Hello all

1 month ago I booked a RTW Aone4 with AA out of Tokyo....of the 18 segments several were weightlisted but within the first few days they all cleared (CX,BA,AA,QF) EXCEPT the segment with JAL from NRT-SIN on the 777 equipment Sat 5/19? This flight has availability in F class on every flight this week however JAL has refused to clear this. Only 2 seats out of 9 are sold and this really makes no sense.

Friends recently had this same problem and they flew in business with 4 seats open in F? This has happened to my friends flying to LHR and SIN on AONE4 and 5's. It seems that JAL is having problems with these A class fares and clearing them. I would think they would want the additional revenue from these fares?

Have spoken to AA EXP desk...they say the flight is wide open and they do not know what the problem is. One world desk said "JAL is fully integrated and operating under their own guidelines". JAL has said they are waiting to fill the seats with revenue passengers? Most of these F class flyers are usually upgrades on JAL anyway. Everyone is towing the corporate line however I am still in J and I have paid for F.

Any suggestions? I suggest as you plan your RTW itinerary's you avoid JAL until they get this corrected.

JL has apparently zeroed out A completely. This was discussed at lenght on a very recent thread.

Edit: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=688051

Part of the problem is how OW allocates the revenue from OWE fares. The 3 trans-ocean legs get more than 50% of the ticket revenue, leaving little for the remaining 17 sectors. JL seems to have decided that this is too little for its regional flights with F service, and has zeroed out A for all such flights. Whether they will ever release A is unclear at this point; JL doesn't sell any JL-unique fare products in A, so it is zero impact on their revenue model. Welcome to the JL way to run an airline --- they have a proud tradition of a decade of this kiind of behaviour.

If you booked with JAL, how was the ticketing experience? How do they apply fuel surcharges, etc.?

Interesting - those are the only three segments that will be flown "for sure" so with an established percentage of the total, the OW bean counters can pay the carrier as soon as the segment is flown.

And don't be too sad for the airlines regarding the other segments. Although many here max out their trips, that's why they're here; I'd wager a strong drink that the typical AONE3 is flown with a different purpose, and far fewer segments are involved. If 13 total (more than I'd guess) and a modest USD8K AONE3 fare, there's about $400 per segment left in the kitty for the "local" segments, probably good money for a capacity-controlled D-class seat. You can find plenty of retail full C-class rides that cost less than that.