Friends of mine were booked on a TPA-LGW-JNB//CPT-LGW-TPA itinerary departing this evening utilizing MR points to book cash fares via AmEx travel. They had Confirmation numbers, assigned seats, everything but a boarding pass. Get to the airport and are told their itinerary was never completely ticketed and they need to contact AmEx travel. Spend 30 minutes on hold with AmEx travel before they finally get someone on the phone, but by then it’s too late and they’re missing their flight.

Spend the next three hours on the phone with AmEx travel to no avail trying to get a decent routing that doesn’t eat up multiple days of their trip before finally deciding to book an $800 cash fare on B6/SA TPA-JFK-JNB tomorrow morning. Lucky for them the fare mysteriously plummeted in price from $3000 to $800 around 9:30PM.

Now they’re trying to work with AmEx travel to get the return flight “reinstated”. Does anyone have insight into likely outcomes here? I haven’t spoken with them on the phone to determine whether or not AmEx is taking responsibility for the issue. Based on my understanding of ticketing, I’m struggling to come up with a scenario where AmEx honors the flight home if they aren’t utilizing an AmEx ticket on the outbound. Seems like they’re going to get a refund at best and be stuck buying a close-in one-way home. Anyone have insight they can provide on how this might be handled?