I think most of you missed the most important part of the original post: the final destination is Europe. ALL international tickets must be endorsed by the issuing airline. Domestic tickets can be accepted without endorsement with the understanding the accepting airline will get whatever money the clearinghouse will pay.
Any domestic ticket can be accepted, whether or not there are restrictions in the endorsement/restrictions box. Of course, there must be a ticketing agreement in effect - which leaves WN out along with the other newcomers.
If you have an e-ticket, the best bet is to have it converted to paper and walk up to the ticket counter and ask whether they have room and whether they will accept the ticket. Their choice.
Frequent flyer miles so be no problem - just like being re-routed on another carrier - put in the number and get the miles.

Hi Vegas Agent. Got another question for you:

Situation:
* Full-fare ticket from USA to Asia
* Domestic flight on NW from DTW to SYR on some given day.
* Domestic flight on CO from SYR to EWR on one day.
* International flight on NW from JFK to NRT the next day.

Will the NW SYR check-in agent accept CO's SYR-EWR coupon as-is for travel from SYR to EWR via DTW on NW metal? Thanks!

- Pat

I don't think anyone missed the point, they (we) just elaborated on it.

The originator of this post has a NW ticket with an inconvenient routing. DL (a U.S. based carrier) has a convenient routing. One would have to call DL to see if they would accept the full-fare ticket from NW (and they would be unwise to do so).

It is not the origin or destination on the ticket that is of concern, but WHAT airline issued it. If it's an international airline (excluding Mexico and Canada) then an endorsement is required.

One would make a reservation with the new company, the RES agent would note something to the effect of "Final Acceptance Must Be Verified At ATO". The customer would come to NW, we would send a telex requesting a written endorsement, they reply saying yes or no, and you're on your way. I recently had two Japanese gentlemen with Japan Airlines Tickets flying UA from DTW to ORD and picking up JL. It was issued on JL ticket stock, so I called JL at ORD and got their telex address, sent them the request and they replied in about 20 minutes saying yes, the ticket could be endorsed to NW at face value. I stapled that written endorsement to the original coupons and printed an ON-LINE TRANSFER for our Nonstop DTW-NRT. If UA had issued it for the same DTW-ORD on UA and JL from ORD to NRT, NW could still accept it without an endorsement because the ticket was issued by a US CARRIER.

And to answer a question that Mr.Airport also addressed, with the BUMP program, you could have a DL ticket SAV-SLC with one coupon (though there are no nonstop flights) and NW will accept that ticket and in exchange for it, issue an online transfer for SAV-DTW-MSP-SLC.

If it's an E-Ticket, NW can search the databases of CO, UA and AA for E-Tickets, take control of them, issue you new coupons and send you on your way.

Before the end of December, NW should have Interline E-Ticket available with AS, DL and US (though I wouldn't expect it to happen before early next year). And as I've stated before, KL should be online by May, 2003.

[This message has been edited by PARSpro (edited 12-01-2002).]

Can the BUMP program be taken advantage of before the day of the flight, with a confirmed reservation? Can it be done via telephone with an eTicket, or does it have to be done at the airport?

Or am I just dreaming, and this is a same-day standby only kind of thing?

How do I have an agent look it up if they're not familiar with it?

And finally, what fare bucket are BUMP reservations booked in?

Edited to add: I'm going to try this for a trip to LAS this weekend that I have booked on an AA eTicket. I'll report back.

[This message has been edited by AndrewC75 (edited 12-03-2002).]

I was explaining endorsements to my roommate, and he asked what would happen to a NW passenger who was upgraded to F on a V fare because of elite status. Could they walk over to AA and get a first class seat?

As far as I know, the BUMP program only works on a space-available basis. No confirmed advance reservations at all.

The whole program is to get Northwest's empty seats filled up (i.e. more revenue - as little as it may be) at the last minute. It's not to have passengers buy tickets on other airlines and then confirm them seats on NW.

And since that this is a space-available basis, I would imagine that no matter what class of service you are ticketed in, the accepting carrier will most likely put you in coach (unless it's a full fare F ticket which has been endorsed - but the BUMP program refers to non-endorsed tickets).

I have a few more questions:

1. If this is a standby type of arrangement, and I do it on the outbound, what happens on the return? Will my original confirmed reservation still be valid on the original airline? Or will NW confirm me for the return? Or will I be forced to standby on NW on the return?

2. I understand that if I purchase a coach ticket on, say, AA, that I'll be on coach on NW, but what fare bucket would I be booked in, such as Y, Q, K, etc?

Finally, since I'm doing this on an ATL-LAS round-trip, if I get to the airport and walk up to NW and aren't confident that I'll be taken care of both ways, I wonder if Vegas Agent might contact me privately(see my profile) so I can try to be the FT guinea pick on my LAS-ATL portion.

Full Fare F or Y tickets will be accepted by the other carrier in the same class of service, if available, and can be confirmed in advance.

Non-Refundabale tickets and the BUMP program are more along the lines of "Oops, I missed my DL flight from DTW to ATL to SAV and DL can't confirm me until tomorrow." I call NW and they have a nonstop flight, so I go over to NW, and there's a procedure...DL L class gets NW K class, DL M class is NW H, etc. If it's available, you can get confirmed. Otherwise you can standby.

This only applies to same-day travel, and if your outbound is changed, you must contact the original originating carrier to advise them not to cancel your return with them.

Thank you, PARSpro! That is exactly the information I needed!!

Here's my experience with the BUMP program:

ATL-LAS
Agent had heard of the program, but wasn't 100% familiar with it. She looked it up, and very nicely shooed me off to the AA desk stating that she couldn't confirm me on the MEM-LAS and MSP-LAS flights I wanted to try (though I could stand by if I wanted) and that if the city pairs weren't EXACTLY the same (which mine weren't as my AA ticket was ATL-STL-LAS), she needed a paper ticket from AA - eticket numbers weren't good enough.

LAS-ATL
Agent was not at all familiar with the program by name, but was familiar with the practice of accepting tickets with monetary value. Again, couldn't get confirmed on the LAS-MEM flight. Agent stated that I could NOT standby when using an OAL ticket - I had to get confirmed to my destination. I was also told again that I needed to have the ticket on paper if my city pairs weren't the same.

Had I not been traveling with my wife, I would possibly have gone to try and get AA to print my ticket, and then tried to standby on NW, but she doesn't have the stomach for such shenanigans. Maybe next time!

EDITED TO NOTE: NW agent in LAS said that CO also accepts OAL tickets with monetary value. I didn't have time to check in to it at that point, but ATL-HOU-LAS would have been far more convenient than ATL-STL-LAS (We did LAS-DFW-ATL on the way back, so no big difference there).

Vegas Agent or PARSpro, any corrections or recommendations for next time?

[This message has been edited by AndrewC75 (edited 12-10-2002).]

If NW had availability and the flights were not oversold, then, yes, your e-ticket should have been accepted from CO/AA or UA. Yesterday Interline E-ticketing began with DL. The agent should not have shooed you away and told you to get a paper ticket from UA. We have access to their database and if you were not already checked in for their flight, we could have taken control of the e-ticket through our computer system.

We have quite a few agents set in their ways who do not want to go out of their way, or take the extra time to look something up and do it the correct way. Our HDQ printed an Agent E-Ticket pamphlet that has everything an agent could ever want to know about sending control of an e-ticket, to getting control of an e-ticket to reissuing an e-ticket, etc. An enhancement was even made to our system where we can use a "wildcard" approach and as long as we know your city pair and date of travel, we can enter this in the computer and it will first search the NW e-ticket database, then CO, then AA, DL or UA utnil it finds the appropriate e-ticket.

There is no reason you should have been turned away. The city pair, i.e., LAS-ATL has to be the same, but connecting points don't matter. You just can't come up to NW in LAS and say you have an AA ticket RNO-ORD and want to fly NW now LAS-ORD.

I've requested this type of information be included in daily memos, our ground news publication, etc., but no one must read these!

Thanks!
When I tried, the MEM-LAS was oversold in Y. Not by a lot (i.e. a standby w/ status would probably get on), but enough that they couldn't confirm me. ITN the night before showed Y0, though there were some seats in P/F. I presume I'd have to be confirmed in Y before I could get upgraded to F. In ATL I was given the hypothetical option of standing by (which was nulled by the agent thinking that I had to have paper if my routing was different). I didn't push it because I wasn't willing to give up a confirmed seat for a standby seat.

For LAS-MEM, the agent was a little ambiguous about how sold the flight was. She said "they don't overbook flights out of LAS". Not sure if that's true or not, but since I got the same paper-for-different-routing issue, we didn't move beyond that discussion.

Anyhow, I don't have any non NW/CO travel planned anytime soon, but if I ever do, especially if the wife isn't with, I'll try again.

Sorry I've been away for a while and didn't get to respond to your post or possibly offer some assistance in your situation. I am curious as to the agent who "helped" you in LAS. It's still not clear to alot of agents that we have the capability of pulling up e-tkts on other carriers (at least CO, AA, UA, and DL right now) and taking control of the ticket if we need to...the whole point of having this capability is for mainly for irregular operation situations but the other carriers can do the same with a NW ticket. All you should need is the ticket number but we can search for the ticket with as little as the passenger's name and flight information.

A few notes on this: any reservations made on NW can be done for travel on the same day only...so purchasing a ticket on AA with intentions/hopes to fly NW are risky...as one said earlier, the policies intentions are to fill empty seats with revenue (and of course to take the business from our competitors). If the ticket is a restricted fare and for a day other than the one you intend to travel on, we are to collect the penalty on it...in a case such as this, you might be at an advantage on NW if the other carrier wanted a penalty and a fare upgrade.
The policy is not set up as a standby only deal...I don't think it would be wise to send you standby on your flights with the possibility of stranding you at a hub with the intent to get your business next time.

Hope this helps and sorry your experiment didn't work out.

Not likely, the ticket would still read as a "V" fare and doubtful that AA would accept for a first class seat...in a case where NW had a problem and rerouted you to AA and was keeping you in first class, NW would have to rewrite or "FIM" the ticket. (FIM= flight interuption manifest).

Sorry - I didn't catch her name. Had the only sticking point been whether I could fly NW on the same city pair via different routing, I would have persisted and probably remembered her name, but since she couldn't confirm me anyway, we just trudged down to AA.