Since the AA RTW desk was merged into Meeting Services, there are a lot of agents answering the phone who have no idea. You can try calling back and see if you get a more knowledgable agent. There is no requirement that the first flight be on AA, although as I mentioned above, they will likely want to see one or more AA codes on over the water flights. That may not matter to you, but it could affect your earnings and also the fuel surcharges.

The term "RTW" is often used to mean OneWorld Explorer, Circle, Global Explorer, and Visit fares. It would be worth clarifying the fare want to book.

I believe the CX call centre is extremely busy now handling all the rebooking and rerouting, as HKG was shut down for about 12 hours. It is unlikely that they have time to handle your request now. See the CX forum if you haven't heard of what happened.

Thanks, things were relatively normal when I made the request originally, but I am not even thinking about calling them back now. Perhaps I'll give BA or QF a shot.

Following up on this.

So I decided to call QF and try to piece together the two bookings, One World Explorer and Circle Pacific. After 1.5 hrs on hold, I reached an agent. We tried to piece together and ran into multiple hurdles. I had carefully pieced together the itinerary looking at the fare rules. In assembling both itineraries, we ran into numerous hurdles:

• Agent told me that if it was a First class booking (AONE3), every single segment had to be in first class.
• Agent told me that if I departed from Vancouver, I'd also have to return to Vancouver (rules say last segment can be overland between US/CA)
• Agent told me that I could only go around the world in one direction (starting with transatlantic)

After 6 hours on the phone, the signal dropped and I never received a call back. I was able to retrieve the booking references with all flights by calling both QF and MH.

After multiple hours on hold I finally reached someone today. We only got as far as the AONE3 ticket, and the agent told me it would only price if I returned to Canada. The fare rules clearly state otherwise. I told him forget it, I'm going to try turning the ticket over to a travel agent and see what happens.

Is this level of difficulty normal with RTW and Circle Pacific tickets? I'm surprised that the airlines/agents aren't more familiar with a OneWorld product.

You unfortunately got a particularly ill-informed, poorly-trained agent, as everything he/she told you is wrong. In those circumstances, the normal advice is HUACA but one understands that you might be reluctant to do that after waiting on hold for so long. :(

'Is this level of difficulty normal?' I don't think so. I've booked 10 RTWs in the last 20 years and I've never had the level of frustration that you describe. They often don't call back and sometimes they don't reply to e-mail as promptly as one would wish but in general things have gone smoothly enough for us in dealing with CX, JL, AA and BA.

Good luck.

In my experience, only the AA RTW desk is up with the rules and even then some of the staff aren't without their misinterpretations and misunderstandings. The problem as I see it is that the rules are very cumbersome and complicated. As numerous posts show, it's almost luck of the draw as to the outcome you get. In my most recent experience with a DONE3, it took me an hour to convince QF staff that, yes, geographically Morocco is in Africa but for the purposes of the oneworld Explorer, it's considered part of Europe/Middle East. Even on Qantas's own oneworld five stop award (frequently used for round the world redemptions), agents often don't know the rules and that's Qantas's own product.

Oneworld either needs a dedicated desk for these types of fare products or each carrier needs to have dedicated staff whose only job is to deal with these tickets.

I have downloaded a copy of the rules so I am armed when I get someone at the dedicated desk who doesn't know as much as I do. (Most recently, I had to show where in the rules it says that a DONEx segment on a route that only offers economy class is to be booked in B, not L.) Of course if I get someone who seems to have been assigned to the desk that day or so (which has happened more than once), I politely tell them I'm thinking things over, then hang up and call again.

I really don't understand how this level of incompetence exists ... a fare booking into a non-prime class on some sectors is hardly unusual. Is it just that everything is autopriced these days so no one ever does it by hand?

The AA RTW desk does not autoprice. The agents are supposed to know the rules and create valid itineraries which are then sent to an offshore desk for pricing. Many TAs don't autoprice RTWs either, sending them to the rate desk of the first carrier.

In your example, my guess is that agents are used to booking RTWs in the usual booking inventory (A, D, L for the most part).

Is it still in Ireland? I always wondered why it wasn't in Dallas.

But I mean, even if you autoprice a regular TATL AA F itinerary, it will book into different codes on connecting sectors which don't offer F class, and the agent will see that.

It just seems completely inexplicable to me that a person trained to book itineraries would be unfamiliar with booking code exceptions.

I don't think it's been in Ireland for a number of years. Last time I had AA price an RTW it went to Fiji or someplace around there.

Well, the AA Meeting Services people don't have the best reputation.

I'm sorry if I missed it in all these pages, but the cost, or even price range, seems to be unavailable. I don't want to spend a lot of time on this and then find the price is crazy. Can someone PLEASE just post what you can about prices for the different options for business and first? I originate in PHL. No definite idea where I'd go, but probably Fiji, Tonga, Australia/NZ, Papeete, Rome, Greece, Paris, London (open to trains between local places), Israel, Egypt, Singapore, Dubai, Seychelles, someplace in Africa for safari (maybe Kenya), Iceland, Anchorage, Las Vegas, Panama someplace, Peru, Chile. I'll spend time reading the rules & restrictions of course, and will strategize the order and dates to max things out. Senior discount if applicable, we're both over 65. These are just some ideas about places, we'd change them around if it turns out some add $$$$$$$ to fares.

What's a ballpark price range? We'd go cheapest season, flexible about dates (at this point anyway)....

You need to do some more reading in the forum to understand more of the nuances of the fares. You can also read the rules at oneworld.com or expertflyer.com.
You can look up fares at expertflyer.com.
For a start here are some coach and business fares ex-us:
coach:
lone3 - $3599
lone4 - 4999
lone5 - 5699
lone6 - 6899
business:
done3 - 9699
done4 - 10299
done5 - 11799
done6 - 13599