So AA canceled my first flight so my itin starts a day later. So here's my question:

I was going to be out of North America 10 days before returning. The canceled flight lowers this to 9 days. The EXP desk said there would be no problem but I get this nagging feeling there will be trouble ahead.

If I end up breaking the RTW rules due to a canceled flight and the airline cannot reroute me the same day can\will I be forced to wait an extra day before returning to North America?

any advice would be appreciated.

Arrangements made by the airlines to get around cancellations, INVOL reroutes, equipment changes and the like do not - should not - affect the rules in place in any way. Just make sure your PNR is annotated by AA and you should have no problems at all.

The way this is policied is the "Not valid before" date on the last international coupon. If you have a paper ticket that hasn't been reissued this is not an issue. On an eticket I can see that it might be. Make sure that the PNR is well-annotated. I would be more comfortable if the RTW desk (or whoever set this up for you) was going to be open at the time I was checking in for that last international flight so that I had someone to call in the event of any problems. If that isn't going to be the case then it might be worth trying to get the RTW desk to send you an email or something explaining the situation and confirming that it is OK.

Christep is absolutely right about the "not valid before" date on the last segment being the key. If the INVOL reroute is handled correctly, this date is not updated, so you are fine. You can easily verify this at any time by asking any agent to read the date value on the last segment. If it happens to be in error, the AA RTW desk can correct it. Annotations in your record probably would not help in the slightest, unless your last flight is on AA (presumably it is not). I believe the policing on this is strict and automatic (computers are good at that); not sure what level of supervisor over-ride is needed if the date is wrong (but it will be very high -- so the airport check-in people will never be able to help you in this situation).

This advice is flat wrong. If the OP gets into trouble, and wants to contact the ATW desk for help, the annotation becomes very important, unless one likes having to explain everything again and fight the issue from a position of weakness. To say that it probably would not help in the slightest is incomprehensible to me.

That annotation is helpful only with the airline issuing the ticket (AA in this case) and of zero help with another airline -- hence my comments. Of course the PNR is already annotated at AA when the original flight was cancelled, and this is automatic and requires no further action. My point was that other airlines won't honour an annotation about ticket validity date as the issuing airline can correct the date as easily as it can add the annotation -- making any such annotation suspect.

First I want to say thank you to all the responders. I appreciate you taking the time to give your input.

I called the AA RTW desk and they confirmed I will not have any trouble as it is "clearly noted" in my record that AA cancelled the flight and it was an involuntary reschedule.

I pressed and asked if BA would be able to see this info (BA is the last INT segment). The agent said yes and there would be zero issue for me.

So half of me feels better and the other half is now 100% convinced I will have a problem because the RTW promised there would not be one. Murphy's law and travel seem to be best friends.

thanks again for the help

Second that. I had a similar issue with my recent *A RTW. After ticketing a schedule change to one flight, which forced a change in the next flight and meant the following stopover was no longer a stopover, reducing me to 2 instead of the required 3 minimum. However as this was an INVOL CHG and noted as such there was no problem even when I subsequently had to reissue the ticket (for a schedule change on another flight which caused a reroute).