while rereading the oneworld explorer technical rule sheet (thanks to whomever posted this) i am confused by two seemingly contradictory paragraphs.

from point 4 (e):
"Only one intercontinental departure and one intercontinental arrival permitted in each continent except as follows:
1. Two permitted in North America. when one is a transfer without stopover.
2. Two permitted in Asia when one is a transfer without stopover or on direct single plane service between the Southwest Pacific and Europe."

i interpreted this to mean that you may visit asia and/or north america twice as long as one of the visits is only a connection to another intercontinental flight and not a stopover.

but point 4 (i) states:
"Travel between Australia and Europe on a single flight number is considered travelling SW Pacific-Asia-Europe through three continents."

can this be interpreted to mean that the "asia twice" clause in 4 (e) is superseded or does it simply mean that going from europe to the swp requires 3 continents regardless if you stopover there or not?

fyi, i recently ticketed two aone6 itineraries. one through ba in mru and the other via cx in jnb. neither of the ticket offices would let me connect back through north america scl-(lax)-lhr to get from latin america to europe. both offices were insistent and refused to allow me to have that routing as they said it constituted backtracking. even though i felt my routing was legal, in the interest of getting the tickets issued i acquiesced and routed scl-gru-lhr.
is there some new interpretation of the oneworld explorer rules that i don't know about which made them disallow my scl-(lax)-lhr routing? in the past, i have had no problem routing this way.

The rule meaning in reality, as it stands today is simple: you can ONLY enter Asia twice if one of those entries is a transit without stopover between SWP and Europe; period. The other rule means that the moment you touch Asia you pay for it, stopover or connection makes no difference, you still pay.

The transit without stopover rule in NA is different. In NA the transit without stopover is between SA and another continent, so it can be SA to Europe or SA to Asia or SA to SWP.

Correct.

Post you entire itinerary to be sure but it very much looks like they made a mistake in not allowing SCL-xLAX-LHR.

thanks.

so regarding my disallowed scl-(lax)-lhr connection, it was legal, correct?

full itinerary was mru-jnb-(hkg)-syd-drw / syd-hkg-nrt-hkg-lax-sjo-lax-jfk-gig-scl-(lax)-lhr-dxb-lhr-mru
(i know that the mru-jnb-(hkg)-syd was technically illegal but they didn't care about that......

As I said, I like to see the itin before making such a statement but yes, it does look like the airlines made a mistake.

Even without an itin let me put it this way: as long as you are paying for NA this partial itin is perfectly legit: ...HKG-oLAX-oSCL-xLAX-LHR....

hkg-lax-sjo-lax-jfk-gig-scl-xLAX-lhr is, IMO, perfectly ok and they should have allowed it. (and they should not have allowed jnb-xHKG-syd but that's another story)