In theory BA is meant to be able to do it for you, with a service fee.

If the ticket is issued by AA however, they should have "full control" over all segments of the ticket regardless of what GDS the operating carrier/s of the individual segments are hosted on. I'm suspecting that you got a newbie (a lot of them around these days) at the ATW desk as IME they've always been more than happy to help me alter my itinerary on AA-issued tickets, regardless of operating carrier.

I have had no trouble changeing BA, QF and CX segment on xONEx's ticketed by AA.

Recently, they appear to have had to re-issue each time for reasons mentioned elswhere in this forum but there has been no charge for this.

I've had 2 LONE4's and 1 LGLOBE29 to date all ticketed by QF. I've had changes made to each of them enroute by QF, JL, BA and AA, never been charged for any of them. The only issue I've had was during the last one, BA changed the booking code from QF32 to BA7372 when they changed the date.

My turn to experience another wrinkle on this theme. I want to reissue an AONE ticket originally issued by a TA on BA paper in S Africa. The TA called BA on Friday and was told he must go to Cathay since the next flight on the ticket is HKG/NRT on CX. When he insisted that BA must reissue since it is on BA paper, they said fine, take it to BA in HKG!

Fortunately the TA is a peristent fellow it seems (he is the 4th person from the same agency that I am dealing with, so I have no prior experience with him) and decided he just got a lazy agent who didn't want any work on a Friday aftrenoon. So he will go to CPT in person tomorrow and try to sort it out with a BA agent he knows there.

Oh, for some consistency in OW!

Well, just in case anyone else needs to reissue with BA in CPT, this is what transpired.

TA went to CPT and arranged everything with BA. But they would not allow his agency to pay and so I had to go in person. When I did this the agent who knows about such things wasn't there and the agents at the desk were clueless. They found the documentation left by their colleague but were very tentative and unsure. Then I discovered that the first leg had been left off the new booking. Presumably this was because it was the same routing as the original ticket, albeit on a different carrier.

After phoning the agent who arranged it, they wanted to sticker the first leg on my paper ticket and re-issue the rest. Rightly or wrongly this did not fill me with confidence. The thought of presenting the first coupon of a paper ticket that I assume needed to be cancelled to reissue the last 3 coupons struck me as highly dubious. For all I know this may be perfectly acceptable practice but I didn't see why I should risk a major drama in a week's time during a 3 hour layover.

After I insisted that they reissue the full ticket a few more phone calls produced the result. Intially they wanted to send it off for re-pricing but I managed to persuade them that there was no possibility that the taxes or levies could change and if they were prepared to sticker the paper coupon they should be prepared to add the leg to the e-ticket.

So, eventually, they did the re-isssue but not without my having to be quite insistent and refusing to make another trip to CPT. In the meantime it looks as if they have made entirely new bookings on all the legs as there are new reference numbers for the other airlines, so I have no idea if my seat bookings made by the TA are going to hold. He is investigating. Interestingly my TA has declined to charge me a fee but BA was quick to pocket their ZAR300 (about USD30) pp for their rather disjointed efforts.

Bottom line: like most outstations BA in CPT is poorly equipped to do re-issues and there appears to be only one person who is competent in this. Avoid it if you can.

Well, AA finally paid up but not without a bit of effort on my part.

Rang up the EXP desk 2 days after I got back to Australia on 19th Feb. EXP Agent scrolled around in my PNR but had "absolutely no idea" what to do, and told me to contact the refunds department. I had a feeling this wasn't right as it wasn't an AA ticket that I want refunded. It was some wee hour in the morning Dallas time so maybe they put on "B Team" to work during that time. Sure enough the agent I spoke to at the Refunds department told me to contact Customer Relations first who have to authorise the refund.

I then shot off an email to Customer Relations 2 weeks later (v busy with more pressing errands) to ask for a physical office to write and send stuff to so i can get my refund. Despite v clear notes in the PNR (which I'm able to view) inserted by the original AA EXP desk supervisor I'd spoken to whilst in MXP and my v clear email stating that it was an MA ticket that AA had promised to reimburse me for, I was told that AA will only refund the difference between the AA ticket and my MA ticket - which is totally not what's promised or desired. So i sent another email, reiterating the previous email and emphasising the refund of the entire MA ticket that was originally promised.

Eventually, someone in the Dublin office replied and took ownership of the issue, and told me to forward all relevant documentation to the Dublin office with a note addressed to her. I'm guessing it took about a week for the documents to arrive in Dublin via regoed post. She then asked for the unused coupon on the AA LEURPASS ticket - which I don't have (it's buried in the depths somewhere of AA's MXP ticket desk) and was the sole reason for the need to buy the new MA ticket for MXP-BUD in the first place.

Thankfully she finally understood everything and a month later my refund for both the change fee and MA ticket finally came through.