Just an update of my experience at HKG trying to get a DONE4 ticket reissued (after flying the first segment). Bottom line: CX was quite efficient in handling my situation, which was simply changing some dates and some destinations for flights downstream.

Upon arrival at HKG, I proceeded to transfer desk in E1. CX agent suggest I settle down in Wing First Lounge and then go land side (She gave me a "Transit Advice" form) to get ticket sorted.

While at Wing First, I gave a copy of my revised itinerary to a staff, who then handed it over to another person. That person told me just sit in the lounge and be available if she calls.

Some 2.5 hours later, I checked the status. She was assigned somewhere else in the airport, so another staff called for me. I was told all changes were made without problem, except for my requested seats. I was handed a phone to talk to the agent regarding credit card charge details. I paid US$125 as change fee per pax. The other charges (YR, YQ etc...) was very minimal and was charged in ZAR.

25 minutes later, I received my reissued ticket in my email. When it's time to go land side to get BP and check bag at UL counter, we did so by showing the "Transit Advice" form.

The key here is that I had plenty of time at HKG (8 hours before my next flight) to make the change work.

Thank all you guys for chiming in with suggestions and sharing experiences.

Thanks for the report back. Good to know that HKG airport ticketing is one of the bits of CX that still works well!

RTW date changes with BA
 

I bought an ex-CAI DONE4 in November during the EGP crash sale. The ticketing carrier was BA and I flew the first two segments CAI-LHR-AMS early December. The following segments (AMS-DOH-SYD) were booked for early April.

My plans changed, I could not continue the trip in April and I needed to postpone till around mid-October. Oneworld website promoting the fare states the following: ‘If you need to make changes to your itinerary during your journey, please contact the member airline you are flying with on your next segment.’
So I call QR hoping they can change the dates for me. I speak to two agents and they both say they cannot do anything to this reservation, I would need to contact BA.

BA Cairo, who in the past have been pretty good in handling ticket changes, advised me to contact customer service in UK as they now handle all RTW tickets changes. Fair enough, the Cairo office is small and they must have sold a lot of tickets lately.

So I start my series of phone calls to BA customer service:

DAY 1 – Call 1, duration 35min
The friendly agent I talk to is clueless. I am put on hold five times as he needs to ask someone for advice. He also asks me a couple of times what is the reason I want to change the dates. I find this a bit intrusive - why would he need to know that? He makes note of my request and says someone will call me back later that day. I do not receive any call back.

DAY 2 – Call 2, duration 48min
I again need to explain what I want to do, seems none of the information from the call the previous day is anywhere in their system. I’m put on hold three times during the call. The agent keeps telling me he cannot access the fare rules, therefore he cannot make date changes. I tell him the fare rules are on the oneworld website, I offer to email them to him but this does not work out for him. He says he will forward my request to the ‘Fares team’ who would get back to me.

Three hours later I do receive a call back. However, it is not from the Fares team but someone who appears to have picked my call-back request from the previous day. He is unaware of my call to them earlier that day and reassures me ‘they’re looking into it and will get back to me’.

DAY 3 – Call 3, duration 11min
Another friendly agent, another call where they can do nothing to resolve the simple request I have: change the dates of the remaining flights on the ticket, keep the routing the same. Response I get is that the Fares team are still looking into it, please call back later.

DAY 4 – Call 4, duration 32 min
The agent seems a bit more knowledgeable. He goes through the itinerary with me and finds availability for new dates. My dates needs to be very flexible as the booking class D apparently is very difficult to find for many flights. This comes across strange to me as the flights are some six months in the future. Anyway, the reservation is now moved to later dates, finally. However, he cannot ‘confirm’ the ticket yet as it still needs to be validated by the Fares team.

DAY 5 – Call 5, duration 11min
My reservation is still with the ‘special department’ and I would need to wait as ‘they’ – the customer service - cannot do anything about it anymore.

I find it shocking how difficult such a simple change is to get processed. It felt like I was trying to book a flight to Mars, everything was so out of realm for BA’s customer service. Not to mention the cost to BA, I spent well over 2 hours of their time on the phone and this is not counting any time the Fares team would have spent on my reservation. Why could I not do such a change online myself? Felt like this all happened in the 1980’s. Unbelievable.

AA RTW desk told me that as long as there is an AA flight in the upcoming itinerary after flying the first leg, they can reissue the ticket and make changes (for $125) - sounds like this is the way to go for changes, given BAs failures?

Ticket is QF stock, but simply cannot get thru to QF in under an hour.

Oneworld RTW/circle fares are not (yet) autopriceable, they have to be manually priced. You are basically back in the 1980s, yes.

BA has very few people who can deal with this and they have outsourced a lot of their operations to undertrained people. :(

QR could in theory take ownership of the ticket and reissue it, but good luck with that.

That sounds unlikely, D class is usually wide open, unless you are looking at domestic flights on certain carriers. If you want to share the dates we can look for you.

The bottlenecks were DOH-SYD, supposedly no D class available in the first two weeks in October. I'm booked end September now, which is fine.

The other strange one was SYD-AKL-SYD on LA800/LA801 where again no D class available in October. I'm now booked on QF metal BA code for these segments.

I always thought D class is not particularly scarce as it is revenue and not deep discount (except of course in the case of ex-CAI :D).

Anyway, I'm all sorted for now, just wanted to share the experience and indeed may go for the AA RTW desk for any future changes.

Thanks for your input and help.

I'm seeing D9 on pretty much every QR908 flight in the first week of October. But it could be some weird married segment logic.

Glad it's all sorted. ^ ^

Checking in ExpertFlyer and yes indeed it is married segment logic
- plenty of availability in D for AMS-DOH
- plenty of availability in D for DOH-SYD
- zero availability in D for AMS-xDOH-SYD
QR is notorious for its weird married segment logic; there are threads on this in the Qatar Airways forum.
R2 - you could consider a stopover in Qatar, which would remove the problem for you (I did that in 2015 when wanting to fly CMN-xDOH-OSL).

R2 - your experience certainly does not match mine in 2015
I was flying a BA-issued ex-CPT DONE5, made numerous date changes as I went. In all cases I was put on hold for ~10mins while the agent read the rules regarding the date changes, then the agent would come back confirming the changes and that there was no charge
(Now a re-route I wanted became a nightmare, but that another story!)

Are you claiming this is wrong?
https://www.oneworld.com/news-inform..._col_count%3D5

BA is not on Sabre though

AFAIK BA can't change these tickets with the automated Amadeus Ticket Changer

Did the AA RTW desk say this specifically about an ex-CAI ticket? And was the ticket originally issued before or after AA dropped the fare?

AA RTW told me they cannot touch an ex-CAI ticket that was issued after AA dropped the fare.

Glad to hear that CX handled it so nicely. Was the ticket originally issued by CX or did they take it over? Was it an ex-CAI?

AA desk and reissue at LHR
 

It would be wonderful if AA could take over the BA issued CAI ticket.
However, In my experience with the AA RTW desk since the merger, has been mixed, some of the agents "just say no" while others are competent and helpful. It depends on who picks up the phone. There are agents I have spoken to that I know I will get a negative answer every time.
I have 2 of the BA ex CAI tickets left to fly on: one AONE4 and an AONE5.
I need to add SYD on the AONE4, but I worry about planning the trip to SYD.
Yes, I am going to make changes after I fly the first segment.

I wanted to break the first segment CAI-LHR-SFO, at LHR, but the flights are on the same day, and I do not want to go through the pain and uncertainty of a reissue at LHR.

There is no airline that can change your ticket before you fly CAI-LHR...

I changed my ex-CAI DONE3 at LHR after arriving from CAI. I was also connecting, but my connection was long (20 hours...), but no matter 2 or 20 hours I guess you can ask the agent at CAI to just check you in for CAI-LHR, which probably leaves it easier to change the remaining segments no matter what they are.

I reissued the DONE3 with CX at LHR which took 2-3 hours. I figure you will fare better with BA ticketing agents at LHR T5.

I have a DONE4 exCAi issued by QR through a Perth TA.
AA made one change (well actually two) prior to the first flight when the AA schedule changes made automatic (and behind the scenes) changes to a couple of my AA flights in the USA. When I called AA, it was noted that the change was computer generated and another flight on the same day was permitted (and made and communicated back to QR). The TA was able to get QR to re-issue.

About three weeks later (just before the first flight) a combination of QF and AA schedule changes caused a mis-connect in the TransPacific routing. As this section was in conjunction with Mrs WF's AA-issued U class award ticket things got complicated. Apparently rescheduling would be permitted but not re-routing. AA was not really helpful until I contacted the RTW desk and provided the details of QF available flights PER-SYD for Mrs. WF. AA made the change to my reservation but would not re-issue and referred me back to QR.

But this eliminated the invalid connection and allowed me to re-ticket as the first flight had been taken.

So - involuntary changes can be dealt with - as long as re-routing is not involved. If you want to re-route - fly the first segment and pay the fees and taxes. Note that QR has not been transparent on this but I would say that they were not "excessive".

Happy wandering

Fred