Sorry, I searched but could not find answer.
What are the booking class codes for RTW fares in First and Business?
Is it still true that there is no minimum duration for RTW fares out of Hong Kong?

Moving this to the OneWorld forum as your questions are generally with regards to the Oneworld RTWs.

Generally Business Class is in code D, and First is in A. Domestic USA/Canada flights on AA, if 2 class aircraft and you hold a Business Class ticket, you get to sit in First!


Guy Betsy
Cathay Pacific Asiamiles forum moderator

So,to book a RTW in F on CX, I need availability in A. Is that correct? And re minimum duration, I can do HKG-JFK-LHR-HKG all in four days.

Yes, the oneworld explorer first class fare books into A, and there is no minimum stay if you start in HKG.

But without status your chances of getting A on HKG-JFK (at least the non-stops) is slim.

How does status affect the chances of getting one of the A seats?

Surely the segment either displays A0 to the agent or A1-9, in the first
case (A0) is there anything more the ticket agent can do? In the second
case (A1+) why wouldn't the agent allocate the seat to a non-elite
flyer?

If you are CX elite then they can and so it seems do open up A on flights that otherwise show as A0.

Also there are point of sale restrictions that come into play. For example I am waitlisted on a direct JFK-HKG flight for next August that Expert Flyer shows as A1 but my agent in MRU cannot get the seat opened up for me.
Now if I was a CX elite as opposed to a BA/AA Emerald I might already be confirmed. This is the game the airlines play and it seems they make the rules and we just have to do our best to work within them.

In certain cases, A0 does not mean there are no first class seats available, just that the airline is not willing, at that time, to let them go to those flying on A class. When you have top status the agent taking your call can, if you are persuasive enough, and the agent is nice enough, and the stars are correctly aligned, talk to yield management and plead your case; if successful YM will release one seat (A0 becomes A1) and that seat is assigned to you. Without status this already hard feat becomes mission impossible.

deleted - did not read carefully.

We did get a hint this might sometimes be possible, we were booked
on the first available L seats on the famously busy SCL-ALK route and
wished to bring back the date by a few weeks, many days showed
plenty of Y seats in both the LA and QF allocations. The agent initally
said L was full but when we asked. Pointing out we had OW Saph and
QF status they went off to check if something was possible.
The answer from both LA and QF was that the route is too busy
and that is wasn't possible to get one of the Y seats. When we
booked SCL-AKL the first available L seats were 3 months away,
the situation seems similar now.

We also tried wait-listing for the LA seats, QF wouldn't waitlist but LA
would, however LA seemed to treat wait-listing like normal standby and
said we'd only know about 3hrs before departure whether seats
were available. We declined the wait-listing and used our time waiting for
the SCL flight to fly with LA to MEX instead.

Just to clarify: the advice given before applied to agents talking to their own YM. In other words, an AA agent talking to AA's YM, or a CX agent talking to CX's YM, etc. Very seldom do you come accross a successful attempt by, say, an AA agent talking to LA, or QF about releasing seats when the class is full.

Well I didn't think SYD-HNL would be busy in L, given all I read about is SYD-SCL.

Hm I wonder if something is happening in HNL on 09/19/2008? L0 at the moment on QF (and also AA) for SYD-HNL.

I was just casually glancing through EF for my LLGLOB26 itinerary. I didn't even think of trying to book/issue it till March next year as I didn't think any of the segments would be particularly busy ones. But on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum I'm told that HNL can be hard to obtain in L even at 330 days out.

Interestingly there're L9 and L7 availabilities on QF and AA flight numbers respectively for every other day they fly in Sept - just not the 19th.

I've now sought the help of a TA, hoping that he'd have some sort of expertise with AA/QF waitlists (he was great at clearing SQ waitlists, albeit in significantly higher fare buckets...). The other reason why I enlisted the help of a TA was the possibility of a longer ticketing time limit, plus he's willing to plate on AA ticket stock unlike a lot of TAs in Australia. ^

The only flexibility I have is moving HNL from the start to the end of my trip, which means I'd be doing HNL-SYD on 03OCT2008. Unfortunately I'm constrained by a limited time frame as this trip is done during a mid semester 2 week non-teaching period of uni. Plus HNL-SYD is looking even busier than SYD-HNL. But I'm thinking that this way I can issue the ticket without the first interregional sector open dated so I'm charged the LL fare and not the peak season fare.

I suppose my AA PLT status won't help much with clearing a QF waitlist/AA codeshare waitlist?

Any thoughts on this situation?

Sorry for the long and rambling post...

After a number of frustrated, failed attempts to have BA-MRu make bookings that show as available on EF, I have adopted the strategy of having them issue the ticket with a minimal number of segments and then expand the itinerary to book these segments later by calling the appropriate AA or BA RTW desks. I always change my plans so the extra reissue fee is irrelevant. I have usually been able to book the segments this way.

On occasion I have even reserved the segment before the ticket was issued and told BA-MRU that I had reserved the segment they were unable to obtain and so they should check and incorporate that reservation into their ticket.