AA limits Oneworld awards to 16 segments?
 

I was told today that effective 1-1-05 all Oneworld awards will be limited to 16 segments. Even though you can claim awards with travel up to 50,000 miles, it seems AA wants to only e-ticket these records so their customers must suffer due to their (and Oneworld's) technological limitations.

In the scheme of things, this probably won't bother too many people. However, it will probably eliminate lots of in-country hopping on these awards and force members to use them for the long hauls.

For example, if I was going to do an around-the-world trip, I probably could not add lots of Qantas or AA domestic sectors within their respective countries even within the mileage allocation if it ran over 16 segments.

I know they have a rule like this for revenue RTW tickets, but I think I would gladly pay a reasonable fee for them to handwrite my ticket.

I will post this on the AA forum too.

But remember you are limited to 5 stopovers on these award flight, and cannot "buy" any more stopovers. Surely you can build a 5-stopover routing that fits into 16 sectors. You are on an award ticket, why would you want to take a really crazy routing criss-crossing the country? It doesn't really qualify as a mileage run :rolleyes: .

Steady on NM. The OP was posting some useful and topical info wrt AA OW awards. It is quite plausible that someone might need >16 segments on a 35k or 50k miles award. I don't recall previously reading seeing any 5 stopover limit on AA Oneworld awards. The rules, award bands and miles charged vary by OW carrier so maybe this is only a QF restriction.

True. Actually, it says 'unlimited':

'... 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...'

QF has the 5 stopover limit for the OW awards (AA does not). I find it strange, annoying and almost humorous that the only FF awards that OW offers in all OW airlines, and called OneWorld, would have significantly different rules in each of those programs. Maybe it should be called EightWorld instead.

Correct, QF oneworld awards do have a 5-stopover restriction, but AA awards have not had a stopover restriction other than staying within the # of miles. (at least until the 16-segment limit, which will effectively limit you to 15 stopovers). So before you could have done something like SJC-LAS-LAX-AUS-HOU-DFW-XNA-STL-PIA-ORD-CMH-LGA-DCA-RDU-MIA-CUN-MIA-CCS-MIA for 60k in Y.

The reason I was advised of this is because I just turned in 280,000 miles for a first class award that allowed up to 35,000 miles of flying.

My itinerary involved 22 segments. Apparently AA has to have a special agent handwrite these tickets because their system cannot print more than 20 coupons and cannot e-ticket more than 16 coupons.

You could easily claim one of these awards and exceed 16 segments as they are indeed unlimited with respect to stopovers as long as you don't stopover in the same city more than once.

Example:

JFK-DCA AA
DCA-RDU AA
RDU-MIA AA
MIA-MSY AA
MSY-DFW AA
DFW-YVR AA
YVR-HKG CX
HKG-SIN CX
SIN-SYD BA
SYD-CBR QF
CBR-ADL QF
ADL-PER QF
PER-MEL QF
MEL-AKL QF
AKL-SCL LA
SCL-EZE LA
EZE-JFK AA

The above itinerary includes 19 segments. This is 33,294 miles and would "cost" 280,000 miles for first class.

Effective 1-1-05 this currently valid itinerary will not be allowed.

So you could do something like this....
and this is just an example with 16 segments--
JFKDCA AA
DCARDU AA
RDUMIA AA
MIAMSY AA
MSYDFW AA
DFWYVR AA
YVRHKG AA
HKGSIN CX
SINSYD BA
SYDCBR QF
CBRADL QF
ADLMEL QF
MELAKL QF
AKLSCL LA
SCLEZE LA
EZEJFK AA
This is 16 segments and would be okay for an e-ticket and still cost the SAME amount of miles for first class (280,000) but you would (effective 1-1-05) eliminate the trip out to PER and western Australia.

One would now have to buy a round-trip where a city previously would have been free.

I know there are cheap tickets in the above example, but not all cities have some inexpensive service.

I just see this as an example of AA accomodating themselves before their customers.

AA rules are currently unlimited travel within the mileage level and award amount as long as...

-you don't stopover or connect through your point of origination
-do not stopover in a city more than once
-do not connect through a city more than twice

So you could stop once in SYD in excess of 24 hours and then connect through SYD twice as long as each time is less than 24 hours.

If other than AA, you have to use two additional Oneworld carriers so you could use only BA, but if using AA, then you would have to use two additional OW carriers.

Say it isn't so.....
 

I really hope this is not going to materialize. But then, the unlimited stopover rule did seem very generous, and I've always had a feeling it was just a matter of time before it went away. I plan to do a 50K award next year on a four or five month journey, and I plan to do 27 or 28 segments. I hope I can ticket before the new rules begin.

what about paid OW tix...
 

I think the biggest concern is that this will be applied to ONE RTW tickets-- 16 coupons total-- on tickets booked through AA. I personally believe, and have been told, that this will be the case. What will happen with ONE tix booked through other OW carriers I don't know, but, pretty soon, I think we will be limited to 16 segments total.

Sorry, I didn't realise AA was so generous with unlimited stopovers on their version of what is supposed to be a consistent OneWorld award product. Perhaps this 16 sector limit, although imposed due to e-ticket system limitation, is AA's way of reducing this generousity?

I wish QF was so generous as I redeemed 7 x OneWorld 35,000 miles awards last year and struggled to get to where we wanted to go with the limit of 5 stopovers.

Can AA issue e-tix for all OneWorld sectors? I ask because I am currently partway through a DONE4 issued by QF that was going to be issued as an e-ticket, but they could only use E-Ticket for QF/AA/BA/CX sectors. And although my ticket only contains QF/AA/BA airlines and codes, they could not issue the E-Ticket for the HEL-LHR sector (on BA metal and flight number) since AY do the ground handling and check-in and there is apparently a limitation of E-Ticket in that situation as far as a QF E-Tocket is concerned. Or perhaps this restriction on E-Ticket issue is to be fixed before the time this restriction comes into effect??

AA have been able to do interline e-ticketing with all of the other oneworld airlines since July 1 (or thereabouts).

All of the other oneworld airlines are supposed to be on track to have this capability by the end of 2004, so that would line up neatly with the January 1, 2005 introduction date for this new restriction.

(Source: press release on the oneworld web site--for the e-ticketing; nothing on there about this new restriction on oneworld award tickets yet.)

And since the oneworld Explorer product is limited to flights operated by oneworld airlines (i.e., no codeshares on non-oneworld airlines), this certainly seems like a strong sign that JonNYC's fears of this restriction applying to ONE tickets may come true at that time, too.

"And since the oneworld Explorer product is limited to flights operated by oneworld airlines (i.e., no codeshares on non-oneworld airlines), this certainly seems like a strong sign that JonNYC's fears of this restriction applying to ONE tickets may come true at that time, too."

I don't see why that should be so. iirc, the 16 segment limit is an issue specifically with AAs systens rather than a general issue with e-tickets

Dave

IB, AY and EI don't presently allow e-ticketing, so any ticket including sectors on those airlines cannot be e-ticketed by any OW airline. This obviously also applies to codeshares since the handling is actually by the flying airline. So QF is no different from AA (or BA) in this respect; however AA can split a ticket into paper/e-ticket parts, so on AA I could get e-ticket up to the "BA on AY" segment and then switch to paper for the rest. It won't be fixed until all OW airlines upgrade their IT systems for e-ticketing.

Help with QF mile spending.
 

Hi,

I have about 400,000 QF miles to burn. I need to carry out about 3 or 4 RTWs that I know of in the next 4 months. When I enquired, QF said that I had to add up all the individual sector requirements (and of course the returns would be wasted unless I was very clever in advance with reverse way round next time but I do not have the miles for that in J or F).

Can someone point out what is going on to this tired member. Have I completely missed the point and this is not about an RTW ticket on miles. Links appreciated as I have never spent QF miles and have lot several hundred thousand as they expired without being able to burn them.

Spotwelder