aa takes 2+ hours to REVALIDATE DONE3 RTW
 

I have a partially used DONE3 RTW ticket issued in India in February 2002. Last week, I needed to change some dates on my itinerary. Absolutely no flight or routing changes involved - strictly date changes. I called the RTW desk and requested the changes. They took a little longer than I would have expected, but confirmed the date changes had been made as desired. I requested them to fax me a copy of my revised itinerary, which they did. Then the agent informed me something I found very surprising that a change of dates involved a reissue of the entire ticket, and even though there was no fee, I had to get it done at an aa ticket office within seven days. She asked me where I would go and I told her I would go to LGA. She said that would be fine. I needed to go to LGA last week (June 21 to be precise) to see off my sister travelling on AC to Toronto. So I went to the aa ticket counter in the main terminal. I ahd taken my original ticket with the faxed itinerry from the aa RTW desk. The agent at the counter was very friendly and trying to help the entire time. When she put the refrence number in the computer, she told me the reservation had expired. She said she was going to try to revive it. She did, but could not get the ticket to print. She called her help desk for support, who were trying different things for a long time and finally the ticket printed. I reviewed the ticket and noticed that three segments had been dropped from the ticket. By this time, an hour had passed. I pointed this out to the agent, who again was very polite, but told me that this is what showed in her computer. When she called her help desk, they told her "the passenger is lying and trying to get the ticket reissued only to add on additional illegal segments. The ticket does not have to be reissued for date changes." When the agent at LGA told me this, I was shocked! Luckily, the original ticket was still with the agent, and so was the faxed itinerary from the aa RTW desk. When I asked the agent to confirm this, she again called her help desk, the person at the other end told her that the previous person had put remarks in the itinerary cautioning everyone to be careful of the passenger as he had approached several aa ticketing facilities the NY metro area trying to make illegal changes to the ticket! The LGA agent informed the person at the other end that she had the original ticket and the faxed itinerray in her hand and that the reissue involved only date changes - no flight segments were being added. It appeared that she was trying to convince the agent at the other end of the line for a very long time, when they finally came to an agreement that the ticket needed to be "REISSUED" with all the original segments intact. After much deliberation, the ticket was reissued.

I asked the LGA agent to remove the negative remark from the PNR. She told me she could not do that, but assured me that that I should not have any problem travelling as my ticket has been reissued. I find it shocking that a disgruntled airline employee has so much power that by adding a line into a PNR, he can make life difficult for a bonafide, fare-paying passenger.

Hope you're going to follow up with AA.

This is outrageous. I would call or e mail customer service at DFW and tell them of your experiences

I agree that the agent's initial comment is just wrong - why do you need to reissue a ticket for date changes? I can see no justification for that - you simply change the reservation... In fact I can never see any reason for putting the dates on the tickets at all - I simply get my OWE tickets issued open dated (except the first sector which needs to be fixed.

[This message has been edited by christep (edited 07-03-2002).]

[This message has been edited by christep (edited 07-03-2002).]

Unfortunately since 9/11, tickets with dates printed on them, need to be reissued to reflect the new dates. This goes for all airlines within the USA. Even with tickets that permit date changes without any fee.

A case noted here - always try to issue your tickets with OPEN DATE SEGMENTS.

You may not be able to get curbside checkin with this, but at least your don't have to get your ticket reissued everytime you change your flights.

That is incorrect. All airlines in the United States do not require tickets to be reissued for the correct date. I work with UA, and if the customer is changing the date on a ticket, I print out a new itinerary charge a fee if applicable, document the reservation and call it a day.

AA told me yesterday that my open date segments MUST be reissued! And they will have to hand-write my ticket at the airport (no change fee). What a waste of resource! Other Oneworld carriers have no problem with stickering (even for more than just date changes).

AA RTW reissues are almost always a nightmare

I have just finished a call with AA's RTW desk booking my NA open segments. They insist that I must have the ticket reissued when I make an actual booking. What a nightmare and pathetic waste of resource!! Even the agent I spoke to thinks it's a stupid idea. I suggest we all write letters of complaint to AA. This new policy is turning what was flexible and excellent product into more of a pain in the butt than when dealing with the cheapest, highly restricted tickets!

An update - turned up at the airport 2.5 hours before my flight anticipating a long wait while they manually wrote out a new ticket. The check-in agent looked at the record and said it was nonsense that the ticket should be reissued. She checked with a supervisor who agreed.

So what's the deal? A definitive answer from AA is required - though I don't have a clue who would give that. Any ideas?

I don't want to turn up at the airport way ahead of time when not necessary, nor do I want to be caught out should a particular agent require a reissue.

I understand that AA have a new system which requires them to create an electronic mask og the entire routing, even flown legs before they can re-issue a ticket and you have to be present with the ticket for this to be done. Perhaps this was your problem? They cannot simply sticker anymore.

Am in the process of having AA re-issue a CX DONE4 because of open dates on the remaining ticket coupons. My next 4 flights are on AA and they need to have the "ticket image" in their system before a re-issue can be done by a ticketing agent, according to the RTW desk.

Judging from the advice given by AA, it would be wise to ensure that the reservation system has ALL flight information correctly entered before the actual re-issue is made.

If CX issued the ticket, why not let them deal with the changes? American seems to have moved from a "friendly" enterprise with respect to rtw tickets, to one decidedly the opposite, and from comments posted here it would appear best to avoid them whenever possible.

Although AA reportedly won't "sticker" tickets, is it also true that if you waltz up to the counter with a ticket stickered by someone else, the agent won't accept it? (Admittedly a bad time to learn the lesson, unless you're prone to arriving at the airport earlier than I do.)

In the rest of the free world, I've begun a OWE ticketed by QF, and although I wasn't happy with that process (I was VERY UNHAPPY, in case anyone asks) I've already made one flight-date change and it was just like the good old days - a call to res and no paperwork at all. Of course it was a domestic Oz flight, so different local rules may apply, etc.

Once again, the US shows that it knows how to apply a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Dave

AA warned me when I made the reservations for the open-dated segments that the ticket cannot be used on AA until re-issued, with the dates filled in. They (AA) will not accept stickered tickets. Presumably this is some sort of security change, they must have a security analysis program that kicks in during ticket issue (and not at other times). The bottom line is that if you want to fly on AA you have to have the ticket re-issued for all date changes (no fee for this, so AA is incurring the expense and I'm sure they would prefer to avoid it if they could). But BA, QF and CX are able and willing to use stickers and not re-issue. It wouldn't be so bad with AA if they fixed the computer system so it was able to handle issuing these tickets, now it becomes hand-written even when fewer than 16 segments due to other problems such as the tax calculation.