This is all very helpful, albeit a little bewildering. I guess there's two issues for me--the benefits of paper vs. e-tickets, and then how best to make use of either. My understanding w/r/t e-tickets is that any routing change is instantaneous, and that a $125 fee is charged as soon as the routing change is completed. The benefit of that is that I have a confirmed seat on my new flight.

For paper tickets, the way it was explained to me (although maybe I misunderstood) is that although I can reserve a seat on a new segment that's not part of my original routing, that seat is not really confirmed until a new ticket has been reissued for that segment, at which point I am charged the $125 fee. Because I am only charged the $125 fee when I actually perform the reissue, I can make multiple routing changes up to that point, although I may be at risk of losing my seat on the new routing prior to the actual reissuance.

Is that correct?

Just two other questions for christep: First, why do you leave all your segments open-dated? I had thought that there was no (or little) benefit to this--since date/time/carrier changes are free, and you're more protected with a particular confirmed seat should the carrier discontinue the route. You cited the benefit of making it easier for the person doing the reissue if the segments are open-dated, but does this outweigh the other factor? (Also, just as a separate question, am I not able to open-date e-tickets? When I reserved my e-ticket the other day, the person at the RTW desk said I needed to have a date and flight for each segment (though not a seat number).)

Second, you mentioned booking your intermediate segments directly with the operating airline--what is the benefit of that (as compared to, say, booking the entire re-route with the AA RTW desk, even with respect to, e.g., CX or JL flights)? If I want to waitlist a particular flight, am I better off doing that with the operating airline? Does this process differ for e- vs. paper-tickets?

In my case, I actually don't think I'm going to be making very many changes at all, but I like the idea of being able to make changes over the phone without having to spend three extra hours in a foreign airport, in the event that I do decide to make routing changes. I guess I'm still trying to assess the pros and cons of e-tickets vs. paper ones.

Thanks again, and sorry if these are elementary questions.