oneworld - Travel agent in Canada needed for OWE ticketing

Hey all,

Need a TA that can issue a OWE ticket for me. Can anyone refer one to me.

Thanks in advanced

-Pix

Guy Betsy's the man with tame TAs in Canada, but I can't immediately find the thread where he posted his recommendation recently.

I still don't understand now that tickets cannot be issued for itineraries commencing in other countries (or at least not at that country's price) why people don't just book OWEs direct with the airlines.


[This message has been edited by christep (edited 01-21-2003).]

Thanks christep for your kind words.

Unless you're going to issue your ticket for travel ex-Canada, OWE tickets, I'm afraid can no longer issue in Canada at another country's lower rate even though yo uare departing from that country.

You may only do this if you're issuing 'Star Alliance' RTWs.

Take christep's advice and book and issue with that originating carrier from wherever you're starting your journey from. You basically can issue the ticket up to 1 hour prior to departure. But please make sure the reservation is set up to ticket already with the stroke of one button. You don't want to miss your flight while the airline tries to figure out the proper taxes you should be paying.

Well my plan is to originate travel out of YYZ this fall.

Its my understanding that once a reservation is made I must have it issued within 7 days. It was my desire to avoid having to fly up to YYZ now just to pick up the ticket and head back, I was hoping I could get a Canadian TA to just issue the ticket and send it to me.

I know the Canadian OWE fare is not as cheap as say the GIB fare but as I understand it its still better than the US rate hence why I'm going through all this.

[This message has been edited by Pixel (edited 01-22-2003).]

I'm not aware of this ticketing restriction. And as I have said MANY MANY times, the simplest way to do OWEs is to keep the reservation and the ticket completely separate (except for the first segment (perhaps up to the first international segment, depending on who who ask) which needs to be on the ticket.

Simply decide the routing and get the ticket issued with all except the first segment as open date/time. You need to call the airline in advance to set up the ticket record so that they have time to calculate all the taxes etc and then just arrange for ticket on departure at your first airport. In your case, ring AA/CX/BA (whichever you are using first) in Canada and get them to set it all up and you can pick up the ticket from their ticketing desk at YYZ before your fisrst flight (allow an extra 30 mins to do this).

You can then arrange the reservations through a friendly TA or direct with the airline who issued the ticket (since they will have the record for the ticket and thus you won't need to fax them a copy every time). These reservations can be made in as many separate chunks/PNRs as you need.

This seems to me to be far easier than all the convoluted stuff that some people here seem to want to go through.

(It does of course help if your girlfriend is a TA! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif )

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Pixel:
Well my plan is to originate travel out of YYZ this fall.

Its my understanding that once a reservation is made I must have it issued within 7 days. It was my desire to avoid having to fly up to YYZ now just to pick up the ticket and head back, I was hoping I could get a Canadian TA to just issue the ticket and send it to me.

I know the Canadian OWE fare is not as cheap as say the GIB fare but as I understand it its still better than the US rate hence why I'm going through all this.
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The 7 day rule for ticket issuance is before departure, not after the reservation is made. It only applies to travel originating in Area 1 (basically the Americas).

As you are going to initiate travel ex-YYZ, perhaps Guy Betsy could put you in touch with a Canadian TA that would mail you the tickets.

(Edited to fix typo of YYZ that the spell checker wasn't smart enough to catch.)

[This message has been edited by ExMo (edited 01-22-2003).]

So have the airline issue it 7 days before departure and have it waiting for you when you go for the first flight. Why make this more difficult than it needs to be?

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by christep:
So have the airline issue it 7 days before departure and have it waiting for you when you go for the first flight. Why make this more difficult than it needs to be?</font>

No airline office will issue the ticket for you without you being there to sign the creditcard charge slip. The only way is through a T/A, I'm afraid.

as was discussed, there is no 7 day window between booking and issuing.
you just have to ticket it 7 day priot departure.

you can book with AA RTW desk, give the PNR to a TA in canada (eg. GB recommends).
give the TA your credit card number and have the ticket mailed to you.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Guy Betsy:
No airline office will issue the ticket for you without you being there to sign the creditcard charge slip. The only way is through a T/A, I'm afraid.</font>

I'm sorry to be blunt, but that's bollocks - I have had tickets issued by airlines on more than one occasion when I haven't been there to sign a credit card slip. Why should airlines be different from anyone else who is authorised by the credit card company to accept phone transactions?

Ticketing through the carrier 7 days prior to departure is really not an option as it would require me to stay more days than I had planned in YYZ.

Pegasus - Giving the booking information to the AA RTW desk and then getting a TA in canada to issue the ticket and mail it to me has been my desire all along http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif, I thought it would be a pretty straight forward process but it hasn't been that at all as I havent had much luck getting a referal to a reputable TA in canada so I'm not sure what I will do next.

Dupe/Deleted

[This message has been edited by Pixel (edited 01-23-2003).]

Pixel,

You still don't get it!

You DO NOT have to go to YYZ for ticketing to take place. You simply call (from anywhere in the world) the airline in Canada which is going to issue the ticket 7 days in advance of the first sector and ask them to issue the ticket. All this means is that you are committed to the purchase and they will take the money from your credit card. You ask them to keep the ticket for you in YYZ and 2hours before your first flight out from YYZ you go to the airline ticket counter at the airport and collect the ticket.

Why is this so difficult to understand?

Christep,

What you have suggested is not difficult at all to understand. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif If I have given you the false impression of not comprehending what you have said it is not because of my ability to understand what you proposed, it stems from the fact that I have been given conflicting information as to what can or can not be done in this particular case. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif

I will be calling the RTW desk this evening or tomorrow to find out if it fact what you suggest can be done, I'll post an update once I get the info. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

just be warned about the "payment without personal apperance" approach (maybe b'cos we don't have an AA CTO in Detroit and Airport Tkt counter do things differently; or it is b'cos hand-written tkt, but if you are doing a RTW with over 16 segments, many time (not always, depends on clever agent) it need to be hand written so it may matters you:

I booked a tkt ex-canada and get it issued in DTW AA counter (good old day rule, of course). They requires me to goto the airport IN PERSON WITH MY CREDIT CARD so they they can swipt my card to do a slip before they write my tkt(I have the option to sign it later). Then I need to come back on next day to collect my tkt, again IN PERSON WITH MY CREDIT CARD!!

So after days of long phone call wit hRTW desk I still need to goto airport for TWO times to issue the tkt!!

About paid for the tkt in advance and "will call" it at the tkt counter: It used to be OK but recently the counter told me "DUE TO SECURITY REASON" they don't do will call again. (Well... will call tkt issue from AA at AA counter will cost security risk? i don't believe it but this is what the agent said!!)

Notes about more than 16 segments: One time I had a Clever (2 SOS for that of course) agent in NZ to spilt up my reservation in to 2 sets of tkt and divide the fare among them. So she can issue the tkt by computer!

*QUESTION about open end: if I have that many open segments, will AA just assume I will stopover at every point and thus charge me all the taxes? Or I need to decide /o /x at the point of tkting the open segments?

option1:
christep's approach, pick up at a canadian airport. you have to make sure you have a couple hours there, and waste the time waiting the agent to complete it.
(some airline can issue the ticket and make it ready for you to pick up, but i am not sure if this can always be arranged).

in order to accept your credit card, the airline may want to verify your address, and they may try to be difficult and unhelpful to the process because they know you are trying to SOTO effectivrly.

option2:
get a canadian agent to issue and mail to you. this is simple and easy. and remove your anxiety before starting the trip to canada.
you do not pay anything extra, because the agent's work is covered by the commission it earns

side question:

what is SOTO?

SOTO is "Sell Outside Ticket Outside" (outside the country where travel begins).

It's increasingly disallowed (with various caveats/workarounds/exceptions) because it runs counter to the airlines' desire to price tickets differently based on the economy of each specific country. They don't want to make it any too convenient for someone from a more expensive starting place to pop over to the cheaper place, ticket in hand.

On an earlier topic, note that it's probably not going to be easy to book a OWE with AA, and then get a TA anywhere to issue the ticket, as AA doesn't pay a commission to the TA.

And asking the airline to ticket seven days before departure and hold the ticket at a Canadian office is almost certainly going to look like a very blatant attempt to circumvent the SITI/7 day advance rule, and I'd bet if they did it at all it would be at the U.S. price. You might get lucky but I wouldn't try it.

Finally, that rule that says you have to ticket 7 days before your NA departure has a bit of Russian Roulette in it. I believe fare quotes are only good for 24 hours (although I wouldn't be surprised if they informally extended a quote for several days)so you would need to schedule a visit to the rate desk not too long before your departure. If you have to, you have to, but for discretionary travel known months in advance, that's asking for trouble. Depending on the wisdom/experience/intelligence (or lack of any of those) on the part of the rate agent who gets your itinerary, you and your TA can spend several days getting the rate right, and if the rate desk happens to be busy they may not get to it right away in the first place. I suppose if travel in imminent, you can whimper and they'll move you up in the queue, or if they're in a grump I suppose they can equally delay you.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by HK-UMICH:
*QUESTION about open end: if I have that many open segments, will AA just assume I will stopover at every point and thus charge me all the taxes? Or I need to decide /o /x at the point of tkting the open segments?
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You need to indicate at least enough "x" to meet the requirements of the ticketing. Otherwise by default I guess they will leave them as "o". I've never really bothered about the tax implication of this, but perhaps I should.

Similarly I've never had anyone recalculate the taxes when rerouting a OWE, which obviously opens the door to saving a little money, particualrly if you know that you are going to want to reroute the ticket later.

the /x /o is critical for the old tkt (I know b'cos the IST CTO mess up my tkt by changing it all to /o, LHR and HKG-CTO used days to fix it for me)

but the new rule is, apart from the origin con., there is no stop over limit but only segment limit, that means a lots of /o to count for!!

P.S. yeah... never re-rate the tax when changing the date.. but most of the time I change a /o to /x so that is OK, I don't know whether the check-in agent will ask me for $ when I change from /x to /o.


<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by christep:
You need to indicate at least enough "x" to meet the requirements of the ticketing. Otherwise by default I guess they will leave them as "o". I've never really bothered about the tax implication of this, but perhaps I should.

Similarly I've never had anyone recalculate the taxes when rerouting a OWE, which obviously opens the door to saving a little money, particualrly if you know that you are going to want to reroute the ticket later.</font>

Spoke with AA RTW desk today and they told me that they do not do "will call" for tickets at the counter. Yes, you can give them your CC number and depending on how near the date of issueing the ticket is to departure they will either mail or fedex the ticket to you just like they would do for any other ticket.

Luckily a couple of people have recommended an agent which I will be contacting today, with a little luck I think I'll be able to get my ticket issued in Canada. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

But say if the OWE is ex-Canada, will AA be able to send it to an US address? Or they will only send it to Canada?

Thanks!

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Pixel:
they will either mail or fedex the ticket to you just like they would do for any other ticket.
</font>

Did not ask, but will assume it has to be sent to the billing address of the CC as thats what has been required in the past.

[This message has been edited by Pixel (edited 01-24-2003).]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by HK-UMICH:
But say if the OWE is ex-Canada, will AA be able to send it to an US address? Or they will only send it to Canada?

Thanks!

</font>

AA will ONLY send an ex-canada ticket to a canadian address. so if you know anyone living there, he can then mail forward the ticket for you.

Hi. We can have your tickets for RTW and Circle trips issued in Canada if they are business or first class.

Enter your required itinerary at:
http://flyaow.com/oneworldrtw.htm

Cheers!