Am I correct that if I ticket through BA I will incur YQ fuel surcharge "taxes" that I won't incur if I book through AA?

As far as booking ex-CAI, if I book on-line through the oneworld site, who is the ticketing carrier in Cairo?

If it is not AA, is there any advantage to having the AA RTW desk in the States book the itinerary and send it over to the AA [contract] ticket office in Cairo for ticketing?

If I send a copy of my passport and credit card to the AA CAI office, will they ticket on that or will they make me show up in person to show them the documents in person?

Thanks for the help!

Yes, BA charges heavy fuel surcharges

With the on-line tool, which airline will ticket your itinerary depends on which you choose for your first flight segment:
- BA if CAI-LHR
- IB if CAI-MAD
- RJ if CAI-AMM (well actually AA does the ticketing for RJ)

Getting AA to do the ticketing means you will only pay AA's fuel surcharges - it doesn't gather the surcharge for other carriers. So in this case how much you pay will depend on how many 'over water' AA segments are in your itinerary (AA has surcharges only on its long-haul 'over water' flights)

Can't help you ticketing through an agent in Cairo - perhaps others can

I had no problems ticketing an AONE4 through these guys in 2005.

http://www.emeco.com/index.php?mod_r...GSAs/GSAs.html

Can PM you the email address I was using if you want to go this route.

You could email your desired itinerary to [email protected] and they will handle the booking, pricing via the AA rate desk, ticketing on AA ticket numbers, etc. In order to issue the ticket, you will need to email your CC and passport details -- they will provide a list of the required details.

The only caveat is that you will need to pay a service fee of EGP 200 in cash or wire transfer.

According to the online booking tool, IB cannot issue tickets ex-CAI. Consequently, it won't allow CAI-MAD as the first segment.

It's been a while, but back in 2003-5 the AA GSA in Cairo (Emeco, specifically Mrs Kamal, but I've no idea if she is still there) was very efficient in arranging AONE3s for me.

I used Emeco 3-4 times in the past, even visiting their office (Taquir Square or something) once. They were lovely. With the old paper tickets, they would even hold my paper ticket in their safe & deliver the ticket to my Cairo hotel when I arrived to start my RTW.

Thanks all for the help. I just ticketed three AONE3 tickets on AA and saved over $500 each on YQ fuel surcharges from what BA would have charged me booking it on-line through the oneworld web site. [You can't make a choice of ticketing carriers on-line and BA was the default ticketing carrier, either because the first flight was on BA or because they are the default issuer for CAI [I don't know which]].

Here's how it all went:

I first called the AA RTW desk in the U.S. The first agent was clueless. She didn't even know AA had a [GSA] ticket office in Cairo. I hung-up and called back the next day.

The second agent was only marginally better. Yes, they would build the record for me and send it to the ticket office in CAI, but payment and all else had to be coordinated with the CAI office. That didn't help much so I hung-up again.

Emeco is the operator of the AA GSA Ticket Office in Cairo. Their e-mail address is [email protected]. I sent them an e-mail with a print-out of the proposed itinerary I built and printed to Adobe format from the oneworld site.

They built the record and sent me the price. They accepted my credit card fpr payment when I sent them a follow-up e-mail with scans of the front and back of the card and a copy of my passport.

The only issue was they charge an Egyption Pound 250 service charge per ticket (~US$43.00). They wouldn't charge that to my credit card, however, and I had to send them a wire transfer for the sum.

So it all worked fine, save for the issues and cost of sending the wire transfer for the service charge.