Originally Posted by
ernestnywang
I definitely understand you are report your true observations. I don't doubt that. However, I am not convinced the reasons are what you believe to be.
I would have done the same simply because, once the segments are booked, you only have a limited time to save the PNR. In Sabre, the status code is first Sell Segment (SS), then one has to End Transaction (ET) before SS gets changed to Holding Confirmed (HK) during the initial creation of the PNR. Amadeus behaves similarly though use DK instead of SS. If anyone attempts to enter most of the information only after the segments are booked, one risks losing the SS status of the segments booked. I don't believe anything is entered at the "fare" level during the initial creation of the PNR, except an "OSI YY OW RTW" or similar line to indicate that all airlines should set the Ticket Time Limit (TKTL) consistent with the xONEx rules. The AA RTW desk creates the PNR and then sends it to the Tariff Desk for pricing after. If the "OSI YY OW RTW" can result in change in availability display (I highly doubt), one can simply just enter that single line after all the segments are booked. If there are airline internal policies that say any agent booking RTW needs to enter such line first or otherwise enter information that tells the availability display system that this is an RTW, or that the AA RTW desk sees more limited availability because of Point of Sale (PoS) restruction, wouldn't the airlines give TAs more of an advantage for seeing expanded availability?
I really don't think so. You can lose a confirmed segment if you didn't save (ET) the PNR in time, but once the status code has changed to HK, you don't lose it after merely pricing it. You only lose an HK segment if you didn't issue the ticket before TKTL or if the flight itself got cancelled or down-gauged.
There can sometimes be availability discrepancies, though your cases sound to me like the initial availability display did not correctly reflect the Point of Commencement (PoC).
Can we possibly see if
JAXBA has any comments? Maybe a new technology is being implemented that I do not know of?
I would very much like to better understand what has changed. A few years ago, availability was consistent for regular fares and RTWs. In some cases there were point of sale differences, but those affected all types of bookings. Now, it is clear that RTWs have reduced availability compared to regular records. With both AA and JL, a flight have be D9 in Sabre or Amadeus in an ordinary record but D0 for an RTW record. The same flight for the same date shows the same restriction with AA (Sabre) and JL (Amadeus). I mention those two airlines because I haven't asked any others. I did ask a friend who books his own (non-RTW) tickets in Sabre and he was able to book the flight but told me if he proceeded it would likely come back unconfirmed later.
I know there are other reasons a confirmed segment can change to unconfirmed, e.g., if the operating carrier finds a flight for the same passenger in a different record that it believes conflicts. A corporate TA told me there are things one can do to work around married segments for UA but those same things would cause the segments to change to unconfirmed with AA flights.