Hi,

It's been about 18 months since I've booked an xONEx, and when I tried to book one today, I was surprised to hear from an AA agent that it's no longer permitted to make a double-connection without stopever between North America and another continent...

Specificially, I wanted to fly SYD-x/LAX-x/MIA-CCS, followed by a longer visit to North America later in the itinerary. (There really is no better connection from SYD to CCS).

I was told that in order to take advantage of the North American transit-without-stopover exception, I could only have a single connection. Is this really so? The AAgent seemed quite certain, and even told me the rule had changed back in December. Nonetheless, I can't find any mention of it in the published rules, and it seems a strange limitation, so hopefully this is just a bit of correctable confusion.

Can any of you shed light on this?

Thanks,

Checkerboard

Yes, unfortunately. The restriction is a recent 'enhancement' by AA. Not quite sure what the situation with other airlines is but AA will just not allow it now.

AA975 (at least in april ) flies JFK-CCS. So you should be able to get around it by doing SYD-x/JFK-CCS-MIA-etc

Except that the QF flight arrives at 17.20 and the AA flight departs at 17.25 - so more than 24 hrs means it can't be classified as a transit. Back to the drawing board!

Drawing board

AA903 daily (at least in May) departs JFK 11.55am 1 stop to CCS. So should work but needs an overnight in NYC

What about SYD-SCL-CCS?

Can be done but requires an overnight in SCL(SCl-CCS direct only flies Friday) or LIM(uses up one of your segments)

I may just end up having to rearrange the South American part of my trip to accommodate this "enhancement." The RTW drawing board seems like it will become a regular hang-out of mine.

Incidentally, are there any other AA-specific rule changes which came in at the same time as this one?

The transit without stopover in Asia has also been enhanced in the same way.

Can you ellborate more?

It used to be possible to transit Asia using more than one segment, for example SYD-xNRT-xHKG-LHR, and still comply with the transit without stopover rule. Not any more, at least with AA. Now you can only make one connection.

Thats annoying, however shouldn't be too much of a problem for Asia givne you only get 4 sectors free anyway. I can see the US will be a problem.

That's sad, I always liked those little 23 hours stays in 2-3 places on the way back to Australia.