, Expedia never took any ownership.

If before your first flight, on what basis? The fare rules (which you presumably read before purchase) are pretty clear:

Thanks everyone for help. I finally manage to book 2 xTYO for DONE4 for $6,000 USD through AA. Base fare $5,300. Tax + Other charges 700. I did not try to optimize surcharges, perhaps it can be even cheaper than that.

Here are my itineraries

TYO -> xDFW -> BUR (JL)(Even though EF shows 9 D fare from TYO -> LAX, but AA is not able to book it) BUR works well for me because it has direct flight from DFW where I can catch long haul flights. Also online tool does allow me to select LAX twice unless visiting another north America city, so during planning I just use Burbank. Burbank can trick online tool.
BUR -> xDFW -> SCL (AA)
SCL -> xDFW -> LAX (AA)
LAX -> ANC (AS)
ANC -> LAX (AS)
LAX -> xDOH -> CAI (QR)
IST -> xDOH -> MLE (QR)
MLE -> CMB -> PEK (UL) may switch to QR later
PEK -> TYO (JL)

All flights beside the first flight are placeholders. I will need to call AA multiple time to change everything. If anything I need to watch out please let me know. So far it does not seem like I can select seats from QR by using record locator (same locator for all airlines) from AA. I can see all my flights through QR, but when I attempt to select seats, it also show something went wrong, please contact us.

Unfortunately you can't switch MLE-CMB-PEK to QR since DOH is in the Europe / ME zone and MLE is Asia, you'd have to take UL out of MLE to CMB but can take MH from there since you still have an extra segment you can use in Asia (4 max, so MLE-CMB-KUL-PEK is 3 and PEK-TYO is 1). MH apparently resumes direct flights to MLE in August, so if your trip is after that (which I believe yours is in 2025) then you could do DOH-KUL-MLE on QR and MH, and then MLE-KUL-PEK on MH, finishing off with the planned PEK-TYO on JL.

I don't recall who you're crediting to but if AA then to PEK you're slightly better off on MH. UL doesn't have a cabin bonus with AAdvantage. No matter who you're crediting to, UL is pretty much a direct route to PEK from MLE, so you're not getting anything additional by detouring a bit to the east first. via KUL is more miles.

Also I think you have a typo in your price. $6000 total sounds about right for a DONE4 ex-TYO, and I suspect you meant $700 instead of $1700 in taxes and fees, which is also about right ex-TYO, I think I've been in the range of $600-800 in taxes and fees on my last 2 ex-TYO DONE5s.

That's a really nice data point that AA still ticketed this without any TPAC or TATL flights on it. Good to know they'll do it with South America instead since I'm pretty sure going anywhere except GRU requires AA codes to / from South America, so they're unavoidable in that situation. I cringe thinking of using AA codes TPAC or TATL because of the massive penalty getting credit on revenue vs. distance.

**Edit on my original post, didn't realized UL is now the only Asian OW carrier in MLE, didn't realize CX stopped flying there and MH is only to CMB, not MLE but is apparently resuming MLE in August this year.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...a2c94816f7.png
From EF it looks like they are maybe in the process of doing so, as fares exCAI have gone?

It went yesterday, the fares were removed (no fares filed).

Anyone else having this issue?

I had an exCAI reservation held at the "old" price and called the AA rtw desk to have it ticketed on Monday before it cancelled out. I was told all was OK. Today AA called and say the fare was wrong all along and they need to use the new price. They even charged my card at this unagreed price (it bounced, mostly because they already had the previour cost held on my card). I think the claim is tha one of the mid-itinery flight holds cancelled out so ticketing decided to rebook anew which means the new price is now stored Trying a supervisor ... let's see.

Update:
* I called the RTW desk to ticket late on March 25th
* On March 27th it was cancelled and rebooked at the new price. Possibly due to one of the holds for one of the flights timing out.
* RTW desk was initially only interested in telling me the new price is the correct price and I'm doubly wrong for having a card that wouldn't clear this 2+ times charge on top of the hold for the previous price. I tried hard to be calm, polite and curious rather than frustrated or annoyed and in time it boiled down to: the ticket was repriced for whatever reasons and the original pricing is just gone so there's nothing ticketing or the RTW desk can do. Only customer relations can intervene and you can't call them so email.

Of course, the RTW-desk dragons are mostly accustomed to 10K+ prices exUSA, so their comments are understandable, if not to be taken personally.

I think this is completely normal. I've nearly always seen disclaimers that prices are not guaranteed until ticketed, holds mean nothing on revenue tickets like this. I think AA might promise to 'hold' their own fares but this wasn't an AA fare, they were booking on CX, RJ, and maybe others' fare basis. This was one that shouldn't have been sat on during contemplation, ticket it and cancel later for a minimal penalty if necessary, we all knew the fare wasn't going to last indefinitely and many members including myself posted warnings in this forum not to dawdle on it.

Unfortunately you have no customer service claim here, nor other like DOT, etc. You didn't ticket before the fare disappeared, end of story. Sorry to be harsh about it.

That's very helpful info in there, though it's more likely to land and be useful if not packaged with a sugar coated rebuke. I'm happy to take this message: the only thing that matters if if you're ticketed. Any mistakes by the airline, any assurances by the agent, any assurances by ticketing are all meaningless. Especially if the airline has decided something is a mistake fare which is AA's line here. So if it takes an hour staying on the line asking for ticketing, do that rather than accept assurances if ticketing is important to you.

Something interesting I think got lost in this thread: there are many reasons people choose a DONEx fare: some to maximize PQM/EQM and get elite status...some to go on one or more nice vacations...some because it's cheaper than buying 2-3 of the flights individually....but usually a combination. Wanted to remind that "earning status on the cheap" isn't everyone's reason

This was a very unique situation, so yeah basically all you said is true and it only matters once it's actually ticketed. It wasn't a mistake fare at all, but it wasn't an AA fare either, AA pulled their own ex-CAI RTW fares quite a while ago. That's the key to the puzzle. Once they no longer had another OW carrier's fare basis to issue on, that was the end of it on AA tickets.

They were using the fare basis of other OW airlines who still had the fare filed at the old price in EGP. Once EGP devalued it made the fare much cheaper in USD, but certainly wasn't a mistake fare. All airlines except QR and AA used to price ex-CAI in EGP (QR and AA had USD fares which were only a few hundred $$ different until the devaluation).

But definitely yes, there was an urgency on this to get it ticketed ASAP, and that was really clear when the Star Alliance fares were pulled very quickly post-devaluation. I want to say that *A folks only had one or two days to get theirs ticketed before that party ended. (it was also a good bit cheaper than our OW fares)

I disagree with what LilZeppelin said though about AA only being used to US$10k+ RTWs, a good number are issued ex- OSL, CAI, and TYO and are all well under the ex-North America price. I have a feeling that ex-South Africa may gain some popularity again soon as well as the base fare isn't bad and it allows more stopovers in each of the primary continents. (ex-OSL and ex-CAI limit you to 2 stopovers in Europe, and ex-TYO limits you to 2 stopover in Asia, Africa on the other hand no longer has a OW carrier so stopover opportunities are extremely limited... note all of North Africa is classified as Europe or the Middle East by OneWorld, so AT flights are to/from Europe and QR flights are to/from Middle East, we won't have a true African carrier again until RwandAir (WB) joins)

The good news is that ex-OSL and ex-TYO are still out there and are still very good deals (sure not sub-$5000, but still quite good). ex-OSL you have to be very careful about chosen carriers because of the sting on YQ, but ex-TYO you don't have to worry about it, it's YR only and they are quite reasonable. (about $600-800 total taxes and airline fees is normal ex-TYO on a DONE4 or DONE5). From what I've noticed over the last couple of years in this thread, ex-OSL is by far the most offensive if you're not choosing carriers to avoid YQ. ex-CAI didn't seem nearly as bad in that regard but still had a hefty amount of YQ.

That's both unkind and unfair. The AA RTW Desk staff are probably the most knowledgeable in the world of all airline ticketing staff on these fares. How many times do we see posted on FT advice to just call the AA RTW Desk. And has anyone here ever run across a rude agent there? I haven't. They have to work within the rules that AA sets. To call them dragons is uncalled for.

Correct. Here's the language from the first email I received a few minutes after I booked with the AA RTW desk last week: "The price quoted (inclusive of base fare, taxes and carrier charges) is not guaranteed until payment has been made."

Yes, especially if they're superseded by an email from AA which says that the fare is not guaranteed until ticketed.

This is my experience as well. I believe they are used to ticketing/pricing ex-US RTW fares at the AA desk, with other origin points being less common. After pricing out my ex-OSL DONE4, the AAgent went on to say that there was something wrong and how the base fare should be 10k+.
After I pointed out that this was originating in Oslo, not the US, and that the fare is legit.. she then corrected herself. I'm guessing that the AA RTW desk isn't aware of how terrible their Oneworld partners are with RTW ticketing.. otherwise, we would all be going through the carrier of the origin region. Times have changed.

I am thinking to credit to either AS or AA. If I credit to AS, I can hit MVP50K with around 80k - 100k miles. It is a bit hard to calculate LP I can get for AA since I have 5 segments operated by AA.
Thanks for pointing out I can not do DOH -> PEK. This segment will happen in late 2025. I will see if MLE -> xKUL -> PEK is still available after my date change.

How was you experience for date change for AA? I assume it is unlimited and free of charge?

I saw news today JAL is starting to fly A350-1000 for HND -> DFW every other days from April, but JAL has not released winter schedule yet. I will need to watch out winter schedule closely and check if my first leg will be on A351. Do you know if changing first leg date will also trigger reprice? It will be very existing to try out new product.

HND-DFW should be daily on the A351 well before the time you fly, I think they'll even have LHR running by that time. But just a date / time change to get the A351 if it's not daily yet "shouldn't" be any issue.

Yes, date changes should be unlimited and free of charge, but your change from MLE-xCMB-PEK to MLE-xKUL-PEK isn't only a date change, that's changes to ticketed points and requires a $125 fee. Any other changes to ticketed points should be done at the same time.

If you credit to AA, when I do calculations, I just omit the AA segments entirely and count them as bonus. They'll most likely credit as revenue and be pretty crappy, so you can't rely on them to provide much in terms of LPs. Do you have any AA status already? If starting from zero status, it looks like you'd get somewhere around 75k LPs and miles on that itinerary as is currently, you'd hit Gold roughly around the time of the LAX-DOH flight and Platinum at 75k. Making that change I suggested to MLE-KUL-PEK adds almost 5k LPs and RDMs onto it after status bonus, pretty much guaranteeing you'd hit AA Platinum even with the pittance of a credit you're likely to get from the AA coded segments. (Edit Ignore those, that would assume your entire trip is in one elite year, but it crosses the threshold, resetting in March)

Having said that, if you can get AS 75K then that's OW Emerald, it's really going to depend on what their award chart looks like after the updates.

Just for comparison, you could also get Qatar Gold and about ~84,000 Avios. If crediting to QR you'd be at 472 QPoints, so if you have other premium cabin trips planned it'd be pretty easy to get to 600 for Platinum and OW Emerald. The only reason I mention that is you'd have domestic US lounge access but no free domestic upgrades but you'd still get AA MCE seats free (but not AS Premium Class). It's also worth note because something I hadn't thought about, starting your ticket in January means you'd be crossing the annual cutoff for AA, since the elite year is March to February. I believe AS is January to December, so you're ok there. QR is within 12 months from your first flight.

After. The thread you're replying to was a conversation about airlines wanting to reprice based on current fares as opposed to original fares after first flight has been flown.

Always learnt something new. I thought if I change from MLE -> PVG will consider of ticketed points change. I value AA points and AS points more, so I will probably credit to AA or AS.

I believe the lesson here is that what the ticketing party tells you cannot be relied on. All that really matters is if ticketing completes.

Most people would assume they had met the criteria of that email (payment has been made) when they call and ask to buy, give over a credit card number, see the relevant amount held on their card, are told it is locked in, ask for that to be confirmed with ticketing who also say its locked in.

Moreover I just pushed for actual ticketing on another reservation. It's showing ticketed but AA have still not taken payment (the hold is still there) and yet I think there is no chance that AA will do all of: cancel and rebook and at a price over twice the amount, call to tell me there is no credit card hold that matches the required amount, get told the amount is not as agreed and I do not accept the new amount, charge my card the over x2 amount anyway, then do it again with rtw desk supervisor approval when it bounces, tell me the problem is my card decline when i call to ask what's going on.

Of course if all that matters is if you are ticketed, then things *likely* to mean ticketing will happen will matter to some degree. Calling and "paying" usually works but that wasn't enough this time for me.

Several things differ between the xONEx that ticketed and the one that didn't. I'm unclear which, in combo perhaps, made the difference (vs just luck).

1. The ticket payment hold was in USD in the failed case vs the currency of the reservation in the other.

2. Ticketing was left to AA in the failed case who took two days to start working on it and I believe did so outside the US vs my calling the rtw desk a day after it was sent to ticketing and have them press for ticketing then and there.

3. The failed case was governed by CX and there was a new higher price at the time of ticketing vs the other which was governed by MH who had no filed fare at all at the time of ticketing.

Oh, and may or may not be relevant. The ticketed xONEx receipt is ~$1k less than the amount that was on the resevation. I suspect i'm going to wind up with two transactions on my card, one of the receipt and one for the gap. I've no idea why but it suggests a complexity to ticketing, and varied results from a complex manual process is to be expected.

The basic issue is that complex RTWs are manually ticketed so choices or simple mistakes can happen which mean something that should or at least might ticket... doesn't. Words of promise in an email or on the phone do not count for as much as what the actual ticketing agent does.
​

I'm sorry to hear about your experience.

Ticketing on AA normally can take up to two days, but you can ask for immediate ticketing and wait on hold. Be insistent, maybe tell them that you're concerned about possible price increases. After two days when I still didn't have a ticket number on my DONE3 last week, I called the RTW desk and asked for immediate ticketing. It was ticketed (with a ticket number) while I waited on hold. Remember, it's not ticketed until there's a ticket number.

I've done more than a dozen xONEx tickets over the years, both AONEs and DONEs and never had a hold placed on my credit card. No idea what that's about.

Finally, read carefully the rules and warnings that you'll get by email both when you first book and receive the itinerary by email, and with your ticket. That's what they're there for. From a legal perspective (yes, IAAL) no telephone agent has the authority to alter the published/printed terms and conditions. So if you're told that your fare is locked in, you now know to rely on the printed Ts & Cs, not what you're told on the phone.

<snip>
<snip>

Were you paying in USD? I now suspect the reason I hit issues was because (it very much seemst that) non-USD base fares held by the AA RTW desk and priced in a non-USD 3rd currency are really painful for AA to ticket which inevitably means things are more prone to go wrong. I think that because:

1. I've just spotted the wierded thing on my full receipt. My taxes is over $100k *negative*. This is to counterbalance the fact that my base far is over $100k. It's set to the EGP number (145k) but in my currency. Carrier-Imposed Fees are normal FWIW. I assume this is related to why my receipt total shows an amount ~$1k less than my reservation amount and I'm ending up with a second charges to my card for the difference.

2. I stayed on the line for the xONEx that did ticket,. Took 45 minutes from when the RTW agent first spoke to ticketing, i.e. after the 20-30 mins they had taken to check everything, take my card details etc. and send it off to ticket in the system. I assume that process is way less than 45 mins in almost all cases.

Those together speak of major pain being overcome with serious bending of the system to make my ticket... ticket. Presumably they did that at least partly as an AA RTW agent was chatting to them about it every 5-10 mins with a customer on hold.

I have some sympathy and more understanding as to why a different ticket agent not in chat with an AA RTW agent with a cusomter on hold and facing the same issues would instead reprice to make the ticket "sane". They may even have not realised that was going to nearly 3x the ticket price. And when it did jump the price then the pains before and that different amount when "fixed" makes it easier to call the earlier price "incorrect". I'm just guessing of course and it's a bit different from what AA told me but it's certainly clear ticketing was very tricky; it's notable there were CX segments on the later xONEx that did ticket so it's not like CX had done something insurmountable which was what AA told me.

That said, I'm not sure any if us will face anything like that again, or is exCAI still filed in EGP?

This is seriously giving me a headache to read. It's quite clear, it's ticketed or it's not, there's no grey zone in between.

These aren't normal tickets in any stretch of the imagination. You're not going to AA.com, BA.com, Expedia, etc. and getting instantly ticketed like many people are used to.

It's extremely rare that actual base fares are so volatile and fluctuate so quickly. In the case of a direct booking on AA or another airline, whether on their website or a third party site like Expedia, they pull the appropriate fare bucket inventory when you book it and they typically ticket a few seconds after your payment is confirmed, base fares don't change in that short period of time.

That's not how RTW fares work, and this was a very volatile point in time on the ex-CAI fare. RTWs take hours or even days to ticket / re-ticket. Even on my own, it increased a bit between the day QF quoted me my change fee and when they ticketed it so they had to reverify my authorization with me, but I didn't care it wasn't significant yet. But it was a sign that the base fare increase was imminent.

It sounds like you got yours done on the MH fare basis at the last minute, so congrats on that because not too long ago there were reports that AA was refusing ex-CAI bookings except for EXP and CK members, let alone non-AAdvantage members entirely. So please stop pointing fingers at AA for something they didn't do. You literally got in at the last second of this fare and be grateful if you got something ticketed.

Again it wasn't an AA fare they were issuing the ticket on, they were at the mercy of other OW airlines keeping the fare alive and we all know that AA doesn't have instant ticketing on these, they need approval from the rate desk first. You HAVE to allow 1-2 days leeway on AA ticketed RTWs, and the fare simply disappeared in that amount of time this week. That's simply it, the fare is there at ticketing or it's not... there's no fare hold, there's no credit card hold so you're safe, etc. It's there at the time of ticketing or it's not... end of story. Very very different than normal JFK-ORD fares.

The issue of credit card hold and actual charge is an interesting one: I noticed that once my credit card was authorized at the time of sending PNR to ticketing, the hold never changed (even as the PNR was sent back to reservations to apply additional payment methods) until the real charges hit the credit card a day or two later. In other words, one could not see the exact charges until they posted. In addition, e-ticket receipt made no sense and did not reflect real amounts charged; however, one has to trust that since the amounts quoted never changed and all the charges were correct in my case, I would be able to obtain correct refund if one was needed. But overall I think American's ticketing process needs a lot more to be desired.

Finally, let me just say that I fully agree with all the comments earlier that we were all running against the clock to lock in what seemed and indeed was a good deal! Thanks to the flyertalk community we became experts in RTW products and its various rules!

Pre-devaluation prices were a great deal, post-devaluation was an absolute bargain! You can almost never even get a roundtrip in business from US to Europe for that amount,

​​​​​Agreed. I don't think anyone was suggesting otherwise.

​​​​​​<snip>
​​​​
​​​​​​Increased in EGP or in some other currency to match the fluctuations in exchange rate?

<snip>
I'm sorry you are so disturbed by my sharing my experience and being on a journey that started with me believing what agents told me and ended with me realising that was a mistake and as has been noted several times... The crucial issue is if it's ticketed or not.

BTW can I please have your credit card details? I'd like to charge it for $10k against your permission because if you feel I shouldn't point fingers at AA for that then logically you won't point fingers at me if I did it.

<snip>
I'm here to learn, help others where I can and hopefully get help and maybe even support. I'm struggling a little to stick purely to that given your... upset at me? And I'm not sure of your full set of reasons to be here so it's with some trepidation I'll note that contray to the apparent conviction in what you just asserted... I had (yep, still have) a hold on my card from AA for both tickets, and the one that ticketed did so days after that MH fare it uses was pulled. It's now clear (here to learn, right) one should not rely on ticketing promises from multiple agents promise it, but to say something never happens right after someone says it just happened to them is a bit.. odd.

I'm happy to DM if you want to resolve something further that's about me. IMHO the thread should only be about what can help
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