<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by JohnAx:
There's more than simple economics at work here - the OWE rules have plenty of caveats that could easily be applied to keep the likes of me from buying a ticket in Egypt. For instance, there's a paragraph near the end that says you have to pay for your ticket in local currency, else you pay the higher rate for the currency you use. Check it out. Despite my ticket saying "EGP" I clearly paid with a U.S. credit card, and BA could easily have said "no, that's not allowed."
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I think you are too broadly interpreting the rule section to which you are referring. I believe this section has to do with where the payment is made, not the type of currency that is involved. If you pay for the ticket in Egypt then you pay in EGP. This is illustrated in the example given in the rules for the HKG origination,
"paid for in the U.S.". The rules specify what is to be done if the ticket is paid for in a different countries currency. Your ticket was paid in EGP and it says so on your ticket.
Yes, your credit card may be charged in another currency but you are actually making the payment in Egypt, not the U.S. The charging in another currency is a choice of the individual airline issuing the ticket. They are doing a currency translation but taking the payment in the country of origin (in this case Egypt). The actual reason for the currency translation in these cases was to lock in the price due to the falling EGP exchange rates. I wonder if they would have done this translation if the exchange rates were going the other way?