The advice you were given makes no sense at all to me. The oneworld award (what I understand of the AA version of same) is miles based, not a 'return' award. If you want to travel A-B-C you add the miles A-B + B-C and that's it. Of course you can also turn it into a return itinerary A-B-A if you want, but you don't have to. So, to turn it into a RTW you could, for example, plan an itinerary LHR-HKG-LAX-LHR, work out the total miles for the 3 segments and then find in the table the award that best fits that total. There's nothing to 'waste', except the miles you 'waste' if you select an award for a maximum of, say, 35000 miles, and your total flown comes to only 34999; in this sense you have 'wasted' 1 mile.

QF rules for OW awards are considerably more restrictive than AA rules for the same award, as a consequence I would never use QF miles for this purpose but instead use AA miles. The rules for awards are spelled out quite clearly on the Qantas web site, which will answer your questions fully in less time than I can type it (also it doesn't much matter what I think the rules are, rather what QF thinks the rules are). See http://www.qantas.com.au/fflyer/dyn/...Points/flights and more importantly http://www.qantas.com.au/fflyer/dyn/program/terms

The rule that causes you grief is unique to QF (oneway charged as round trip; on AA it can be oneway for OW awards); however this applies to the entire trip, you are allowed up to 5 stopovers at intermediate points on QF awards. See rule "10.4.3 One way bookings will be charged as a return trip. Itineraries finishing in a port other than the originating port must include the distance to return directly to the port of origin when calculating the number of Points required to redeem the Flight Award and the maximum distance for the itinerary"

Yes, we did pick that up before ticketing and I was moved from the AY-operated BA codeshare to the BA operated BA flight number. But the problem was that the HEL-LHR flight, even though operated and coded by BA, was still unable to be e-ticketed since the check-in and ground handling for BA in HEL is done by AY and their check-in agents can't see the BA e-ticket.

So there are still some BA flights that are not eligilbe for e-ticket. I wonder is AY agents can see AA's e-tickets currently?

I do understand that full OneWorld e-ticket capability is due soon.

Which is ironic... as travel agents with SABRE CRS' can book and ticket up to 24 segments easily.

When/If this happens IMO the price of xONEx fares should be reduced, or some other feature of the fare enhanced, to compensate. @:-)

Yes, I know, I'm day dreaming, but, hey, nothing wrong with asking, right? like some of us used to do, time ago, around Xmas time.

Limit is now posted on the AA OW award page:


Valid: All eight oneworld carriers may be used on one award as long as the mileage and segment maximum is not exceeded (see distance range). Travel must include at least two one world partners other than American Airlines, American Eagle or AmericanConnection, and effective January 1, 2005 may not exceed 16 segments.

Routing: Members may fly unlimited segments and may stop in each city once, but may not connect in the same city more than twice. Passengers may not stopover or connect in the city where travel originated.

Link

Just to be clear .. this topic is on AWARD tickets ....right ?

So what does it have to do with xONEx RTW tickets -- paid type ?? Still 20 segment rule ?

There is no announced change to OWE rules and I personally don't expect there will be a change to limit it to 16 segments. The 20 segment limit is sufficient and my impression is that the airlines are happy with that (but I don't have any inside info). The award rule change has been posted on aa.com for several weeks now.

Hmm.. it was not there 11 days ago, when I did a copy&paste of the rules for another thread.

And this announcement is only for AA's flavour of the OneWorld Award redemption. Others may follow, but this one only refers to AA's program.

Try hitting the "Refresh" button on your browser more frequently (or set your caching options to be more appropriate).

It was the first time I loaded that page, and my browser auto clears the cache on system reset. Try another one.