While it's been discussed, has anyone actually booked this yet? The idea of including Australia on a three continent trip is very appealing!

All of my conversations with AA's RTW staff indicate that there is no 3-continent fare if you include the southern hemisphere, even with the ORD-DEL trans-atlantic flight. Still costs 4 continents.

According to the AA RTW desk, although ORD-DEL is transatlantic, you still have to pay for Europe. However, it remains to be seen if other OW carriers have the same interpretation.

Isn't there something in the rules stating like "no 3 continent xONEx possible starting from the southern hemisphere" - seems the airlines are taking it as "no 3 continent xONEx possible when visiting the SW...) ?

Not so much a rule as the 'limitations' of network connection. From OWE T/C:

Now that AA flies ORD-DEL, and that this flight is considered transatlantic, one can theoretically do a XONE3 with AUS-tranpac-North AM-Transatl-Asia (DEL)-AUS.

In any case, I tried to book SYD-LAX-ORD-DEL-HKG-SYD with AA RTW desk. As previous posts indicate, AA considers this routing as XONE4. According to the AAgent, ORD-DEL is 'over' Europe and hence it counts as North Am-Europe-Asia . I guess we should be grateful they don't also add Arctic as another continent when flying over the north pole.

Don't know if this is an AA idiosyncrazy or a OW-wide thing.

I guess, to be fair to AA: what is to stop someone from arguing LAX-ORD-DEL-HKG-LAX as an XONE2?

This argument would not be valid, since OW doesn't offer a xONE2.

The issue would simply go away if AA said that they deem all Area I-III passages to be transpac regardless of the actual meridians crossed in flight.

IIRC some current polar routes (SIN-EWR etc) will route on the "Asian" or "European" side of the pole depending on winds.

The World According to the Airlines has already been carved up in strange ways (DXB is Europe? Really?) so this would not be that great a leap.

I wonder what motivated AA to make this judgement. North Atlantic traffic restrictions?

(FWIW a co-worker just returned from ORD-DEL-ORD and said the ORD-DEL leg was over central Greenland and northern Norway, while the return leg was a lot farther north but still on the Atlantic side of the pole.)

I believe it has something to do with the contractual way the Fare is carved up amongst the carriers.

From this forum I have come to understand that the transcontinental carriers get the largest slices of the xONEx 'pie'. More here: Airline compensation for one world explorer.

I would guess any contraced formula is based on several factors including a minimum requirement of having ASIA<->N/A, N/A<->EUR and EUR-ASIA transcontinental segments. To allow a defined a N/A-ASIA segment as such would invalidate the contracts. To get around this, the airlines have agreed an ORD<>DEL segment be defined as two transcontinentals, N/A<>EUR & EUR<>ASIA.

Thanks for the very plausible explanation. I can somewhat see glimpse of airlines logic now @:-)

Isn't that just because there are no OWE 3 continent fares from Australia? What if you tried to book such a thing starting in Asia or North America, where 3-continent fares exist?

Hmmm, that's a brilliant thought! ^ I will ask my CX agent in CMB to try: CMB-HKG-SYD-LAX-ORD-DEL-HKG-CMB. I will report back on what she says.

Go figure!
Can some CX gurus please check on this? Thx.

In my completely uninformed imagination, I see the OneWorld organization having one or two staffers with the part-time responsibility of maintaining an "official" star file for OWE, trying their best with limited resources to quell inter-airline quarrels about how to map the rules onto reality. Meanwhile, the airlines are left to their own to interpret the existing rules.

We've all found plenty of times when different rtw/rate desks give significantly different answers to the same question. If Cathay thinks it's trans-pacific and that works to anyone's advantage, they should conspire to ticket with Cathay. If trans-atlantic works better, float some trial requests with the other carriers until you get the right answer. Then stop asking, grab the tickets, and enjoy the trip. The AAgent who check you in for ORD-DEL will be totally clueless about what direction you're going or should be going next.

This would work -- until someone needs to do a ticket reissue and for whatever reason needs to use an airline that has a different interpretation of the rules. Since the route is new, one could only hope that within the next few months, the rules will be amended to deal with this flight.