Define 'receive'. For example, 'Ticketed', as per aa.com, does not mean anything. You are ticketed when the issuing airline is able to give a ticket number.

This is what the AAgent was trying to explain. Something that ticket numbers were not given to Cathay in this example until 2 weeks before the flight and thus it 'might be possible' to waitlist.

That sounds then like you are not ticketed. Otherwise one would have to think that AA is hiding the ticket number from CX just for the sake of improving your chances with the waitlist. Then again, AA will go the extra mile sometimes so who knows, maybe they are being nice this time.

Be aware there are at least two, maybe three, IIRC, posts in the archive that dispute the above, stating that CX has (paraphrasing here) demanded to know the ticket number well in advance of the flight (soon after booking), or else they will simply cancel the booking and, in one case, if memory serves, actually have done so.

As of now I only have a reservation.

A few minutes after the reservation was put in the AAgent stated CX automatic system had requested ticket numbers by 'April xxx' of next year [1-2 weeks before the flight].

This did not make sense to me since if I were CX I would want ticket numbers right away.

The AAgent implied that changes could be made to the first flight until that time.

CX's auto-ticketing deadlines seem to depend on the anticipated demand. When I booked CMB-HKG-LHR for early Jan the msg returned was a ticketing deadline of 14 days after the reservation was made.

I would call CX and ask them directly when they need to receive the ticket number from AA. And then once you are ticketed, I would call CX again and confirm that they have the ticket number. I lost a seat because AA failed to give the number to CX within their deadline (or their computer systems failed to communicate).

Well this is the problem in my case...I want to wait as long as possible for AA to send the ticket numbers to CX. That way I can have more of a chance of changing the first flight as discussed above.

After a couple "no's" I talked to the supervisor.

She sent a message to yield management and the next day the seats were opened up.

A couple observations, I think it helped that this was the first segment. The supervisor could 'guess' these seats would eventually open up causing the RTW desk a lot of work in re-writing these hand tickets. This made me happy and made sense for AA [plus indirectly prompted me to buy an extra set of $10K in tickets not related to RTW today].

I am still unclear about the 'first flight' rule because the AAgent implied it could be changed until 7 days before the first flight which seems inconsistent with what is written.

The rule involved is as per post #14; your case is TC1... what part of it you find inconsistent with the agent's interpretation?