I'm hoping for a bit of advice here, but I'm guessing there's nothing I can do except waiting and seeing. A major problem has come up after yesterday, although my travel agent has assured me not to panic (yet).

Basically, my question is: is there anything I should or can do when a ticketing issuance problem occurs between my agent and United (via Sabre) ? The story is below if you want to keep reading.

Yesterday, within 2 hours of the 72-hour hold period of the reservation my travel agent had for my MEL-ORD-EWR-MEL tickets, I rang him to ticket the reservation as fares had gone through the roof. The fare and seats are guaranteed for that 72-hour hold period. The itinerary shows up on my "My Itineraries" during that hold period as well. He was going to do the payment right after I hung up with him (and he tried to).

Well, I rang my travel agent earlier today since the itinerary disappeared from my itineraries. He said there was a problem in issuing the ticket. He books via Sabre (which AA owns he says), and Sabre and United's communication was down during that period. (.bomb has been having problems all weekend too for pricing and booking Australia-US flights).

The agent said he spent hours on the phone today trying to fix it, but it hasn't been fixed yet. He hopes to have it sorted by tomorrow, and he said something like Sabre or United might have to eat the extra fare cost (which sounds a bit odd I guess). His agency isn't big, so he can't eat the $2000 fare increase (which is a ridiculous increase for an economy fare when there were tons of cheap fares that immediately switched to very expensive fares, even though the Australia-US advertised sale doesn't end for another few days).