LatinPass/GlobalPass - No More Tickets in House!

I made my final reservations with TACA today no problem. Will have burned all but 11,000 miles. I called Global Pass they said submit everything in writing to them. She said on Thursday or Friday we will let you know. They are working with TACA to get more tickets. My concern is TACA signed on to share the program with 11 other carriers. Now that they are the sole airline left they are getting slaughtered. I wonder if they will tell LP sorry, but no more tickets. If so will TACA convert our paper tickets that we haven't received to an electronic ticket? Hoping and praying they will.

I made my final reservations with TACA today no problem. Will have burned all but 11,000 miles. I called Global Pass they said submit everything in writing to them. She said on Thursday or Friday we will let you know. They are working with TACA to get more tickets. My concern is TACA signed on to share the program with 11 other carriers. Now that they are the sole airline left they are getting slaughtered. I wonder if they will tell LP sorry, but no more tickets. If so will TACA convert our paper tickets that we haven't received to an electronic ticket? Hoping and praying they will.

I just got off the phone with GP (Marissa) and she informed me that there is no problem with the tickets that were called into them before last Thursday (the ones that had fees charged and ticket numbers are there -- you can see online in your GP account). The problem is with the call-ins or write-ins on Thursday last week or later. They are waiting for an answer from TACA on those. I don't think that there is any chance that TACA would give electronic tickets if they are not going to give ticket stock to GP.

I called GP today to confirm that they received my email regarding ticket requests that I had sent Friday afternoon. They confirmed that they received my emails and will process my tickets this week.

Also, a friend of mine sent 3 requests for tickets to them on Friday morning and has received an email back from them confirming that they are ticketing her reservations.

Just out of curiosity, how did she send them vandykes44? E-mail, fax, fedex?

Well typical LP I was told no tickets so let's see if they got some more today thanks for the good news. If anybody has reservations out there, I say book those tickets via expediate immediatly

I called GP today to confirm that they received my email regarding ticket requests that I had sent Friday afternoon. They confirmed that they received my emails and will process my tickets this week.

Also, a friend of mine sent 3 requests for tickets to them on Friday morning and has received an email back from them confirming that they are ticketing her reservations.

Talked to them as well the same day as you (TUE, 6/28), confirmed receipt of my e-mail, was not sure about the fax with my cc number.

BUT, the agents wording was very choosen, e.g. requeste will be "handled", we will "get back to you" and similar. Pressing more she always evaded my question if the reservation will actually be ticketed. Further on FR, they said ticketing by TUE, now it's just "at the end of the week" - no further details.

I am concerned and I am prepared to fight!!! :mad:

Does anyone know what the arrangement is between GP and TACA for the award travel? Is it GP that has to pay for all of these award tickets, or is it TACA? If it is GP, I agree that we could be in big trouble. If it is TACA, then I would think that GP must have some sort of formal agreement with them that obligates them to provide the tickets. If the cost is TACA's, once GP has the ticket stock from TACA, there would be little reason for GP to not send them out as promised, as they would face much bad publicity and possible litigation.

My reason for posing this is partly to try to help reassure myself that we will get our tickets issued, but also to reassess the need to pay the expedite fee if we "know" that GP has the ticket stock and maybe has also actually written our tickets. It seems that at this point, it may be all about whether TACA provide GP with the ticket stock or not. If they do, we get our tickets - if they don't, we don't get our tickets. The expedite fee is not likely to affect any of this, unless they were to run out of ticket stock again, with expedites possibly being written up first.

Does anyone have any thoughts about this? :confused:

Well we may all be in trouble, even if we "in fact" receive our tickets should you need to say change the dates OR even your return....look for the thread with title WARNING!
I am not secure with the way this is all going down, at all.
I did get a ticket number and I can see it on TACA's & GP's website, but will GP actually send it to me in 2 months? Even if they don't I can dispute the charges on my credit card, but I CANCELLED an Award tkt w/DL to finish off my GP account, and it could disrupt my travels should they welch.
I ask you... should you be considering just getting a tkt and changing the dates later, who will you contact? If TACA says it's a GP tkt and you need to contact them, and GP is long gone, who ya goin-ah call? Ghostbusters? :confused:

I just got off of the phone with Marissa at GP to get a status update from her. I want to start out by saying that she seems to be a sweetheart from all of my conversations with her. She could not confirm that tickets would definitely be issued, as others have stated. GP is apparently having dialogue with TACA to try to get more ticket stock. However, there is a very large back-log of ticket requests that have been submitted, and I'm sure that TACA is balking somewhat and sending over more tickets.

Marissa indicated that they would send-out e-mail confirmations when they have ticketed the flights. I asked her about the expedite versus the non-expedite. She indicated that expedite would be sent-out right away, and that standard delivery would likely occur 8-12 weeks in advance of one's flight, as GP wants to get all of this stuff out. She said that she wouldn't worry about the expedite, because if they have the tickets, you will receive them. I don't think that the expedites necessarily get processed any sooner than the non-expedites. I think that they get processed in the order that they were received.

Now, I guess we just cross our fingers and wait. Hopefully this all gets resolved before any of the reservations actually lapse. That could get ugly. Someone might want to ask GP if they believe that they need to ticket everything by June 30th, or not, due to reservation expiration. I was told by TACA that my various reservations extended anywhere from mid-July to early August, I believe. I'm wondering if the longer amount of time is related to business class tickets, or not.

I also just got off with GP and was told to either email or fax my 5 trips in, they cant take over the phone. I had to line up where to go and with whom.

WHATEVER you do MAKE SURE that your email or fax is there by 5pm tommorrow, as they close at 6pm and can deny you if it aint there by then!!

Now my take on this is why would Taca want to make reservations for us I just finished my last one 10 mins ago, and then go P!SS us off by saying OK you got a res but we arent gonna send you atkt even an E Tkt. They would stand to lose too much IMO

I also just got off with GP and was told to either email or fax my 5 trips in, they cant take over the phone. I had to line up where to go and with whom.

WHATEVER you do MAKE SURE that your email or fax is there by 5pm tommorrow, as they close at 6pm and can deny you if it aint there by then!!

Now my take on this is why would Taca want to make reservations for us I just finished my last one 10 mins ago, and then go P!SS us off by saying OK you got a res but we arent gonna send you atkt even an E Tkt. They would stand to lose too much IMO

I suspect that TACA is trying to moderate the number of tickets by the various reservation restrictions. However, not everyone is indicating that they are using GP awards when they make their reservations, and even if they do, the agents may not be briefed uniformly to not accept reservations or place limits on them. If I'm TACA, it would seem to place less heat on them if they simply restricted the availability of tickets. They need to allow some, but could severely restrict them. That way, no one points too much blame on them. The thing that helps protect us, I believe, is the original notice on the GP website about the demise of the ability to book award tickets ("The New Era"). That notice is still there and unchanged. I suspect that if GP was smart, they have a firm agreement with TACA that requires them to provide the tickets thru 6/30. Hopefully, TACA will come to the conclusion that these flights would not be taken but for the GP awards, and that unless the planes fly full, the only cost is the marginal cost of a bit more fuel and food. I think that GP and TACA will not take actions that would be blatantly inconsistent with GP's website notice. TACA is still reasonably big and strong and hopefully can survive the issuance of another batch of tickets. I think that they all just underestimated how many people would "check" the GP website or otherwise find-out that the miles were about to expire. They didn't reneg on the original mileage bonuses, they just put restrictions on them. Hopefully the same will happen here.

Rhino having said what you did, since the tkt stock is not a GP one but has always almost been on GTs I will not blame GP but I will hold it against GT. I for 1 made sure that the rep understood I was using my GP miles and I know they knew it,how- otherwise they would have asked me for my Distancia # which they didnt. Im sure had I said I was going to use my miles in my Distancia acct they would have looked it up and finished everything then and there.

I feel very strongly (not that it will help us any) that its up to GT to hold up their end of the deal. If they werent gonna honor or issue any tkts after the stock that GP had was used up they NEVER should have made confirmed reservations for any of us! I would think that GP would have to pay GT for the tkts so there must be some even small rev coming in. If GT was worried about us taking all the free tkts in their system then they should have allowed us to redeem tkts thoughout 2006 or simply worked out some deal with GP,where GP would have transferred the miles over to them and then they could ahve imposed a limit as GP did on the amount of miles we could cash in per year. Now its all up in the air and will a sour taste in many apersons mouth.

Yes it was a fun run and hopefully we all will be able to use up the miles, but they definitely should have handled it better. My last trip down there was 2 years ago I figured I can burn thru them little by little. Well now Ill be going down 5 times with a friend within 4 months.

I asked it earlier, but does anybody know or have a guess as to how the financial arrangement worked between LP/GP and all of its member airlines in terms of the ticket awards? Who took the hit for the Million Mile bonuses? Was it LP/GP or was it the member airlines, and is that part of why they have all dropped out? If GP is paying TACA some amount for the ticket awards, doesn't that imply that TACA must have paid or be responsible for paying GP for running the awards program? I would guess that all of the original members agreed to provide free award tickets as requested, based upon the belief that award tickets would be requested in proportion to the amount of flights flown on each of the member airlines. This would mean that the member airlines probably took the hit for the Million Mile runs. The payment doesn't become due until GP requests an award ticket from the airline. This means that TACA as the only carrier left in the program would be "paying" for all of the remaining award tickets.

Anyone have any other theories? :confused:

i personally dont know or really even care who has to shoulder the burden. all that should count is that Taca has been accepting and making the res for using GP miles and they should hold up their end. GP does NOT have their own tkt stock (meaning GP is not a Carrier and does not issue its own tkts), we were told that we had until 6/30/2005 to exchange our miles into tkts and that we could use them ONLY on Taca/Lacsa and not even Avitaca so Ill to buy a r/t on Avitaca to get to/from Flores(Tikal) its $122 r/t and will allow me to extend the expiration of my Distancia miles so that will work for me.

so if at any time Taca wasnt going to honor its part by issuing the tkts they should have said so, so that we didnt have to go nuts trying to find flights and make land arrangements.

I happen to like Taca/Lacsa flight times as they get me into the LA Countries early so I have time to do something that day and leave late in the day back to NY so I get a full day again down there. The US carriers get you in late in the day and then they turn the aircraft right around and it comes back early, so you lose the day going and coming back. so I can leave on a Sun and return on a Thurs and Ill have 4 1/2 days to do things. With a US carrier all I get is 3 full days.

heading down to SA the US carriers are better as its a non-stop or a 1 stopper while TA/LR it takes 3 to 4 flights and alot more time as you must go via their LIM hub.

i do hope we are all worrying over nothing and that GT doesnt drop the ball on this one , but accepts its responsibilities on this one as it was them and not GP to whom we had to make the reservations and it was GT that in fact made the res and gave us the Record Locators. We do NOT have GP record locators but GT locators

The reason I keep asking the question is because I think it does matter who shoulders the burden. I'm hoping that it is TACA, because I don't think that TACA is getting ready to go out of business, or that the cost of these award tickets will bust them. GlobalPass, on the other hand, especially if they have to pay something close to the cost of an award ticket to TACA, could be really crippled by having to pay for maybe 500 or 1000 award tickets, and would be willing to risk the bad press and unhappy flyers if the alternative is to jeopardize what many speculate to be a precarious financial position already. I've got 13 tickets reserved right now, and it sounds like many others are requesting similar numbers of tickets. The more people who jump into the life boat, the more likely it is to sink!

The reason I keep asking the question is because I think it does matter who shoulders the burden. I'm hoping that it is TACA, because I don't think that TACA is getting ready to go out of business, or that the cost of these award tickets will bust them. GlobalPass, on the other hand, especially if they have to pay something close to the cost of an award ticket to TACA, could be really crippled by having to pay for maybe 500 or 1000 award tickets, and would be willing to risk the bad press and unhappy flyers if the alternative is to jeopardize what many speculate to be a precarious financial position already. I've got 13 tickets reserved right now, and it sounds like many others are requesting similar numbers of tickets. The more people who jump into the life boat, the more likely it is to sink!

What He Said.

I've got 13 tickets reserved right now, and it sounds like many others are requesting similar numbers of tickets. The more people who jump into the life boat, the more likely it is to sink!

Rhino...no offense :rolleyes: But the boat would be less full if you and others had used your miles through the past years. I myself had just about enough miles left for an economy tkt. from MIA-GRU and bought a few miles to round it up. Plus I have to buy my tkt from ATL to MIA r/t. I do agree that someone is going to carry this burden and TACA got themselves into the agreement BUT I think Globalpass did us ALL "u 2 :-)" a BIG dis-service by NOT notifying us say 90 days in advance via e-mail, snailmail, or a phone call. This would have helped ALL our boats inc. GP & TACA. I used ALL my miles and it was a great experience. I doubt this will ever happen again "on the cheap".

p.s.
Rhino I Hope you get ALL those tkts. and are able to enjoy the same ;)
Boa Viagem!

Bob,
I must disagree with your post above. If anything you should be Thanking people like Rhino for having held onto their miles. Otherwise we might have been in this situation 2 years ago. By not cashing in on a steady basis it meant that LP/GP didnt have to pay the carriers for the tkts (what ever their arrangement is/was).

It was a Blast!! Im happy I did it and Ill tell you something even knowing what hassles we would be put thru, if I could do it all over I would in a minute.

I did the run in 4 days, but have gone back a number of times and hopefully will be able to go again in the next few months. I NEVER would have gone to Cuzco/MP or Quito I never heard of them before. Costa Rica was great and hopefully Ill be there again 2 more times, along with Tikal, and Santiago. I also dont plan to stop going once the miles are gone. Thats where Taca is making a mistake!! If they stand behind their reservations that they made for us then I will stand behind them and purchase my tkts from them in the future. Heck Id rather be in CR than in MIA, I hear Belize is great too. GT has a GREAt opportunity to stand up and get not only our Furture travel $$$ but those that we send to them as well.

I found that GT flights are sooo much better time wise than any US carriers you get there early in the day so you can take something in and they leave late on the return. The US carriers have really bad flight times usually and dont always fly everyday sometimes its just once a week.

But Most Important of ALL, Lets not attack each other or blame anyone for anything it will only help to extingush the Great times that we all had and leave bad memories.

I remember as if it was yesterday reading thru all the posts where we ALL were helping each out with: which flights would count for those carriers that arent in the air yet, which are the cheapest flights, what hotels to stay at, the best Taxis, how to by pass paying exit taxes or if we had to where the booths were so that we can get thru it ASAP, where the lounges were. etc etc etc what to see in each place. And now once again we are binding together in order to help each other thru this latest snag. To me that is what FT is all about!!!! So PLEASE lets not attack each other but rather let us remain Untied Together as we have been till now.

I'm frustrated a bit because many of us our in limbo right now. Theorizing as to what is likely playing out is my way of trying to relax a bit. As to the reason I have so many miles left, my wife and I both did a full run, so we had 2 million miles to burn, rather than just 500,000 or 1 million, like many others. We also have a 2 1/2 year old and are just finishing up with a major remodel that started about 2 years ago, so you can do the math and understand why we haven't traveled as much in the intervening years. I also agree that spreading awards out over time probably helped to prevent the whole thing from going under sooner. As to what GP/TACA may have decided to do in terms of notification of the "bonus" recipients, you might try viewing things from their perspective, and it isn't difficult to see why they may be taking the actions they are taking, especially if this large stone that we represent is threating to not only slow down their boat, but possibly capsize it all together! OK, enough of the boat analogies.

I had a wonderful time throughout this experience as well, and greatly appreciated all of the wonderful shared advice in planning the trip, and in claiming the bonus. Without this community and great posts by people like FLIGHT_HOUND, this whole process would have been much less enjoyable. My original trip was a 17 day "survey" of South and Central America, with significant stops in Costa Rica and Cuzco. It reminded me of my first backpacking trip to Europe when I bounced all across Europe by train ride at night to save on having to pay for a youth hostel at night! Now that I have a taste of South and Central America, I believe I will continue to go back to explore further.

I agree with Craz, TACA has the best connections, especially for Central America. I catch a red-eye flight from SFO or LAX and arrive at my destination early in the morning (this works particularly well with a young child), and I leave late in the afternoon, leaving me with pretty close to full days on both arrival and departure. I put up for a night at a Hilton in either LAX or SFO before catching a flight or driving back home the next morning to Sacramento. TACA and LP/GP goofed when they set-up this promotion, I but if TACA stands by their commitment, they'll have a customer well beyond when my mileage awards run-out. Because of my Million Mile experience, and by telling my mileage run story to so many others, I'm probably responsible for convincing at least 20 different people that I am aware of to purchase tickets from TACA to fly down to Central and South America. Let's hope that TACA realizes the goodwill it gains by keeping its commitment, and let's not fight over the last life jacket...

Imagine all the travelers unfamiliar with Flyertalk!

As LP?GP did not do any mailings we would all be toast without Flyertalk. How could they not notify us is beyond me. I can't imagine what some folks will do when they call to take a nice vacation and find them closed.

I also noticed the fax number was now a number no longer in service

Has anybody waiting for ticket confirmation today gotten any news or communication from GlobalPass?

Friend with whom we went on our run just reported to me that they will not take details over the phone now, fax is not working, and his e-mail to them at customercare@globalpass.com is bouncing back. Actually, he says it may or may not have gone through--he is not sure.

Djlawman

Has anybody waiting for ticket confirmation today gotten any news or communication from GlobalPass?

YES! :mad:
Look at the WARNING Salt & Sugar Thread, NOT GOOD!

Yes, but this was for a KLM ticket.....

Yes, but this was for a KLM ticket.....

The upper left hand corner of the paper-ticket say's TACA w/address, so it IS TACA stock. I wonder if we have any agents or airline employees that could clarify?

If the ticket no. begins with 202 it's TACA stock. If 074 then is KLM's.

If you use "my messages" in global pass account you can have them acknowledgement when they receive message. At least you would have some proof arrangements were made in time. Time is running out though!

I had sent my award requests in by FAX and got verbal confirmation from Marissa that she received them. I had initially had problems with sending something through the "my messages" on the GP website, but I just finished doing it successfully and got an e-mail back acknowledging the receipt. Nice bit of a safety net for proof of request on time.j

I just called TACA and they told me that all reservations are good for 35 days from the date the reservation is made, unless the reservation is made within 35 days of departure, in which case the reservation is only good for 5 days. If this is right (someone please confirm), then unless you are leaving within a month or so, we should have a little bit of time beyond June 30th to get everything resolved. However, when I made the original reservations, they were telling me that the reservations were expiring at different times from what they told me today. Anyone know what might be going on?

:confused:

Anyone know what might be going on?
:confused:

Talking with TACA on the 30th, they are now making all D and T class reservations held until the day before departure. Up until 2 to 4 days ago (depending on who you talked to if they had seen the memo yet) they were holding these reservations for varying lengths of time as they would for normal ticketing. Some of the holds were as short as a few days.

I wanted to check on my reservations today. All of them but one had been changed automatically to be held to one day prior to departure--even though they all had started out at held until June 30th. The one that wasn't had actually been cancelled, but I was able to reinstate it under the same record locator.

I would think it's a good idea for everyone who hasn't received an award ticket tracking number email yet to call TACA and VERIFY the hold dates. If your hold date wasn't automatically extended...then it might be cancelled by the system and you'd be out of luck as GlobalPass processes the tickets over the next week or so.

I also had TACA verify today that if you already have a 2006 award booking in D or T, it would be valid to ticket when GlobalPass gets around to it. But, you can't make any new 2006 award date requests. In fact, they have removed most of the 2006 inventory and you most likely won't be able to make changes now to 2006 ticket records. Once you are ticketed, wait a month or so and the award inventories will be opened up again. At that time you can make date changes and pay the $35 fee.

GlobalPass insists that award tickets that are issued are valid for one year, so I would have to work under the assumption that date changes will be OK through either one year, or June 29th 2006.

Talking to GlobalPass today, they are going to process the requests as they received them. There was a strange comment about them waiting for TACA to "approve" them--them being all the award requests currently awaiting processing. I asked if that meant TACA might not approve any of the current and in process requests. Agent said "you never know"....what a comforting feeling! Agent said TACA was going to respond to them by Tuesday or possibly Wednesday. So, I don't think ANY of us will see the award tracking emails until mid next week. I still get the sense that TACA will approve them and it will all work out OK.

Since there's nothing more I can do, I'm going to my happy place and await emails next week.

Good luck to us all :D

Its now after 6pm est, so GP is closed and Its All Over Now. Now the Waiting Game begins. GOOD LUCK to Us ALL GP & GT too

First of all many, many thanks to you, FLIGHT_HOUND for all your great & very helpful advise!!

Just called back TACA to reconfirm my res. and found one record for a deadline by 2 July, 2005. Close call, as it would have meant 4 tickets down the drain!!!

Was changed to 29 July with the agent relying on the 35-day rule. As of now I am fine with that.

So I have two tickets waiting to be ticketed and another 5 paper tickets in hand, so do I need to reconfirm everything/nothing or just the reservation I am waiting to hold.

So I have two tickets waiting to be ticketed and another 5 paper tickets in hand, so do I need to reconfirm everything/nothing or just the reservation I am waiting to hold.

Awards you have tickets in hand, awards where you've received an award tracking email from GlobalPass, and/or awards where you can see miles deducted from your GlobalPass account (with pending or completed as the status) are OK. The reservations that you are waiting on GlobalPass to slog through the backlog are 90% likely OK too.

TACA recently changed their procedure to hold the award reservations until the day before departure (even if they had originally held them for a week, to June 30th, for 35 days, etc). They have gone through their system and adjusted all their reservations. But, knowing how things have always worked in the past, I wanted to double check. One of my many reservations was not extended automatically. It would have been expired by the time GlobalPass got around to ticketing it in the next week or so--but not now after I fixed it.

Therefore, if you do nothing you're likely OK. But, I'd certainly call TACA and verify your unticketed reservations are properly held until the day before departure. That way you can be assured the reservations won't be cancelled if TACA overlooked one of your records when it was modifying the hold dates.

I guess Craz maybe paying the expediate fee wasn't a bad idea after all.

I believe the approach here is to suggest to TACA that we are willing to pay a $100 processing fee. Otherwise why would they have any reason to honor these tickets. I have two tickets to be ticketed so $100 would be a great deal for me.