Extra North American segment on AONEx
 

I have on hold a 19 segment AONE4 reservation originating in Africa and I am only planning on using one 'free' segment in Africa. To make use of the full 20 segments permitted (before 1st June 2008) I would like to purchase an extra North American segment (as I have already used up my six 'free' segments).

An agent at the AA RTW desk has just told me that the North American segment must be (1) the last (i.e. 7th) North American segment in my itinerary and (2) purchased in first class.

I don' think this correct and wonder what others would advise me to do? The Technical Rule sheet on the Oneworld web site says:

"Two additional flight segments within each continent, except the continent of origin, may be purchased.
Each additional segment at a charge of:
First Class USD550 / AUD750 / GBP350 / HKD4300 / EUR450 / JPY65000
Business Class USD400 / AUD500 / GBP200 / HKD3200 / EUR300 / JPY48000
Economy Class USD150 / AUD200 / GBP75 / HKD1200 / EUR100 / JPY18000
The fare class of the purchased flight segments may be lower than that of the oneworld Explorer."

My intrepretation of this is that I should be permitted to, for example, purchase the extra segment in economy (L) class even though I have an AONE4 ticket. Furthermore, the rules say nothing about the extra segment having to be the last segment in the itinerary for a particular region.

What I was planning to do was use the purchased segment as number six out of seven in my itinerary, and upgrade this AA flight to first or business class (as I am an AA Explat). My seventh flight in the North American itinerary is with CX (YVR-JFK) and I would not be able to upgrade it (as I have no status with CX).

I guess I should try another agent or two until I get what I want - or am I missing something here?

AA will usually require that your 'purchased' segments be after your 'free' segments, even though no mention of such is made in the rules.

You should be able to purchase them in any class though.

(1) is I believe correct; you can purchase a 7th segment in North America. How can you have an extra sector before the normal sectors?

(2) is incorrect; this can be in A,D or L

Dave

Unless I'm missing something, the only time the issue of which NA segment is the extra purchased one would come into play on an initial purchase would be if the passenger wanted to purchase it in a lower class of service than the *ONE*.

As to why they want purchased segments to be after the free ones, I can see a rationale involving complications during ticket reissue. What if you had the extra purchased segment as the first segment in NA, flew it, then later changed the ticket such that you no longer had extra segments? This would complicate the reprice and possible refund.

There is no refund if you don't fly your extra segment, so this shouldn't be a problem. I think they just want to prevent you from flying the shortest sector in Y.

Thanks QF009 for your quick response.

Two years ago I bought an AONE3 ex CAI from AA and I was allowed (without challenge) to select the first flight of seven in North America to be the 'purchased' one. I bought an L class segment and was able to upgrade a few days before I used it. So, two years ago it was apparently possible to do what I now want to do.

I think this is another example of an extra rule that AA has invented which is outiside of the published OneWorld rules.

Nieldsdc suggests: "I think they just want to prevent you from flying the shortest sector in Y". In fact, it would make more sense to me if they wanted to prevent you from purchasing the longest segment, because the price of a fixed segment is idependent of distance.

Dave Noble makes the point: "How can you have an extra sector before the normal sectors?". My answer to that is that if you purchase an AONEx or a DONEx, and the rules say that you can purchase an extra segment in L class, then why shouldn't you be able to position that L class segment wherever one likes in the sequence of 'free' segments to maximize the chance of being able to upgrade? In the North American part of my itinerary I have six AA flights and one CX flight (the last of the seven). I can't upgrade the CX flight but probably can upgrade some of all of the AA flights - hence I want to make one of the first six flights the 'purchased' one.

If, for example the 7th segment is only an Economy / Coach flight, how could AA force you to purchase an A segment (or even a D segment)?

I recently had 4 AONEs issued by BA: 2 ex-MRU, 2 ex-JNB. For each ticket I added two extra US segments in Economy and they were NOT flights 7 & 8. Initially they gave the same response as AA: must be the final segments, but, after the BA supervisor got involved, they agreed that there was nothing to stipulate that they should be placed at the end.

Thanks Full Score! With your piece of recent case history I shall try again with the RTW desk. The only difference is that BA issued your ticket - but as our friends at OneWorld.com keep reminding us, that shouldn't matter.

I'll let you all know what happens...

I have extra segment experiment for Asian continent.
CX Tokyo ticket office ticketed A-A-D-D-A-A itinerary.

BTW, sometimes an agent added USD based (400/550) price even the origin point is EUR currency based.
Once, I purchased ex-IST (Euro) AONE3 at Tokyo, an agent wrongly added USD priced extra segment surcharge.

I've had times where the AA RTW desk said that the purchased segment(s) had to be the last segment(s) and a few other times where they have let me pick the flights. It doesn't seem to be a hard rule, or at least not a hard rule that's well-known. However, the split has been about 90% the former and 10% the latter. Continuing to call and try different agents might be the best chance of success if it's important enough for you.