How do I prevent the following from happening again???
I had a confirmed business class e-ticket (DONE04 ex-CAI) issued by American Airlines. When I arrived at Auckland airport 2-1/2 hours before departure, LAN reps were unable to issue boarding passes. (The reps were in Air New Zealand livery). The supervisor was very unhelpful. She couldn�t get through to LAN, and had no phone access for me to call AA RTW or EXP desks in US. The problem had something to do with the segments marked �E� for "exchanged" rather than �A� for �airport control�. I was standing there for over 2-hours! I could tell this was going nowhere. I figured they weren�t going to board me and my 7-segment mileage run would fall apart. I finally ran over to the Qantas desk (even though they had nothing to do with the ticket) and enlisted their aid. I had to call American Airlines RTW in the USA at my expense to attempt to resolve the issue. From what I can gather, AA had �screwed up� the ticket & it had to be reissued. I had to rush to the gate at the last minute with an escort as I was closed out due to the late hour. I noticed they had given me an economy seat. I appealed to the gate agent and finally was placed in business class. However, my luggage is now lost. I noticed that when the supervisor, Rose, tagged my bag, she put 2 separate luggage tags on: AKL-SYD & SYD-AKL (I was doing a turn-around), rather than 1-tag AKL-SYD-AKL.
This was for LAN 801 AKL-SYD 5:55am on 20-3-2010. A weekend. Thank God it was Friday night in US. If RTW was closed I would have been stuck in Auckland. Try to get another OW carrier to work on these tickets!: JAL can only see their flights, etc.

Hmm...if you were returning to AKL, why did you have any checked baggage at all?

Having said that, I do have a lot of empathy for your problem; the quality of airline staff have dropped dramatically (worldwide) and such mistakes are far too common. What irks me most is that the airlines (particularly US carriers) never own up to their mistakes, let alone the common courtesy of an apology.

Indeed - as advised here.

!

Now, now - he's not telling you he told you so... but he did tell you so

Actually, the luggage was not really my point -- I was upset about an "invalid" e-ticket, and the repercussions. But when did I have time to store my luggage at 4am???? As per my post, I was at the ticket counter, with the supervisor, or running back & forth to Qantas Future Ticketing Desk making phone calls to the US. Then rushed to the gate with an escort as the flight was already closed.

And I was flying (actually flew now): AKL-SYD-AKL-MEL-HKG-CGK-NRT-BKK over the past 2-1/2 days. The ticket agent suggested checking to AKL to break it up. I would have preferred checking straight thru to BKK so I could be transit pax the whole way, but just following advice of ticket agent.

My luggage was at Thai Baggage Services when I arrived this afternoon in BKK.

I reckon that's a pretty good result then - kudos to QF or whoever got the luggage to BKK - presumably you didn't need the luggage during the mileage run section anyway?

There are always issues with OW RTW ticketing, it seems. I have never lost luggage on one though and I've done about ten of them. The OP did have an unusual problem because LA is not too accustomed to those tickets.

I have had issues with the SCL-IPC-PPT segments, but they always were resolved for me by AA people at SCL. Those flights are always full in the summer (Chile summer) it seems.

I laughed when I saw you are 0/10 on lost luggage. QF lost my luggage TWICE on my RTW last year: AKL-SYD-PER and PER-MEL-LHR-CAI. And QF lost my luggage in Feb, 2010 when I flew SYD-JFK-MIA. I sent an email complaint about the lost luggage to QF and it took them 6 months to respond, although I did get a $300.00 voucher after 8 months.

I'm sure I have done at least 12-15 RTW's in my time, and only BA & Iberia had lost luggage.

As an aside, AA already responded to my complaint about this trip, sending an eVoucher for $125.00 in my email.