What month / season? Normally it's more than plenty. Immigration (if international) tends to be one of the best of US airports in terms of wait times. But just be cautious if you're going through during thunderstorm season as they does cause a bit of disruption at DFW. (Tends to be spring time)

Very interesting on the UL notes, please update once you have answers on the fees and requirements to ticket a UL flight.

For your desired QF flight LHR-SIN, just ticket what you can get for now, QR in your example, but keep an eye on inventory. A lot of airlines will open up inventory close in (same with award tickets) unless the cabin is currently nearly sold out already. There's a decent chance of getting what you want within a week of departure, but would require the change fee. Your travel agent might even watch that for you so you don't have to check constantly. EF is a great tool for it, but won't show you married segment with an alert, you have to manually check that yourself.

Fred,

FWIW, I've flown UL a lot over the past decade, both as part of DONE3s and as stand-alone tickets, mostly BKK-CMB-BKK, certainly not long flights. I've never heard of UL insisting on a long flight on an xONEx, and I've never been subjected to that requirement or anything remotely similar. (I'm flying them again a week from Saturday, BKK-CMB-NRT, the last two flights of my current DONE3.)

I'm very new to RTW tickets. Never purchased one before, although I'm researching my first. What do travel agents typically charge a customer for assistance on RTW tickets, or are travel agents paid by the airlines instead? Thanks in advance.

Each agent will determine their own price to issue and service a RTW ticket for you, it's up to them what they think it's worth based on the amount of work involved in them, especially if you're new to RTWs and likely to have a lot more questions and require guidance more than others who know the rules already and do their own planning. I've been told that the commission from the airline isn't very much on these tickets, so I'd anticipate all agents to have some fee on it, but it should be well worth it depending on which OW airline you end up ticketing with. Some are very hard to work with (QF for example), some don't issue their own RTW tickets (QR for example), some charge their own fee every time, even for otherwise free changes (JL). An agent can also help you optimize for YQ / YR (fuel surcharges) by using certain carriers to ticket on and certain carriers codes on long haul flights, that can easily make a difference of $1000 on a ticket.

To get started though, you will need to decide what your priorities are for your ticket. Do you want to maximize mileage or status point earnings in a particular program? Do you want to see exotic places that are expensive to get to on normal tickets? Do you want to spend a bunch of time in the top premium cabins in the world? Or just get a good deal for a bunch of flights that you might need to take anyway, and would certainly be more expensive booked a la carte. (None of those are mutually exclusive, just something to consider when starting your planning)

This is one of the main reasons I stopped crediting to AA, and now credit everything to QRPC. 95+% of my flying is on xONEx tix.


Sorry to say that I don't remember. If I see a post that jogs my memory, I'll let you know.

Especially for North Americans on these D fares the Alaska program is fantastic. I’m not even 1.5 of these fares down and have already earned nearly 300,000 redeemable miles and 100K status through 2025. I didn’t intentionally avoid AA (which earns less) but it didn’t fit my needs. BA and AY codes especially earn gangsta.

Does that mean they earn a lot, or very little? :confused:

Has anyone booked a xonex AS fare? Likely with a travel agent? I wonder if AS would require the same kind of overwater flight like AA does.

Also, for anyone crediting to AA, if you are using an independent travel agent... Aren't you affected by AA's ridiculously vague rule about where you book your tickets?

Customers will earn miles and Loyalty Points on flights when they: Book directly with American and eligible partner airlines.Book travel anywhere as an AAdvantage Business™ member or contracted corporate traveler.Book through preferred travel agencies. American will share a list of eligible preferred agencies on aa.com in late April.

I’ve tried multiple times - AS doesn’t ticket RTW fares.

You've tried how? Calling AS or using a TA?

Calling. AS doesn’t publish a fare so why would you want them to ticket someone else’s fare? Changes would be a nightmare if it were even possible. If you’re going to use a TA why the desire to ticket with AS?

Sorry, but this is what I'm going off of (re AS publishing xONEx fares). See screenshot.

Re: using a TA -- I don't know if having an AA-coded overwater segment is a requirement to using the AA xONEx fare.. or just a preference stated by the AA RTW desk. If it is the former, then it makes sense to explore the idea of an AS xONEx fare instead. If it's the latter, then nevermind.
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...b3bc4f64ac.png

Interesting. I never checked Tokyo, but they don’t publish South Africa, Norway, or Egypt.

Given they also don’t have a RTW desk and their elite agents told me they don’t do RTW fares it could easily be a pain to change just as QF is.

AFAICT, the only AS "over water" routes are between Hawaii and mainland U.S. The AA requirement for over water is TATL or TPAC.


I believe that AA dropped that plan when Mr. Raja left the company.


Even if EF is accurate in this regard, why would you want to book this fare with an airline that has basically no experience with the complicated rules that govern the fare?


I believe that it's an unpublished requirement. Note that AA codeshares on other carriers' metal meet the requirement.

Actually I'm seeing AS DONEx for Oslo as well.
Yes, it would be as bad as QF which is why I suggested the TA route.

Very TAs are sophisticated and knowledgeable in these fares - and I don’t see any reason Alaska ticket stock would make anything better.

Seems pretty clear if AA works for your needs that’s the easiest, but I still believe after a couple of these the deals can be so good I don’t even mind the 10 hours of my life spent on the phone w Qantas. Even at my standard billing rate 😂

So much to unravel here..

​​​​​ Maybe lower surcharges? Maybe no minimum requirements on certain airline coded segments? I'm sure these are all easy to prove true/false with some experimentation and a TA.

All potentially offset by the fees a TA will charge to issue and change one of these. However, I also recognize that some members value the "best deal" over time saved, so to each their own!

You're absolutely right. There's no point in pursuing any of these AS fares. A giant waste of time! Nothing to see here, folks.

About to start an ex-CAI, my first RTW - thank you Central Bank of Egypt! :)
I booked a boilerplate DONE4 itin that worked on the OW tool, and plated that with the BA GGL team on 125 stock to lock in the low price.
Whilst the crazy low pricing was still available, I asked BA to quote a new, better optimised itinerary, but their rates desk said the itinerary didn't meet the requirements. I did two rounds of this before putting it on the backburner; now picking this up again as I will soon fly the first segment and I will be able to change using historical fares.

Routing 1 CAI-LHR-SIN-NRT-BLR-SYDxTBU-SYD-JFK-MEX-JFKxLAX-DOHxBCN-DOHxSEZ-DOH (changing the DONE4 into DONE5, by adding Africa)
BA's rates desk responded:
Routing 2 CAI-LHR-SIN-NRT-BLR-SYDxTBU-SYD-JFK-MEX-JFKxLAX-DOHxBCN-DOH (keeping at DONE4)
In this case BA told me that the itin was not valid according to the OW tool, and left it at that.

Is the BA rates desk correct, or are they missing the plot?

For my ex-CAI RTW ticket, I have one of the following segments:
Originally, it's YYZ-HKG arrives at 5:00am and then connecting HKG-BKK departures at 8;00am, all by CX
Now, I want to change the HKG-BKK flight to a later one on the same day, say departure at 13:00pm.

My question is :
1. Will this change be deemed as a "ticketed point" change or not? If not, then I would assume there should be no $125 change fee.
2. Would it be easier to call QF to make the change after my first segment is flown, rather than calling them now?

As long as it's under 24 hours then it shouldn't be any issue whatsoever. It's the same airline, same connection point, and still a connection (under 24 hours).

2) Yes, very likely easier to do after your first segment, but how much time do you have? It might take 2-3 days to get done depending on the agent you get.

I may not be directly offering suggestion or advice, but just a data point.
I had a very similar situation. My DONEx first flight (on CX) arrived at HKG. By plan, I had a very long layover (can't recall exactly, but it was several hours) before my next CX flight. While inside Wing First Lounge, I handed a spreadsheet with all flight details of changes that I wanted to get done (make sure all flight had D availability). The agent called another agent in the HK office. She then told me to just relax.
Long story short, it was all done according to my spreadsheet. We were in the lounge for a long time. During which an agent kept it informed of the status (being worked on). When the first agent went off duty, she introduced me to the next agent who was to "take care" of me!
I think your 3 hour layover maybe tight (even if YYZ-HKG is on time) if you want to get it done at HKG by CX. I might say, I was happy with CX's performance as being professional.

I'm pretty sure chivalryflyer is on a QF ticket so CX wouldn't have any ability to do changes like that while you're in the CX lounge. Sounds like you were on a CX ticket, in which case they could be very useful.

Awesome! I used to fly through HKG regularly when I was doing AONEx tix. Which person helped you with this, was it the person at the door checking admissibility?

Is your ticket a QF issued one? In fact, I have called CX HongKong asking if they can make changes to the segments that CX flies, and CX agent told me a clear NO. She said I have to ask QF to do that.
Exactly, mine is QF ticketed.

Thanks！ Yeah, mine is Business RTW ticket and the HKG flight is one and half month after my first segment, so I believe the time is enough to do it after my first segment.

Yes, I was on CX ticket #160.
In checking my original record, I had 11 hours layover time! I simply wanted to ensure I had enough buffer, just in case.

No, not the person who welcome me in. I talked with one of two staff member at the desk. When they understood my issues, they led me into small office where 2 lady agents were working. One of them took over, and she called an office in Hong Kong. I was not aware of the particular office by name as such.
My guess is they would refer more complex ticket re-issue to HQ office in Hong Kong.

As answered above, my ticket was issued by CX.

Ex-CAI route change info only. As prev posted I was originally on a QF issued ticket and able to get AA to take it over - thank goodness!. Anywhoo for anyone interested who is on an AA issued ex-CAI ticket I was forced to make changes to my routing yesterday as I called to push out my SEA-DFW-SCL sector and discovered that AA are discontinuing the route from end of March. This forced a change to SEA-MIA-SCL. I have not yet flown the first sector so the agent suggested a $125 change fee was likely and "possibly" a reprice if the fare had changed. This was obv concerning but since AA do not have a published XONEX fare out of CAI any longer I was prepared to wait and see - well good news is they came back today with the fee and it was just the $125 change fee. So it would appear that for at least some route changes a reprice wont happen on ex-CAI XONEX's of course YMMV. I'm not sure about taxes as don't know if a change between DFW and MIA would have seen any additional taxes/carrier charges under any circumstances (I assume adding a stop like LHR or CDG must incur an additional tax fee on top of the $125 at minimum)

If AA discontinued a route, thereby forcing such an involuntary change then there should have been no $125 fee assessed.

Yeah but their argument was that at the time I set up the booking and for the date I booked that sector (Jan) that there was still that route available. I def take your point but the bigger picture for me was that I was prepared to suck up $125 and live with it to keep them on my side, especially since they had done such a huge favour in taking over the debacle Qantas had created and would not fix. Once I've flown the first sector I'm probably prepared to get a little more bold with standing my ground on such changes but just want to get the dang thing underway first.

Why did you not wait until you had flown the first sector?
Did you change the date or still flying on the same date?
Flying the first sector locks in the price & rules. A big advantage for these (low priced) ex CAI *ONE* fares.

You won't have any problem, that's one of the advantages I've found with the AA RTW Desk, and one of the reasons that I book all of mine with them now. If they deny you something that you're entitled to by the Rules, just show them where the Rules permit it, and they'll happily comply. Last time this happened to me, the agent said, "How about that. Yes, you're absolutely right!", and laughed about trying to remember all the rules and keep up with the changes.

Is there a written rule around cancelled routes? I get if it was before the date I had booked but this case was the route was cancelled for later date it just happened that in my itin the confirmed date was a placeholder only

Yeah I think it would be the best option for sure. My itin is spread over nearly the full year and the DFW-SCL sector was the second last I intended to fly. I wanted to get the dates I needed for earlier sectors locked in now (for May 25) because they are hard to get routes - SYD-DFW etc, I had to be able to push out the DFW-SCL to do this and I don't start the trip till Sept.