I'm planning an RTW itinerary (my first) that would include taking the Trans-Siberian railroad. Under the OWE rules, it seems as if a surface segment between Asia and Europe is not allowed. Is this correct? If I were to include an Asia to Europe flight to get around this and just not use the flight, is this okay?

Thanks.

Interesting question - land travel between Asia and Europe. It doesn't seem to be prohibited directly by the rules. They only disallow transoceanic surface segments. Of course, you are really not travelling between IATA Area 3 and 2 on a OWE ticket which might be a problem. Might be worth talking to your favorite airline's RTW desk about this.

As for buying the ticket and then not using it, that won't work. The rest of your itinerary would be cancelled based on your no show for the Asia-Europe segment.

where is your continent of origin?

if you start from europe/asia.
one way you could do this, is have this as your last segment and to forfeit the euro-asia intercont.
then you will have to arrange surface transport for PEK-asia origin, or Moscow-euro origin. e.g.

but talk to them, perhaps they wd allow this.

IMHO, if u r only doing 3 continent, it make make more sense to buy simple 1-way and visit-continent pass

I disagree with that. Get the ticket issued entirely open dated (except the first segment, which has to be specified) then make your reservations on as many separate PNRs as you wish. Throwing away one segment of the ticket is no problem at all.

Slick idea. Ought to work.

Very interesting idea on the open itinerary. This of course put put you at risk at not getting flights, particularyly if you're economy looking for M class travel. But the other thought I have is, surely they would track the tickets being issued. They are numbered in sequence. Would there not be some sort of tracking this? Of course who am I kidding....the majority of ticket agents just aren't familiar enough with ONE ticketing that it probably wouldn't be a problem. Curious what the RTW desk would say to this if you ask as a purely hypothetical question.

Some confusion I feel - open-dated means that you still have to fix the routing in advance so that taxes etc can be priced in. Unless you change the routing there is no need for any ticket reissue.

I get all of my known/critical reservations in place often long before I actually think about issuing the ticket (which I normally do somewhere near the ticketing deadline, or even on departure for the first segment).

This is not hypothetical I have done this two or three times a year for the last 3-4 years.

Throwing one or more coupons away is no problem. What you can't do is use the coupons out of order - that should be picked up at check-in where the agent should look at the sequence number on the coupons, and I certainly wouldn't risk it in the hope they didn't notice.

[This message has been edited by christep (edited 01-15-2003).]

i agree with christep.

the ticket number sequence is too easy to spot. every agent can do that. the only reason for your getting through is they are too busy that they forgot to check