Originally Posted by
oneworld4u
Viajero asked whether a change is planned to oneworld Explorer fare’s 20 sector limit. The simple answer to that is yes – and we believe all other RTW fares face the same issue. The reason is that the technological standard adopted by the airline industry (through IATA) for electronic tickets cannot handle tickets for more than 16 sectors. The industry moves fully into an era of electronic tickets only from June. Tickets already sold by then for journeys of 16 to 20 sectors would of course remain valid. We are working on a formal announcement now, and this should be posted soon. While Viajero and a number of other FTers may use Explorer for journeys of between 16 to 20 sectors, you are in a very very small minority. The new restriction will impact on a tiny percentage of customers. Even so, it’s a shame anyone should be impacted. Over time, as technology advances, we hope this industry-wide restriction will be eased.
Many thanks for the response. The above suggests that the change is *solely* driven by ease of handling technological changes and with regret over reducing the product (for the small number of us who use >16 segments). Two follow-up questions if I may:
(a) how much weight is there in your alluding that were in the future the technological environment to change to make 20 segment e-tickets easy, xONEx products would once again allow 20 segments?
(b) Was there consideration to not changing the fare rules but just the ticketing constraints or otherwise finding a way to allow 20 segments on an xONEx where, say, a re-issue occurs after 4 segments have been flown.