I need to be in MEL in Jan and instead of redeeming miles I am trying to arrange a business trip to London and tack MEL onto the end of it.

Normall LAX-LHR we fly in F - full fare F less corp discount (which is substantial). So I asked the corp TA to price a AONE4 -
LAX-LHR (AA)
LHR-HKG (CX)
HKG-MEL (CX)
MEL-LAX (AA)

(clearly would make some here cringe, but I don't have the time - I am doing this in the minimum 10 days allowable). The published AONE4 fare ex-US is $10,400. The pricing came back $10,500+ (taxes should be minimal since only stopovers are LHR and MEL). I don't see that they are applying the corp discount. Seeing that AA is getting the trans-pacific and trans-atlantic segments, I would have though at least the corp discount would apply to the majority of the fare. As it is, the price for the AONE4 is almost 2.5k higher than the LAX-LHR r/t F fare - which surprises me no end.

Has anyone had experience buying xONEx fares through corp TA with corp discount? I now NM bought DONE4s and DCIRxxs. Anyone ex-US? I need some hints on how to get this down to at least the same as the LAX-LHR r/t F fare.

Thanks

Corporate discounts tend to have negotiated terms, but I can tell you that in our case our AA corporate discount does not apply to RTW fares. It excludes codeshares also.

I queried the TA and waiting to hear back. Ours definitely applies to codeshares as I used to take the AA(LX) codeshare LAX-ZRH.

OT: anyone know the published fare for DONE4 ex-USA?

The data may be 5 months old, but WearyBizTrvlr's spreadsheet may assist: Consolidating RTW fare data.

It indicates that in late Jun '05 an AONE4 was US$9,600 before taxes etc.

yes i reviewed that but it seems out of date. I called the AA RTW desk and was informed the publsihed AONE4 fare ex-US is $10,400 plus taxes

Our previous corp travel agent had an arrangement where the corp discount was passed on to the traveller. The discount was based on the proportion of miles with each carrier. We got a bigger discount for QF miles than we did for AA and BA miles on the ticket, so there was an incentive to use QF flights (and codeshares) in the itinerary.

Our new corp travel arrangements are different. We now receive a regular rebate from Qantas for the business we book with them. So we now pay the published fare and then our corp travel dept get the rebate - not the traveller or their cost centre. The accountants like it that way, but I don't, especially as sometimes I am paying the difference between L and D fare and the company gets the discount in the form of the rebate.

I will PM you the actual discount percentages as its not really appropriate to post publicly.

One of my clients has an AA corporate discount-- a massive percentage off F/A/J/D/Y (but not discounted Y) fares. However, it does not apply to RTW fares or Oneworld partners. So, for ORD-Asia travel, it's always routed through NRT and onto JL codeshares (vs. CX via HKG). Codeshares are only included when it's part of a connection off AA trans-Atlantic/Pacific.