I heard Cairo is cheaper than other countries. How much is the oneworld ticket (4 continents/mone) in Cairo?
Here is a country in asia. So it is difficult to collect the information(fare and booking) of Cairo.

Can i buy the ticket easily in Cairo without booking for a few days?
Or Is it possible that I book it the BA in London or other countries and then buy it the BA in Cairo?

And if you know the BA's e-mail address in Cairo, plz let me know.

Plz answer soon and thanks


[This message has been edited by jessyee (edited 05-18-2003).]

[This message has been edited by jessyee (edited 05-18-2003).]

Yes You can book in BA london for tickets originating in Cairo and buy them there. BA hardly ever replies to emails in my experience Call them

If you have Excel, you can download a spreadsheet that contains the fares from all the countries and allows you to sort them from here. If you do not, you can view the rules and fares online here.

I suggest you make the actual booking through your local BA office and then give the BA CAI office the record locator so they can submit the itinerary to their rate desk and handle the ticketing. BA CAI will probably respond to FAXes. Their FAX number is +20-2-5747674

I just found out that upon ticketing, BA will convert the amount from EGP into 'hard' currency like USD or GBP. Your credit card charge slip is therefore locked into that currency irrespective when they submit the tickets to their accounts department.

The hard currency conversion may actually benefit you as your credit card company will not add a surcharge for the foreign currency transaction. The rate BA uses (BSR???) seemed good at the time they did it. The median Interbank exchange rate on the date of my transaction was EGP5.790 = US$1. I ended up getting EGP5.819 = US$1. Typical credit card transactons cost about another 2%.

Now, the other favorable thing is that they are none to quick to post the charge to your account.

I agree with Exmo that this is a big deal. (Thanks as always to GuyBetsy for the scoop.)

Do other Oneworld airlines do this? For purchases in all currencies other than USD/GBP? Or just some?

I realize this is awfully undocumented so hard to know. But the 2% difference -- on a many-thousand-dollar ticket -- could be enough to shift a purchase from one country to another. (Could make it worth going to Canada rather than buying in the US, etc.)

[This message has been edited by bedelman (edited 05-20-2003).]

Interesting comment about the conversion to hard currency. If you look at the OWE rules dated 2/13 you'll see a line near that bottom that states the traveler must pay for tickets in the currency of the country of origin, else OW will price the transaction to the higher of the country of origin or the country whose currency was used.

As my credit card is not from the US, I was quite astonished of this fact. I mean, is there anything wrong with my SGD creditcard?

Yes, the BA CAI office gave me the choice of which currency to pay in (I opted for the Euro). If you insist, and want to bet on EGP's downward trend, they can charge your credit card in EGP, too.

On the other hand, the Egyptian government may have just introduced rules to prevent this. They seem to be getting quite desperate in maintaining their currency reserves, and have rules that require foreigners to settle their hotel bills in hard currency, for example.

The actual ticket is priced in local currency, Egyptian Pounds. The credit card charge was in US$. Thus, they issued the ticket per the rules and processed the charge in a way that saved me a couple of hundred bucks based on their conversion rate vs. the rate I got from Amex on my hotel bill for that same period.

ExMo: you mentioned that the BA CAI credit card transaction took some time to charge to your account. How long? Mine's taken well over a month now -- my account still shows nothing.

If there's been a payment mishap of some sort, can they deny boarding on my next flight (I've already used the CAI-LHR part)? The reservation seems to be just fine.

I recently bought 2 RTW MLONE tickets ex-Australia - set up the itinerary with the AA RTW desk in the U.S. but ticketed by the AA office in Sydney, priced in Australian dollars, charged to an Australian dollar Visa card at an Australian bank and collected from the AA Sydney office.

Tickets were charged in U.S dollars so got the "benefit" of AA doing the currency conversion plus the "benefit" of the bank charging a conversion fee.... net loss, a couple of hundred dollars.

The AA Sydney office explained that this was because all credit card charges are billed from the U.S. - apparently because AA "will not" or "cannot" give a "guarantee" related to its credit card charges (to whom and for what, I do not know). So "I'd like a credit for the overcharge please." "Sorry, can't do that - what you need to do is dispute the overcharge with the credit card company and they'll charge it back to us."

As I said in my subsequent letter to AA, what a ludicrous way to create extra work for me, AA and the credit card company.

Charged on 9 April but did not hit Amex until 20 May. Another FT'er experienced the same delay on a Visa charge.

I did a RTW last year on AA where the ticket was issued in March but the charge did not hit until November -- and then again in April of this year. Got that one reversed in a hurry.

When I tried this through BA & AA call centers in the UK (should have gone to the BA shop I guess) they both said that if I reserved the seats in the UK then the UK fare would apply even if collecting in CAI. In the end I couldn't get the flights on my tight schedule so left it but now looking for the same for August or September - anyone got contact names @ BA for sorting reservations in the UK for CAI collection ?

Thanks

Found this thread for CAI contact http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum83/HTML/001608.html but I still would like a BA UK contact to do the reservation.

Thanks