Hello, I am toying with the idea to book a RTW that starts fall 2025 and ends 12 months later. Trying to weigh the risks of waiting to book vs. just using place holders for segments. For me it is seems to mainly be to lock in a price.

Why do people decide to book with open dates? What advantage is there to you to book that way? Thanks.

I guess for these long trips its about locking in price and preferred dates. I found that it's often difficult getting in and out of Australia on RTW tickets and dealing with Qantas is huge disincentive. I use a basic RTW as the backbone and build side trips on that using either budget carriers or points bookings.

When you call the AA RTW desk, how do you ask for an open segment/date? Do you give a date that you do not plan to use? Does the RTW ticket show a date?

I have a OWE and just tried to remove a segment (change to surface). The segment is ORD-DFW before flying same day on to SYD. I am being told that I can't remove the ORD-DFW segment because it is married with the DFW-SYD segment. But I didn't ask for those segments to be married. Now I have no choice (according to AA) but to take the ORD-DFW flight which is about as inconvenient as it can be. Where did I go wrong in booking this ticket (or where did AA go wrong)? I want to make sure I don't get a repetition of this for future bookings. And if you have any hints on how to get out of this predicament now, I would appreciate it.

It's not about "asking" segments to be married; since you originally requested to fly ORD-DFW-SYD, availability was based on flying both segments. By changing ORD-DFW to surface, you are now looking for availability to fly DFW-SYD only, which can have different (or in this case, zero) availability as compared to ORD-DFW-SYD. If you are looking to assign blame (don't know why??), it's not AA's fault as you originally requested to fly ORD-DFW-SYD.

As to solving your predicament, maybe consider rerouting yourself DFW-xxx-SYD instead.. assuming you haven't maxed out your 16 segments.
If you have 16 segments already, then look for a different nonstop flight to SYD and your surface segment will be ORD-xxx. From N.Amer, that can be LAX, SFO, HNL, JFK..

How many agents did you talk to? Maybe try again? I called to check on changing the date of a segment (HEL OSL) which I thought was "married" to another segment because it is shown as one flight on the ticket receipt HGK HEL OSL. The agent was ok with changing one segment. I did decide to change the flight instead and pay the change fee (HKG DOH OSL) so I am not sure that the agent would have been able to change the segment but she thought she could.

Hopefully an expect will come explain this.

So I didn't ask for ORD-DFW-SYD, I requested ORD-DFW and DFW-SYD. But now I have spoken to a supervisor, she explained that because it is 4 hours between when I land in DFW and take off to SYD, the computer automatically married it. I was not aware that this is how it works but, now that I am, I know that if I want to keep things flexible in the future (which I need to do as I change RTW trips at least 3-5 times per trip), I have to book flights which land and take off more than 4 hours apart so they don't get married automatically.

The supervisor told me that she rang Qantas and asked for a "divorce" and the first agent she spoke to said they couldn't do that. So she hung up and rang back and got someone else and asked for the same thing and got it no problems. Problem solved.

Btw, izzik, I didn't use the word blame, you did. I was asking where either AA or myself went wrong so I don't do it again. Thanks to AA, I now know.

I used the word "blame", correct.
Nobody said you used the word.

Depends on how you requested them. If you gave the AA RTW agent the entire itinerary up front, then some of the segments may automatically be married by the system on connections. When I book (I only use the AA RTW desk), I feed the agent one flight at a time, wait for the agent to confirm that the flight is available in the fare bucket I need (D), and that s/he has grabbed it for me and added it to the itinerary s/he's building for me. When that's all done, then I give him/her the next flight that I want.

question regarding stopovers:

Stopovers
You have a stopover when there is more than 24 hours between the scheduled arrival time of one flight and the scheduled departure time of the next flight (if you spend 24 hours or less between flights, that is called a Transit)
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• You must have at least two stopovers in your itinerary
• You are allowed only two stopovers in your continent of origin (each can be a surface segment; you can still have the maximum allowed number of flight segments in the continent )

My ticket is originated from TYO. I plan to take flight from MEL -> xKUL-> PKX, PEK -> HND
PKX -> PEK is surface segment, because I could not find any oneworld flight from MEL to PEK in Nov . Does it count as 3 stopovers in Asia or 2(because one is surface segment)

That looks like ONE stopover to me - in Beijing
And a transit in K.L.

ETA: Also, it counts as three segments - 2 flight and 1 surface.

They booked the dates I wanted up to a point about a month from where the bookings are open (~300 days ahead). Beyond that they used that last 30 days and booked the remaining legs so that each leg had a bookable date and the "trip finished" 330 days from the day that I made my booking. The agent said to be that the ticket "has to work". So these are just bookings that require a date change which she assured me was not an issue (contrast with Qantas who said that each of those would be a $125 change fee). On my ticket, every leg has a date and a flights for that date.

Yes. One thing that you need to keep in mind though: rather than picking arbitrary dates in the future with availability, make sure you keep straight your intended connections versus your stopovers. Changing those from one to the other does attract the $125 change fee.

I am pretty sure I did it one sector at a time. But the agent who now fixed the problem told me that if the connection time is less than 4 hours it will be automatically married. I will make sure that there are no sectors with less than 4 hours connection time in the future to keep things flexible and not have this issue again.

Ok thanks, because I saw the rule is 2 stopovers in the origin continent. MLE is my first stopover in Asia. Beijing is my second stopover, but 2 different airports, so I just want to make sure it wont count as 3 stopovers because of 2 different airports in Beijing.