NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!

Someone flogged me the other day for continuing to bring this up, but my experience last summer getting an OWE re-issed at LAX was so painful I would never do it again. Better a quiet little station (is there such?) where an agent will have plenty of time to sit down undistracted and deal with the problem you present, with help a phone call away as needed.

Unlike BA next door at LAX, AA does not really have an ATO - you just stand in line with all the pax checking in and end up in front of some poor agent who will never have seen an OWE before. And I'll bet USD20 that training amounts to this lecture: "You'll seldom see an OWE, and they're very complicated, so if you should ever have to do one, call for help. You can look at the material in your training manual if you want to. It won't be on the test."

My ticket was AONE and I had a plat card so at least I got to stand in a shorter line. My agent, like all around her that she asked, admitted to knowing nothing about how to re-issue an OWE except that it was going to take her a very long time. She was clearly disturbed by the line of pax who wanted to check in behind me, that she was going to have to neglect to deal with my ticket. Her only hope was a fellow who was coming on shift at 2 PM (it was noon) who was rumored by the staff to "know how to do it".

Other than making it clear that her job was checking in pax, and I was a last-priority disturbance who would have to be worked in, my helper was enormously pleasant during the process, but she ended up handing me the tickets at 10 PM. For the inconvenience, she waived the fee. She and her mentor also technically botched the job - because it was a new 20-segment ticket and the printer only does 16, she made it into two tickets, so it's not really an OWE any more (although it says it is, and no one will notice as I use it segment by segment). I suppose the bean counters will have fun allocating the revenue.

Quite a few people pointedly post that they've had WONDERFUL experiences reticketing at LAX, which I take as a suggestion that something about my experience was my fault, or it was an unusual situtation that only happened that one time and every other day things will be different.

Perhaps so. But given that there is no ATO position, AA is careful to manage payroll by not having excess staff standing around, and OWE's are unusual enough that agents have little or no training in how to deal with them, I'd say chances appear slim.

Knowing the right AA staffer by name, being a high-profile traveler, or arriving at a time when there is and will be excess staff for a couple of hours might be part of the key. But since it's home to me, and a waypoint for lots of others, if anyone could post specifics about their most-excellent re-issue there so that we could emulate it, it would be very useful and appreciated.

TIA, as they say.