Passing through OSL, HEL, SIN, HND, SFO, LAS and DFW. At least SIN, HND and SFO have some kind of QF ticketing-(ish) presence. As for the rest of the segments: in my experience, AY tends to be okay about day of departure stuff when it's under airport control. Hopefully all will be fine :)

Departure is in a few weeks, so very little time for sched changes, and I don't currently plan on making any notable changes to the ticket, so should be okay.

Curious if Oneworld Emerald status non-QF gets me through to a decent contact center? - Or am I a mere mortal with QF?

Yes, ticketing carrier makes a difference, especially the carrier imposed charges.

while you don’t plan on making changes why wouldn’t you create the routing and book from AA?

I had (wrongly?) assumed that my ticketing carrier defaulted to the first carrier, or first significant (long haul) carrier?

Seems I could just phone AA or BA and ask them to ticket. That said, part of my reason for doing a DONE is to collect a few more BA tier points and to trigger Emerald for Life. So, having my ticket plated on non BA/AA/IB stock may actually help force a 'distance based' calculation vs revenue based miles/tier points. Will see how this tradeoff lands ...

Apologies if this is the wrong thread but I can't find where to post this question.
If I book a RTW ticket with AY as the issusing carrier, and I credit the points to BA, will that mean I will get the AY distance to tier mile conversion for all my flights or just the ones with AY (i.e. is operating carrier more important than marketing carrier). And if I credit the points to AY, will I get the points based on spend or on distance flown on non-AY operated flights?

Would ask this in the British Airways forum.
I am very sure CWS or KARFA will reply promptly.
With the new rules they just introduced, spins my head.

Thanks, will do!

No, if you credit to BA you will get the TPs credited in line with BAC rules for each airline/codeshare (I’m assuming you mean post April 1st, but current crediting is the same under the current rules) the grey area being how AA or BA sectors will credit?

I thought I’d share my experience booking my 4th Oneworld Classic flight itinerary this week. We have a son in London and a daughter in New York, thus we travel a lot. We sometimes do a paid RTW in between to rack up points and status and this year thanks to our recent RTW booked through AA, I’ve attained Platinum with Qantas and my husband has Platinum Pro with AA. Given that Qantas is devaluing their points after 5 August this year I thought we’d squeeze one more business class OWA trip in while I have access to the premium call centre. I spent two full days planning route after route, trying to find enough business class award flights to get us to the places we wanted to go. This is the itinerary I ended up with.

SYD-LAX (XO) -PDX- (XO) LAX-HND (XO) -BKK (XO) -HEL-LHR (XO)-PER-SYD

34,612 miles

Upon request Qantas released 2 x business class seats SYD-LAX (a month in US with family) then the Portland leg for a couple of weeks in Canada. Transiting back through LAX to a short stopover in Tokyo, then down to BKK when we will take separate positioning flights back to Sydney to spend Christmas before flying back to BKK in April to resume the OWA itinerary and transit HEL to London (Europe) to spend 3 months before coming back home.

I have booked dummy dates for the BKK-HEL-LHR-PER-SYD and plan to change those dates as soon as the flights become available for April/May and before my Platinum status runs out (in October this year). I hope to again request the release of 2 x QF business seats for the LHR-PER-SYD (alt. LHR-SIN-SYD). The other Finnair flights seem to have reasonable availability if I get in quickly.

I have to say that with Platinum status the entire booking process is a completely different ball game. Hitherto I have had no status and even with all the flight availability checked in advance, every single time was an exercise in anger management and frustration. Having access to the premium team – people who actually know what they are doing and are happy to actually do it for you! It was, believe it or not, a pleasant experience! The whole itinerary took just under 2 hours to book and ticket!

But my real problem here is that the LAX-HND on AA has only econ availability. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I could find business award availability on this leg? I have put flight alerts into EF for several AA flights on and around the required date and it shows JAL flights but not award availability. Worst case scenario, could we request a points upgrade closer to the time using my husband’s account as Plat Pro? Can that be done if it’s a qantas booked OWA itinerary?

Hoping to get some more experienced minds to give me some advice?

Is this a oneworld classic award, pye1201? If so, that's a Qantas-specific product and is probably best suited to the QF forum?

To me reads is a Qantas Oneworld classic award (which does not need to be around the world)
As such rules are not like the cash paid Oneworld products. Getting business award vs D class a very different problem.
AFF thread-->Oneworld Classic Flight Reward Discussion - The Definitive Thread

Thank you - you're right. I will repost on the correct thread! Apologies for wasting anyone's time!!

£502 extra YQ tax OSL vs ARN??
 

Hello community, I'm hoping to book my first DONE5 tomorrow, if I can beat an imminent ticket deadline! I'm wondering if anyone can help with a YQ conundrum..

The AA RTW team have quoted me £5419 base fare + £1768 taxes and surcharges for ARN-MADx-BOG surface BAQ-MIA-MIA-LAX-HND-BKK-CMB-BOM-LHR-NBO-LHR-ARN

However when we switch to departure to/from OSL, they quoted £4719 (great!) plus £2270 taxes and surcharges (booo, thats £502 more!).

I cannot find any reason for this extra YQ.As far as I can see, Iberia charge the same YQ to BOG from both OSL and ARN, and I believe it's the same YQ for NBO to both OSL and ARN coming home with BA. The online booking tool shows a much lower tax and surcharge fare figure (approx £500 less), but I cant get it to book my itinerary.

Any thoughts on how to get past this extra £502? Would it be lower booked through IB themselves, or another airline?

Many thanks in advance, Giles_G

Yes that re-route is fine.

You can ticket oneworld fares on any oneworld carrier that participates in the itinerary - personally I tend to choose QF, QR or JL as the ticketing carrier. The online booking tool usually defaults to the first carrier, but not always.

The ticket stock is irrelevant for the purposes of crediting AA/IB/BA flights to BA. AA/IB/BA flights ticketed on non-AA/IB/BA ticket stock will still credit as fare-based rather than distance-based.

The flights will credit as per the marketing carrier. This means a BA/AA/IB flight (whether prime or codeshare) will credit as spend-based and everyone else will credit as distance-based. For clarity, AA operated by QR will credit as spend-based whereas QR operated by AA will credit as distance-based.

See above. BA/AA/IB flight (whether prime or codeshare) will credit as spend-based and everyone else will credit as distance-based.

[QUOTE=madrooster;36881576



See above. BA/AA/IB flight (whether prime or codeshare) will credit as spend-based and everyone else will credit as distance-based.[/QUOTE]

That’s what I’d expect but wasn’t sure if BAC would have access to the full fare data to make that calculation if not booked with them?

I'm sure there's data sharing.

Yes, that is the real question here. Will BAC be able to to see the total cost of the ticket if they are the issuing carrier, and therfore will they only give TP based on spend? If so,it would be pointless crediting to them, or using them as the issuing carrier.

I've got a QF plated DONE with an AA segment. From AA's MMB flow I can get a full fare and taxes breakdown, so I assume data sharing happens between all OW carriers on these regardless of ticketing carrier. Given how tightly coupled AA and BA's revenue based points systems are, I suspect BA will get segment based fare costs pretty easily. That said, I'll be crediting this to BA when I fly in a couple months, so will report back.

Absolutely they do. The marketing carrier is the carrier on the ticket coupon and they know what they are getting paid for that ticket coupon.

Thus, airlines know the fare value of each ticket coupon the moment the ticket is issued. The backend data for all this is all filed with ATPCO by the airlines.

The ticket stock is irrelevant for this reason - regardless of ticket stock, when a ticket is issued, the proration of the fare across the coupons is known.

The marketing carrier then reports this data in the earn files to whoever the FFP is, if they have an agreement to report such data. AA obviously has agreements with BA/IB to report the data to them and vice versa.

See above for the explanation of how it works.

It doesn't matter who the ticketing carrier is as I stated previously. If it's BA/AA/IB marketed, they will know what the coupon is worth and report/credit accordingly.

Any participating carrier on the ticket can view the fare data. It's not specifically a oneworld thing. You can have a ticket that's got AC, LH and QF on it, issued by AC and AC/LH/QF will all know what their respective coupons are worth.

Hi Giles_G


The same routing from Oslo, just been told by British Airways that you are not allowed hitting London 2 times, they see it as backtracking (unable to price in Amadeus).

While the exact same route in Travelport is pricing it, but unable to store the fare, reason, exceeds more then 20 taxes (must be done manually. so no guaranteed quote).

Created also on the RTW tool, valid routing but unable to price it because the flight from Miami to Los Angeles is in Y.

Any experts on this issue?

Giles_G thanks for your patience.

Any experts on this issue?

regards

Don't have access to full rules but the first LHR may not be allowed, unless some exception.
EU/UK-South America-North America-Asia-UK/EU-Africa-EU
For ARN-MADx-BOG surface BAQ-MIA-MIA-LAX-HND-BKK-CMB-BOM-LHR-NBO-LHR-ARN try BOM-DOH-NBO

Do you mind sharing the breakdown if it’s easy to do? Curious how the money gets split (in part in case I do have to book some flights on the revenue airlines in the future).

Thanks so much for your thoughtful reply Mwenenzi . I am thinking its just about OK because:

a. its not using the same two airports in the same direction (e.g. LHR-DOH twice)
b. Its not stopping in the same origin country more than once (ie. Sweden or Norway)
c. Its still only 2 stopovers within the origin continent
d. as you say I believe there is an exception where you are allowed to cross from Europe/ME to Africa once in each direction (see shouty rule quote below)

"ONLY ONE INTERCONTINENTAL DEPARTURE AND ONE INTERCONTINENTAL ARRIVAL PERMITTED IN EACH CONTINENT EXCEPT AS FOLLOWS -
1. TWO PERMITTED IN NORTH AMERICA.
2. TWO PERMITTED IN ASIA.
3. TWO PERMITTED IN EUROPE/MIDDLE EAST FOR TRAVEL TO/FROM/VIA AFRICA. IF TRAVEL IS TO/FROM EUROPE IN BOTH DIRECTIONS ITINERARY MAY NOT INCLUDE MAURITIUS/SOUTH AFRICA."

The AA desk did OK this itinerary. However, it may be that you are meant to come back to your origin airport straight after the trip south? (I can't see this in the rules though, therefore dare I say the BA desk may have been wrong? We will find out.. )

I am trying to book a DONE3 xTYO.

First leg is on JL from HND to BKK.

First long-haul/intercontinental routing is BKK-xHKG-oLAX on CX.

I contacted CX in Tokyo but they said to contact JAL as they are the carrier on the first leg.

How do I get this ticketed? Call JAL in the U.S.? Use the AA RTW desk, perhaps?

Using the AA rtw desk is the easiest option to book (and later make changes).

Mwenenzi,

Thank you.

Routing below.

For OSL-MAD-BOG surface BAQ-MIA-LAX-HND-BKK-CMB-BOM-DOH-NBO-DOH-LHR-OSL (also when travelling NBO-DOH-LHR-OSL) prices it as DGLOB34.

What i am missing here?

British Airways confirmed again today not valid backtracking story (even with the screenshot from Oneworld RTW tool).

American Airways very firm valid.

Qatar Airways hesitating, but also valid as long it does autoprice.

Iberia no comment, useless.

regards

What are the experiences with refunding ongoing DONEx ticket? Can they (e.g. QF) calculate the remaining amount easily, and are there any pitfalls apart from the 5% fee? I'd like to ask how they calculate it in the first place but :-)

We have done EUR-APAC-ASIA legs with ASIA-to-NA, local NA, and back to EU flights remaining and for our travel needs, cancelling the ticket is a viable option.

If that's the case, why not just ticket with AA?

Not really viable. If you fail to complete your ticket, the airline has the right to reprice the flights you did take as a series of one-way flights, undoubtedly much more expensive than the cost of your DONEx ticket. If your situation is that you don't need the remaining flights, you may want to fly them anyway, both to earn the extra miles and to avoid oppressive repricing by the rules. If you can't fly the remaining flights, I would suggest changing the dates to as far out as you can then just don't fly them. It's very unlikely that the airline will realize that you never completed the ticket, and anecdotal evidence in various FT threads confirms this.

(It's never been clear to me that the airline has the "right" to do this. I find it hard to imagine a judge in a small claims court in the UK enforcing such a claim against a consumer. To believe that such a right existed, I would want to see unambiguous wording in a contract of carriage and a history of case law supporting that such a right was actually enforceable. In any case, I have dropped dozens of sectors in my time and never once heard anything about it.)

See rule 16(b)3:
The reference to "fare for the transportation used" can only be the point-to-point fare because if you don't fly the entire itinerary, you are not eligible for a DONEx fare. See the relevant part of rule 4(c):Since you would not be terminating at the same point, you are not eligible for this fare. Oh, and it wouldn't be in Small Claims Court, -- the point-to-point fare would far exceed the Small Claims limit.


Think that you can beat them on this? Give it a shot and let us know how it turns out!


I stand by my previous recommendation, -- move the dates out as far as possible on flights that are not going to be flown and then just forget about it. It would be almost impossible for the airlines to find you. And there's always the possibility that you may find a use for those segments at some point in the future before the ticket expires.

I'm not sure how you square "refund if any" to mean "refund if any, or also maybe you owe us".

In any case, I won't change my mind until I see BA vs FlyerTalker cited with approval by a senior court.

On the substance of the matter, we agree.

The issuing airline doesn't have to sue. it can and will just charge the same card used to buy the ticket. And, as stated above, if the passenger wants to sue to try to recover the money, s/he will not be in small claims court, so s/he will be coming up with money for a lawyer . . . who will have to convince the court that the rules either don't say what they clearly do, or that they don't apply to this passenger.

But by all means, stick to your guns! And let us know how it turns out!!

Having an issue with availability on a specific Cathay flight. Expert Flyer showing loads of availability, but AA RTW desk can't see it. I have 4 Cathay segments and 3 of them were fine (lots of availability seemingly matching what I was seeing on Expert Flyer). The one causing issue is CTS-HKG on 26 June. Expert Flyer shows D7 but AA were only seeing 1 seat.

Is there any other way of checking availability other than just calling AA to check it every now and then?

Whilst it doesn't help you very much I can confirm I was having a similar issue on CX recently like that as well (in my case it was HKG-LHR at Chinese New Year), the leg you are taking is around a Hong Kong public holiday (1 July), so perhaps that explains the problem. I was unable to fix it and had to take a different route, which in your case may end up needing to be via Tokyo or Osaka. Mine didn't change closer to the time, and in fact CX were "Right" to block the seats as the plane organically went down to D0 and then J0 before takeoff (I watched). Suggest if you have the time you raise a ticket to ExpertFlyer to try and get them to fix their data feed, the more complaints the better:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/onew...king-tool.html

Availability and what is available for purchase are two separate things. Airlines may choose to block inventory for yield management purposes, for example, which is impossible for Expertflyer to verify. Stop making the false connection that what you see in EF equals what is available for your RTW ticket. We all recognize that these tickets can deliver value that outpaces buying point to point tickets. Why would the airline allow all of the available inventory to go to these discounted fare products? There are many types of discounts in play for airlines and they have to figure out what maximizes their revenue and fills their planes.

And I have encountered married segment issues with
AA, AS and CX when trying to get a TA to build a DONEx ticket.

Specifically:
DEN to TUS not wanting to go through PHX and
KUL to CMB where a long transfer time (10-12 hours) was desired in HKG

Did not improve my disposition or my wandering
Fred

That doesn't make any sense to me. If an airline doesn't want to make D class fares available to a paid D class ticket in an alliance don't put them into the D "discounted fare" bucket - the extension of what you say is that ultimately all oneworld airlines could say that no D class seat in their inventory is available to be used for a DONEx ticket. Cathay and others are not playing fair in the alliance here and I suspect talking to the AA desk that it is being pushed up chain as a significant concern by at least the AA RTW desk.

For my 2 cents I had very similar issues on the same route with CX, in particular married segments for the onward CX flight were causing issues for AA. They were able to solve it ultimately by breaking the married segment, I don't think it was easy but they got there. Also note on EF there are 3 CX flights a day on that route at the moment (demand from skiing, CNY, Sapporo ice fest etc) dropping to your just one in June but as I recall for a long time when I was trying to book mid last year only 2 flights showed in Jan/Feb so possible CX may well add at least one of those back? CX gurus would be better to ask about that.