Even on a QR plated ticket?

Why not? The only things that determine how flights accrue to an airline frequent flyer program are the marketing carrier, the rules of the program to which you're crediting and the fare you're on. The issuing/plating carrier is irrelevant.

On a side note, I just learned that Matt's Planet is a source of this misinformation.. he recommends that one should plate RTW on BA if they want to credit to AY+...etc

Is the misinformation that plating carrier matters, or that it doesn't?

Of course it does not matter.
I believe the context of his comment was that if AY plated a RTW ticket, they would know the revenue and thus credit to AY+ accordingly regardless of marketing carrier. Therefore, he recommended that people should not plate on AY (which is kind of moot given the usual AA / CX / QR / QF that most people end up with).

I had never heard of him, so I watched parts of a few of his videos. Waste of time. He seems quite impressed with his travel experience and knowledge, but IMO his knowledge is less than that of the average FTer.

Every airline on an RTW ticket knows the pricing details, -- that's how they figure out what share of the total ticket revenue each airline gets for each flight.

Have to disagree about Matt's Planet, I would describe myself as an average (mean not median) FTer and if it wasn't for his videos I wouldn't be contemplating an RTW. I mainly only review the BA forum with some EI and AA from time to time, I only visited the Oneworld forum for the first time a couple of months ago.
After the slicing and dicing of the BA FF club, significant numbers of the club were left without a clear cost effective path to gaining premium status. Matt put together several videos - which he earns a living from - on the various Oneworld options to regain status. It appears that Finnair+ is generally the best option. I have looked at the Finnair website and it is nowhere near as eloquent as Matt has been!

QF Tickets Itineraries begining with a WY Flight (Oman Air)
 

I've been playing with ex-Africa Oneworld Explorer itineraries
Finally managed to price up an itinerary with WY as first carrier
Final price is quoted in AUD - so I presume QF would be doing the ticketing

Just an FYI for y'all

While true, the plating carrier is irrelevant in terms of earning, but most people plating on AA are booking via the AA RTW desk and therefore require an inter-continental AA coded flight. As you well know that dramatically lowers what they earn in AAdvantage.

Otherwise it's likely cheaper to plate on QR or another OW carrier depending on segments being flown, if you're using a travel agent.

How's that looking in terms of fees over base price? No one has talked about this setup yet.

DONE5: starting ZNZ (i.e. Tanzania)
- AUD14583 - base fare (=USD9499, which is correct for starting in Tanzania, according to EF)
- AUD3283 - taxes and charges

Good reference point, thanks for posting it. Definitely not getting any break on the YQ / YR there are you?

Assume you know this already, but I'm pretty sure Kenya is exactly the same base price as Tanzania, though would require QR if going from MBA which you need a travel agent for. I almost wonder if QR MBA-DOH-MNL would save you a chunk of fees? You're the first one posting anything about WY, so not sure how their fees are in comparison and unfortunately you can't get a comprehensive breakdown in the OW tool.

QR did fly MBA-DOH, but that stopped during the covid shutdown, and never restarted :mad:

I agree, he is very clear. His trip is not for vacation, but for getting Emerald oneworld status. And, IIRC, his strategy assumes achieving top tier from no status for X GBP...What I found fascinating is the 180 in planning needed to optimize the points/miles/avios currency for AY compared with similar goal of achieving status and a stash of award miles with AA. The carriers used to reach the respective goals are totally different. I don't feel so bad (and, admittedly it was but a twinge anyway) for wanting status with AA but avoiding to the maximum extent possible flying a segment with an AA flight number. AA makes up for the loss of AA frequent flyers who are booking JL, QR, and AY with the Finnair flyers (and presumably others) who are targeting AA and the 3 other carriers Matt mentions.

I have been reading much of this thread, but to be honest, not every single post. Is QR the best carrier to get a DONE4 plated on in terms of saving on taxes/surcharges?

Based on current opinion,yes.. although I don't know if other airlines would be similarly beneficial..such as AS. Would need a travel agent to test that out.

Yeah, I agree. Unfortunately the travel agent I have a decent amount of a voucher with has never done one of these before. So I am going to have to do much of the legwork on this on my own as possible, and then just parse things out for them.

Deleted

Has anyone ever done a ticket issued by Royal Air Maroc (by calling them and giving them the flights you want) ?
I called to ask if they would do such a thing, and they said yes, but I wanted to get some confirmation that they actually would before investing a lot of time into my research.

I have been trying to put together an ex-OSL DONE4 with the help of a travel agent and we're coming up with a pricing error that neither of us can figure out. First I thought it might be the South Africa rule, but we tried subbing HRE in place of JNB and no luck.

OSL-xDOH-NRT-BLR-NRT-SIN-HND-JFK-xLAX-ANC-xDFW-xDOH-JNB-xDOH-CMN-DOH-OSL

It's pricing only if I drop JNB or CMN on that itinerary, or alternately it's accepting CMN-xLHR-OSL on the tail end. Why isn't it allowing me to go back via DOH? Is it something about the distinction between Europe and the Middle East inside that region?

Similarly in the online tool I could price out almost the same itinerary, but had to go OSL-xHEL-NRT at the start since the tool won't allow QR on the first segment. It happily prices that including the CMN-DOH-OSL on the end.
(so that one that's pricing in the tool is OSL-xHEL-NRT-BLR-NRT-SIN-HND-JFK-xLAX-ANC-xDFW-xDOH-JNB-xDOH-CMN-DOH-OSL)

Well I don't know what you and your agent are doing wrong, or what I'm doing right, but I got the following itinerary to price up in the tool:
All in cost NOK74,438

The tool offered some strange choices, so I had to be careful that I got just what I wanted.
I will send you (dvs7310) a PM with more detail

Ah sorry, indeed that one is pricing ok, I was using it to try to troubleshoot. The one I want is the top one, OSL-xDOH-NRT... etc. I can't test that in the tool because the QR segment.

I'm going to try it later just to test with LHR-xAMM-BKK or LHR-xMCT-BKK and adjust things in Asia just to see what error I get since that replicates what I actually am trying to do.

Europe point of origin, transit Middle East to Asia. Continue Asia and North America journey, North America to Africa via DOH (middle east), then back to Europe (Morocco or would be satisfied with Portugal), and intra Europe via the middle east.

We think it's something with the many DOH transits and one stopover. But I have seen other people's itineraries that had DOH on all of their intra Europe. But they probably didn't have Africa on it.

That's the mystery, why is it requiring me to have a connection in Europe (but not the middle east) on either the first or last leg, but not not allowing both in the middle east?

EDIT: I've done a bit of testing on this now, and it seems it's definitely something with the Europe / Middle East distinction. I can still get it to price when I shift the Asia portion, it seems fine if I go directly Europe to Asia (example LHR-BKK instead of LHR-MCT-BKK) but it won't price if I'm transiting the middle east (leaving the final segments the same JNB-DOH-CMN-DOH-starting point), which I thought and many other people here thought that's treated as the same zone. I've not violating stopover limits in the continent of origin, and I'm not violating segment limits. So this is really a new one I've never seen on this forum yet.

I'm wondering if I'm going to have to change this to an Asian point of origin. I can't do ex-TYO because I need 2x long stopovers in TYO. But I'm also not sure I can get nearly the same mileage earned from any of the lower priced POO's in Asia....

Hi again dvs7310
I've been playing around with this too.
And I've got the following itinerary to price up OK
So at the start, it has

• Europe via the Middle East to Asia, and

At the end it has:

• North America to Africa via the Middle East, followed by
• Africa to Europe (CMN) via the Middle East, followed by
• Europe to Middle East (CMN-DOH), followed by
• Middle East to Europe (DOH-ARN)

I think something else is going on the itineraries you've been trying.
Like you I tried itineraries starting in London, but they gave error messages about returning the country of origin when trying to fly DFW-JNB (trying to route me via LHR)
Another problem I had was caused by the tool making suggestions that resulted in the itinerary having more than 16 segments (for example into NRT, out from HND). Even after I fixed them all, on the final segment the tool said I had more than 16 segments (in that faint, hard to spot, orange-coloured text)
The trick I found that worked was to save the complete itinerary, log out of the tool, close its web browser window, and then reopen it.

dvs7310 - I'll send you a PM

I put down a route for a friend of mine which comes to a DONE5:

Carrier Flight
Number Departing Arriving Booking
Code Meals City Date & Time City Time https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/me...os/default.gif
QATAR AIRWAYS 180 OSL Oslo okt 10, 2025
08:50 AM DOH Doha okt 10, 2025
04:20 PM D N/A https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/me...os/default.gif
QATAR AIRWAYS 838 DOH Doha okt 10, 2025
07:25 PM BKK Bangkok okt 11, 2025
06:15 AM D N/A https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/me...rLogos/CPA.gif
CATHAY PACIFIC AIRWAYS 740 HAN Hanoi nov 23, 2025
11:05 AM HKG Hong Kong nov 23, 2025
02:00 PM D N/A https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/me...rLogos/CPA.gif
CATHAY PACIFIC AIRWAYS 155 HKG Hong Kong nov 24, 2025
11:50 PM BNE Brisbane nov 25, 2025
10:30 AM D N/A https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/me...rLogos/QFA.gif
QANTAS AIRWAYS 197 BNE Brisbane nov 26, 2025
10:00 PM APW Apia nov 27, 2025
05:55 AM D N/A https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/me...ijiAirways.gif
FIJI AIRWAYS 254 APW Apia nov 30, 2025
04:00 PM NAN Nadi nov 30, 2025
05:00 PM D N/A https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/me...ijiAirways.gif
FIJI AIRWAYS 411 NAN Nadi dec 03, 2025
09:30 AM AKL Auckland dec 03, 2025
01:40 PM D N/A https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/me...rLogos/QFA.gif
QANTAS AIRWAYS 182 AKL Auckland dec 30, 2025
10:25 AM SYD Sydney dec 30, 2025
11:55 AM D N/A https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/me...rLogos/QFA.gif
QANTAS AIRWAYS 27 SYD Sydney feb 05, 2026
12:20 PM SCL Santiago feb 05, 2026
10:55 AM D N/A https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/me...rLogos/AAL.gif
AMERICAN AIRLINES 936 GIG Rio De Janeiro mrt 09, 2026
10:30 PM DFW Dallas/ Fort Worth mrt 10, 2026
07:15 AM D Dinner
Breakfast https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/me...rLogos/AAL.gif
AMERICAN AIRLINES 115 DFW Dallas/ Fort Worth mrt 10, 2026
09:15 AM HNL Honolulu mrt 10, 2026
12:50 PM D Lunch
Snack https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/me...rLogos/AAL.gif
AMERICAN AIRLINES OPERATED BY BRITISH AIRWAYS 6907 SEA Seattle apr 22, 2026
08:20 PM LHR London apr 23, 2026
01:40 PM D Meal https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/me...rLogos/AAL.gif
AMERICAN AIRLINES OPERATED BY BRITISH AIRWAYS 7254 LHR London apr 23, 2026
04:05 PM OSL Oslo apr 23, 2026
07:15 PM D Meal

Base fare is euro is 5625, but it hits me with a whopping 2078 euro in taxes next to 321 euro in carrier imposed fees.

Anyone that's has an idea what airline or stop is triggering these costs so that I can see if there is a workaround?

I'm guessing the QF long haul

Is there any way to find out? I had a QF long haul this year (JFK-AKL-SYD) but got only 1000 euro total on a DONE4.

Who is the issuing carrier?

Issued by AA

Hi peterd87
Your route is difficult to read, so I created a map of it for us allHope I got it right
So it's 5 continents, 16 segments
13 flight segments and
3 surface segments (HAN-BKK, SCL-GIG, HNL-SEA)

Something seems off to me - you say "2078 euro in taxes next to 321 euro in carrier imposed fees"
Taxes are imposed by governments. They will be the same no matter which carriers you choose. And they do seem very high to me
By changing carriers, you can only affect the carrier imposed fees

When you say you "I put down a route.."
What do you mean? How did you get this priced?

Finally, I think the itinerary is invalid. I understand the rule "Backtracking between Hawaii and other points in North America is not permitted"
to mean that even a surface segment backtrack is not allowed

Thanks for the map it helps, and yes you are all correct. 13 fights, 3 surface segments.I got this route priced via AA, the itinerary was valid according to them after adding the surface segment instead of flight. Initially I had a flight from HNL-SEA that caused the backtracking issue they could not price out.

What I can try is to remove SYD-SCL and replace by SYD-DFW-GIG to get rid of the surface segment and likely costly QF flight

There is a total of 2078 taxes and fees, of which 1827 are shown as 'other taxes and carrier imposed fees' the other 250 euro are splitted clearly (passenger security charge, airports fee, etc)

That's very interesting.
I recall trying to price up an itinerary with such a backtrack in the online tool, and failing.
I just now plugged this simple itinerary into the online tool:
LHR-DFW-HNL (surface) SFO-HKG-LHR

The tool said "Travel from North America to Hawaii and back is not permitted. Please select a different destination."
So I think you've had a win with AA fares team :tu:

Except that I'm stuck with the to me too high costs on the taxes. :D

Let's see what they think after removing the QF segment on SYD-SCL.

So, feedback after my contact with AA today.

Got rid of the SYD-SCL longhaul on QF, now routed via DFW on AA codeshare. Also removed LHR and added SEA-DOH-OSL instead. They still allowed me to keep the 'backtrack' with a surface segment from HNL to SEA. All changes removed over a 1000 euro of fees.

For the record:
MAP with adjustments

Pricing is now as follows DONE5 ex OSL:
Base: 5636
Taxes and fees: 1219
Carrier imposed: 78

Total 6933 euro

Afternoon all!

I read a lot of people's posts about using the online tool to price things up, and I am amazed. Whenever I try using the tool to price an XONEX trip it just automatically defaults to a Global Explorer and says invalid itinerary as soon as it reaches more than 34,000 miles. Then whenever I try an ANC segment it always gives the "only one flight to and one flight from Alaska permitted - even though I am only trying to book one flight to and one flight from Alaska. the other thing that continually comes up is if I have say an OSL-HEL and DFW-DOH-MAD-DOH-OSL in the itinerary, it tells me I can only have 2 stop overs in the continent of origin, even when I choose dates that clearly indicate a connection rather than a stop-over. Any ideas where I am going wrong?

I also forgot, sometimes it lets me through to choosing flights, evidently as an Explorer ticket as it says so, but then tells me I cannot exceed 34,000 miles in business or first class! See pic.
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...aa0796f15.jpeg

Your posts are better suited to this thread. See in particular posts 689 and 690.

Thank you!

What route? Airlines? Stopover vs transit.
It may be an invalid xONEx route, but OK for GLOB.. But the "34000 miles" is often a generic error messgae:

This is a known and long standing error in the system, much discussed on FT.

The online tool has plenty of issues, but sabre has many as well. Some that I have found:
1. It fails with MH codeshares operated by QR
2. It fails if you try to use all 6 segments in North America. You have to leave one off, as a surface segment.
3. It counts an extra continent when it shouldn't. For example with some itineraries when I've added JFK-EZE-JFK it jumps from 4 continents to 6. Also something like SYD-JNB-LHR seems to add Asia.
I've long suspected that the route maps for these fares in Sabre are wrong, but I don't understand how to read them. Usually route maps are cities but for the explorer fares, route maps contain only numbers.
So you are probably the victim of a bad route map for your desired itinerary. Probably there's not much you can do other than ask an airline to do the ticketing. Also you can try swapping in DFW-LHR-JNB instead of DFW-DOH-LHR. Or similarly JNB-LHR-CMN.

You're indeed correct, it is a Sabre issue. The travel agent I am working with was able to find the errors in the route map that you mentioned and has elevated them to Sabre support, but they need to talk to QR and RJ (the airlines involved in the examples we presented). We got it to price in Amadeus finally, but had to remove one TYO stopover to get it, so even Amadeus still seems imperfect on this routing.

Now we're battling a new issue. It's actually much better for me for positioning to go ex-India, but that one refuses to price unless CX is the first carrier, it will not price JL DEL-HND or BLR-NRT. So now trying one final option in Asia before throwing in the towel and just dealing with my costly positioning back from OSL at the end. I'm actually also able to get ex-JNB to price as well on the same general itinerary (some orders swapped around, and had to price it with CX as first carrier since QR doesn't work in the tool) and it's pretty much the same price as ex-OSL, but I have the same exact positioning issue there. I'm positioning to any of the starting points from CAI, so that's not too bad, but getting back to Japan from JNB or OSL isn't cheap with cash or miles.