Unfortunately, a lot of calls with them will be surprisingly longer and less efficient than you would otherwise expect, including just making changes to the dates of flights within your itinerary. But you can get enormous value out of this ticket and it is still a good value even if you spend a lot of time on hold with American Airlines.

Are you able to share the route and the pricing (base cost and surcharges?)

There are advantages for Qantas members as well.

In which currency did you see the pricing initially? You probably could have simply paid in that currency, unless your credit card charges a currency conversion fee.

my RTW departs OSL so I was expecting to pay in NOK, but I was charged in USD. Itinerary on aa.com shows NOK

While on hold I found other posts in this thread that mention charges in USD for people with US credit cards. Surprised but no big deal. My card has no FX fees.

I eventually booked a DONE4 ticket directly on the OW site, so ticketed via Qantas, as it was not overly complicated. Then came recent events and my QR flights from OSL to DPS via LHR and DOH were cancelled. I was rebooked on an impossible connection, where the LHR-DOH flight departed before the OSL-LHR flight that was supposed to precede it.

I called Qantas to rebook, keeping the original OSL-LHR, and then asking the agent to book me LHR-HKG and then from HKG-DPS the following day, with an overnight in Hong Kong. He was knowledgeable enough, but told me that there was no D class availability for most of that day's LHR-HKG flights, including the one I wanted to travel on that matched up with the BA783 from OSL landing at 18:30. However, all that day's LHR-HKG flights have D class as per ExpertFlyer, and I'm also able to price up my desired itinerary just fine on the Oneworld tool today.

Is there any trick to requesting the flights to get him to see the same availability? Perhaps asking him to search for OSL-xLHR-HKG, and then a separate HKG-DPS? Or any other recommendations?

I'm sorry, I don't understand why you knowingly booked directly on the Oneworld site instead of AA RTW desk (whom you previously contacted) or perhaps with one of the handful of RTW-specialized travel agents cited in this forum.. and given the countless issues reported about QF agents servicing RTW tickets, why are you in this situation?

Any OW RTW ticket that touches or overflies the Middle East has the potentiation, if not the certainty, to become "complicated".

As post above your problem is self inflicted.

As has been discussed a lot, an unwelcome development in the past couple of years is the implementation of additional limitations on availability beyond what is visible using Expert Flyer or similar tools. It's clear that airlines have the ability to impose availability limitations based on the point of commencement/origin of an itinerary. There might also be an ability to limit based on the type of fare (this is murky). This is on top of the usual married segments limitations. You can verify that this is occurring by asking an agent to check availability of desired flights in a new record. If the flight has plenty of inventory in a new record but none in your record, that's proof it is happened. The online booking engine seems to ignore this, but it's unclear what would happen if you booked a new record using it where some segment had no availability in your itinerary. It might get ticketed or the segments might come back unconfirmed and be a problem.

Unfortunately, there's not much you can do other than book alternate flights or keep those segments open and hope your desired flights become available closer to departure.

I booked an ex-OSL RTW where the first flight is OSL-DOH in the fall. A few weeks ago QR reduced the frequency of the flight from daily to 4x week, and my flight was cancelled, but I was able to shift it and the following flight to be one day later. The trip is structured with multiple breaks of a few months, with positioning flights, so pushing the first two flights one day later only affected one positioning flight and nothing else. So not a big deal in my case.

Dealing with qantas for these tickets is a well documented world of pain with many technically allowable changes unlikely to be possible. You may not realise it but asking others to help you share that burden for a still not great outcome is asking a lot. It sounds like you haven't flown your first segment yet. Honestly, just cancel and rebook with AA or an agent.

Just adding a new bullet point, helped a close friend book a new ex-TYO DONE6. Plated on QR stock, $8440 plus agent fee.

HND-DFW(JL)-GRU(JL code AA)-DFW(JL Code AA)-PUJ(AA)-JFK(QR Code AA)-DOH(QR)-CPH(QR)-DOH(QR)-DUB(QR)-DOH(QR)-CPT(QR)-DOH(QR)-AKL(QR)-SYD(QF)-SIN(AY code BA)-HND(JL)

It's an expensive one because DONE6, but he really wanted South America, South Africa, and Oceana. And at the end of the day, it's cheaper than the plan he initially approached me with which was only Asia and Oceana. I love RTWs for this.

He'll get in the vicinity of 180-190k AA miles and LPs from this ticket since only one short segment is AA coded, all others except the AKL-SYD are high earners. (He's starting from only 2k AA LP's but is using the Citi card currently to generate some before the trip) It's not 100% optimized for miles but he wanted a combination of high earnings plus going to some of his bucket list destinations, so is a very pleased man. I'm helping him with some side trips on stopovers now so that will put him well over the 200k for AA EXP even without the card spend. Welcome another AA EXP to the ranks!! :D (but like me, we're Japan based, so won't take a lot of upgrades away from PPro and below, I end up giving my SWUs to friends more often than not, even converted a very loyal JL friend to AA because of that)

Nice. Just curious why PUJ-JFK-DOH rather than, say, PIJ-DFW-DOH. DFW-DOH is longer, so more time to enjoy Qsuite while earning more miles and LPs.

Partially due to poor availability on the DFW route, but also he needed some time in NYC and there weren't any more free segments to go PUJ-DFW-JFK or v.v. if there was a free segment I would have had him go PUJ-JFK-LAX-DOH

Want to give a shout out to dutch_122 - not sure if allowed within the rules of this forum? - for helping with the following first time DONE trip that we are part way through, highly recommend him:

We had a bunch of trips for 2026. We are based in NYC, and had a trip to Australia / NZ from Europe before going back to NYC, then some West Coast plans, then a trip to Kenya / Seychelles. Realised that a DONE5 would allow us to string them all together. Managed to avoid a lot of YQ/YR fees by plating on QR and avoiding international BA/IB/AA flight numbers as much as possible (but still had to for various reasons see below)

Route ended up being: OSL - xDOH (QR) - MEL (QR) - CNS (QF) - SYD (QF) - AKL (QF) - JFK (QF) - LAX (AA) - ANC (AS) - ORD (AS) - xLHR (AY on BA) - NBO (BA); SEZ (QR)- xDOH (QR) - LHR (QR) - TOS (BA).
Price ended up being around 8k USD pp IIRC (proactively changed flights to avoid DOH on the way to NBO which bumped up the YQ/YR because of the BA flight LHR-NBO, the total hotel / safari no-show fees in Kenya are an uninsurable 20k, so not taking any risks getting there on QR.)
Plating on AA etc. was around 9k USD. Fully aware other optimisations available, but priority was securing trips in Business to places we wanted to visit, not just minimising the YQ/YR fees.

Learned that sadly even AA are now rejecting the multiple stopovers inside North America, so couldn't stopover in JFK multiple times despite several HUCA attempts etc.
Bizarre new internal rule...
QR are also still learning the DONE rules for sure... lots of fun with them discovering which state Chicago is in (hint: not West Coast or East Coast ones)

Decent Tier Points for anyone still crediting to BA due to the QR/AY segments. Could have optimised for more Tier Points ofc (more AY / QR / JL flights), but not the priority.

Hold on. Describe what happened in your situation -- what routing were you trying to achieve but was rejected by AA? Are you sure you weren't breaking a rule?

Was trying to do... JFK-LAX-ANC-xORD-JFK... Ended up doing ...JFK-LAX-ANC-ORD...

To our eyes this is valid, one cross continent flight, one flight into Alaska, one out of Alaska, and 4 intra continent segments within the 6 limit. ORD to JFK isn't a transcontinental, and we don't repeat the same flight twice.

They claim you can't stopover multiple times in JFK anymore as the reason for not letting us ticket with the preferred route, one potential explanation is they're trying to clamp down on it. Maybe this is recent, maybe it's not enforced across all agents, maybe it was a few people having a bad day or making mistakes. But since AA was an extra 1.4k USD per person for saving 2 cheap flights, and couldn't find an agent willing to do that (tried Rebecca, Stacey, Deborah) we just went with QR plating who said their system refused to price it and they wouldn't manually override (even though it autoprices in other systems apparently with the preferred routing I believe will let dutch_122 add details)

What was before JFK at the beginning and after JFK at the end?

AKL to JFK, and then JFK to NBO via LHR or DOH transit

Without fully resolving your actual problem, there is a very big difference between these two statements:

Learned that sadly even AA are now rejecting the multiple stopovers inside North America, so couldn't stopover in JFK multiple times despite several HUCA attempts etc

They claim you can't stopover multiple times in JFK anymore, they're trying to clamp down on it.

Might sound like nitpicking but let's try to avoid inaccurate info until actually proven or substantiated. As another data point, I recently spoke with one of the agents you listed to ticket a change.. and I later learned that she never actually completed the request, so I had to call in again.

Ok that's fair - edited to add some nuance. It appears there is inconsistency at the very least across plating carriers and/or within them, for the same rules, and lack of clarity over what is being allowed for the multi-stopovers within the post-1st continents. Yes, I'm one data point, but worth posting about for others planning their bookings that it might happen to them / need more HUCAs etc.

Fully acknowledge that the official PDF rules are super clear (unlimited stopovers, except for max 2 in continent of origin, subject to the other rules like can't repeat the same O/D pair etc.).

Again, YMMV!

Would anyone know the answer to the following two questions:

- I have a JL-issued DONE3 booked. Outbound JL HND-LAX, then some bouncing around US, then return to Japan via LHR (JFK-LHR-HND). JL is blocking LHR-HND as a JL flight - only BA or CX is available. Anyone know why, and whether there is a way to bypass it? There is D space available on both JL flights from LHR, and even LHR-FRA-NRT on the other JL flight is not working. Like, literally, JL will not let you fly its own metal on a ticket issued by JL. The situation persists before or after departure. Currently, JL42/JL44 (LHR-HND) are waitlisted despite space being available, but I suspect they will not clear. TA says it is a ticketing restriction imposed by JL.

- On the online itinerary design tool, is it me or are a bunch of cities missing? I can't depart in YUL, I can't put NCE as a stopover, PHX is missing etc - none of them show up. Am I being dumb or is that how it is, and if so, then how do you even design an itinerary?

Thanks!

That’s somewhat harsh. The OP booked before the ME situation started.

Do you mean that the JL flights are available as BA or CX codeshares, or are you talking about only BA and CX metal flights are available?


Your travel agent is correct. One of the LHR-HND flights is a 351, equipped with the new JL premium cabins. JL is currently guarding those flights jealously because the hard product is so far superior. I expect that it's holding those seats for people who want to pay full, or nearly full, price. Can't speak to the other one, which, IIRC, is a 788.


A quick perusal of these threads will tell you that there are numerous problems with the online tool. That's why many OneWorld Explorer flyers, including me, don't use it.

Mwenenzi wasn't talking about the ME situation. He was talking about the post immediately preceding his, as in "As post above". So he was referring to izzik's post about why the poster booked using the online tool instead of the AA RTW Desk, viz:

I've found certain browsers cause this problem. Avoid Firefox. Safari is hit or miss. Chrome seems to work the best.

Not all available space in D bucket can be allocated to these xONEx fare products.
There is no transparency in these decisions.
You cannot force the airline to put you on these flights.

Of course you are allowed unlimited stopovers in North America on an ex-OSL RTW.

I had a few QR-issued RTWs some years back. I gave up calling their main numbers, instead emailing their HKG office. I think they may have shut that office or at least stopped having them handle RTWs.

This is a fairly recent (and very unwelcome) development: there are now additional inventory restrictions that we run into with RTW fares. Just as airlines can have different inventory for flights booked standalone versus as a connection (married-segment logic), airlines can have different inventory based on an itineraries point of origin/commencement. (There may also be a restriction based on type of fare, but this is unclear). I've run into it with JL and QF flights. If the segments are available to waitlist, I suspect they might clear closer to departure if there is still 'D' (or 'A' or 'L') inventory available standalone.

In my most recent RTW, I had to waitlist the daytime departure JFK-HND but I was able to book the midnight departure. Both are A351s. There's also a long-haul QF flight that I can't book or even waitlist.

No, I mean I am required to use another carrier's metal even though there's space (hypothetically) available. I'm not sure how religiously JL is guarding those flights as I flew one inbound.

So what is a good tool to use if I am only theoretically pricing out a trip? I don't want to waste a TA's or AA RTW desk's time with just a theoretical calculation.

Right you are! Using Chrome did fix it.

I guess we will see in a few days. Asking the clanker suggested that JL is protecting the JV and ensuring that BA gets their "fair" share of the revenue by refusing to carry me when a competing route is available from BA. I don't know where it got this information from, or whether it completely invented it when it didn't have a good answer, though.

Unfortunately, there isn't a publicly available tool that can calculate or even just show fuel surcharges. Matrix comes closest, but there's lots it can't do in the context of RTWs.


I doubt this is the case. As I mentioned, I've been unable to confirm the daytime JFK-HND flight, but I was able to waitlist it and confirm the midnight departure. I am unable to confirm or waitlist a QF flight SIN-BNE. Both flights are wide open in 'D' but are 'D0' as part of my ex-OSL RTW.

I just got a ticket issued that has several stopovers at jfk with AA: IIRC this ticket was HND to JFK to EGE to JFK to MEX to JFK to MIA to JFK to LHR to HEL to OSL to LHR to HKG to TPE to KUL to NRT.

I continue to enjoy these tickets a lot for my personal travels, and find despite their constraints the AA RTW desk are really very helpful. I'd often wondered about how close to departure you could really make changes, well I just had the following to mention on that basis.

Original route was LHR-DFW-LAX-JFK-HKG to try the new AA 78P and A321XLR on my way back from a business trip to Europe. I had a long day/stopover in New York because Cathay wasn't giving availability on Saturday night for these tickets, indeed all 3 flights went to J0.

Whilst overnight at LAX in an airport hotel I realised, via Expertflyer, there was now a route to get home 24 hours earlier via YYZ that wasn't the case a few days before, so I needed to change to JFK-YYZ-HKG. I called at 5am LA/West Coast time when the AA RTW line opens up (7am Central). It took about 20 minutes to get the new route loaded, price it, pay the change fee and ticket it, before an 8am flight to JFK, with the YYZ connection being 2 hours after I landed in JFK. They did mention it took a little longer as they had to undo my AA checkin.

So that was a change to route being made 3 hours prior to departure and 20 minutes before I checked in at the desk. And I got home a day earlier, having experienced what I wanted with the new planes. Great.
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That beats my close-in change, which was quite a few years ago. We landed in HKG for what was booked as a multi-day stop before continuing to Sydney, but it was absolutely freezing in Hong Kong, so I called the AA RTW desk and moved HKG-SYD to the next day.

That’s good to know, and a reminder as always that OLCI causes more problems than it’s worth. The ONLY TIME it’s worth checking in online is if you have no bags and plan to be at the airport late so you can just go to security. (OK - to be fair - I was recently told - by a kid, no less! - that it’s good to OLCI in case you’re flying economy and they’re going to offload you to give your seat to another pax. maybe. lol)

I always try for OLCI so I can go right through security and into a lounge. It shouldn't be much extra time to undo a check-in in those instances where a change is needed after checking in. I suspect what caused the delay was that the RTW agent didn't have access to the operations system, as only some AA phone agents do, so had to call the airport and get an agent there to do it.

How things should be and how they are are often two very different things.

Well due to these RTW tickets I've got a few experiences of impressive checkins, aka a lot of boarding passes being printed: In this specific instance my LHR-DFW-LAX-JFK was considered one trip by AA (14 hours in LAX isn't a stopover) so in LHR I was checked-in all the way thru. After the change from LAX I was given boarding passes for LAX-JFK-YYZ-HKG. Ultimately in 58 hours I did all those segments and ~14k nmiles. So whether online check-in, or at a desk, you will still be considered checked in.

A similar one I was very "proud" of after the great LHR fire IRROPS I printed out SEA-LHR-MAN-LHR-DOH-HKG on an AONE at a desk, again, no stopovers just "transfers", we were all impressed (I lost a stopover in the UK, and a nested LHR-BAH-LHR :(, but kept my QR F segments).

Personally on RTW tickets I often try to do an check-in as a backup and to see if there are problems... I've had the AA desk forget to properly re-ticket with changes a few too many times to want to do that when there is a risk the AA desk is closed, since I live in Asia. 99% of the time go to the airport check-in desk anyway to get my paper boarding pass after too many issues with digital passes or phones in less popularly visited airports. CX, my home carrier, trains me well on this point anyway - if I do pure OLCI I can't board the plane without them doing a physical check anyway, so I may as well do that earlier on.

This.