I'm not sure anything has really changed from when you asked this a couple of weeks ago and I don't know if any of us really know the answer. You can cancel and issued but not yet started DONE4 and receive a refund less 5%.
Whether or not you can cancel without the penalty for a 7 hour time change to one of the flights is up to AA and its policies as noted by Mwenenzi in the other thread.
See:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/amer...ed-flight.html

What had changed was I was asking for information before cancelling and trying to find out about previous experience from others (sort of the reason for FT?). Now I've cancelled and received an outcome different than expected and, again, asking for previous experience and knowledge. But thanks for the link.

My point is (was) that for a refund based upon a retiming of a flight it will still be subject to AA's policies.
I've refunded several unflown xonex tickets over the years (including thru the AA RTW desk) but always subject to the 5% reduction. If the AA RTW desk told me it was refundable in full (without the 5% fee) then I would take it up with the RTW desk or sit tight if they say everything is fine. If AA eventually comes back and says it isn't refundable at all, then I think you would recontact the AA RTW desk, AA customer service, and file a DOT complaint.
For the dates of your planned trip, will you actually be able to enter those countries? Rule 16(b)(2) would provide a full refund under the xonex rules if you are not able to enter, and you wouldn't have to rely upon AA's policies regarding cancellation/refund for a flight retiming.

Here is the relevant section of the fare rules. I was able to get a full refund for my exKRT years ago when my kid ended up in the hospital.

AA RTW Desk – changed policy
 

So I was trying to set up my next DONE4 (yay!). Starts in Asia the first carrier being UL (Sri Lankan)

Phoned AA’s RTW desk, as I’ve done before. Per AA’s previous policy I had an AA “overwater” flight in the itinerary (i.e. intercontinental flight) which is what they required to ticket an itinerary where the first flight is not an AA flight.

• First agent said they won’t do it, because AA is not the first carrier
• HUCA – and got the same agent!
• HUCA – different agent put me on hold to check with a supervisor; after 45mins on hold I hung up
• HUCA- 3rd agent said AA has changed its policy – now AA must be either the first carrier or the first overwater carrier for them to ticket

Thoughts?

HUCA
Phone AA Aust
HUCA

AFAIK my Perth Aussie travel agent (who has issued OWE in the past) is still "working"
I will check on the Colombo agent.....

In case I am going to go wandering
Fred

If AAgent name Kelly is still there, ask for her by name. She seems to know the products & rules well, and seems to have the authority to act on things. My experience that was.

Thanks for clipping the Cancellation Rules.
Do you think Paragraph 3, "FOR PARTIALLY USED ....." applies to current COVID restrictions to countries (stop-over and/or transit) like HKG, BOM, KEL, TYO?
I am sitting on a partial ticket that covers those very cities/countries.

Is there an Article # for that Clipping with which I can quote to the AAgent, if & when necessary?

TIA.

On a similar note, once AA have written the ticket according to their own 'requirements', can they refuse to change it? Here's a hypothetical: say the original booking includes ... -NRT-LAX-JFK- ... on AA. If I need / want to pay the $125 and make some changes, could I get ... -NRT-HKG-JFK- ... on CX?

Anybody have any experience with such a thing and the AA RTW desk? TIA

You should be able to do that. Only issue is if that was your only overwater AA flight, an AA RTW agent might object, but in that case you could book the CX flight as an AA code.

Longish story short - I managed to ticket my itinerary using the booking tool (!) and to pay Sri Lankan Airlines for it. So all's well that ends well I guess. I'm also more comfortable than I had expected to be in dealing with SriLankan customer service - I've had a number of interactions with them getting everything set up, competence has been patchy, but those that were competent were very competent :tu:Thanks for the contact details of your Colombo agent. She tried hard to get my itinerary ticketed, but wasn't able to do it.I tried the AA RTW desk a few more times, I was not able to get Kelly but the agents I did speak to were both fully aware of the policy change, the second agent said it had come from Oneworld (so not an AA initiative). I'm going to email one of my contacts inside Oneworld to get a verification of that and maybe what the rationale is for the change.

As I read it, the first OVER WATER flight translates to "between continents"?
And Pakistan to Sri Lanka is all within Asia.
But UL would still have been the first carrier - ticketed and metal flown
Was there a specific reason a TA could not ticket?

Please help my understanding of the new wandering
Fred

Suspect "OVER WATER" means the segment across TC, so TC1-TC2, TC2-TC3, or TC3-TC1, or v. v. GDS autoprice would pick the first "OVER WATER" airline as validating carrier, although it can be overriden.

This could be big. It's not too many years ago that the general understanding here was that any airline involved on an xONEx itinerary could write the ticket -- although some, e.g., AA, didn't want to bother with it unless there was a trans-oceanic segment on their metal (but I vaguely remember anecdotes in this forum about people getting trips ticketed by carriers who weren't even involved at all!).

If it's not an AA initiative policy change but rather something imposed upon the AA RTW desk by OW, then it raises a couple of questions. (1) Is this something that OW wants to enforce (for whatever reason) only on AA, or (2) is it something that will sooner or later apply to all OW carriers in their writing of xONEx tix? That could be a conscious strategy to either force some OW members to up their game or alternatively to make the xONEx (and perhaps the GlobalX too but I don't know anything about that one) much less attractive to pax.

It will be interesting to see if / when / how this new requirement is incorporated into the Rules.