If do have a question to you Oneworld-Experts. Is it possible, to reserve seats for a RTW if the RTW is not ticketet yet. I don't want to reserve it with the agency which will issue the ticket. Just with AA or some other company. If it is possible, can you recommand me a website or telephon number, where I can make reservations, which later can be used by the issuing agency???

Thanks for your comments.

So you want a company to make a reservation for you so that you can take that reservation to a different company to get ticketed, thereby not giving any income to the company that made the reservation.

Unless you have a friend who is a travel agent or you have a travel agent that owes you a few favors, I don't think you will find anyone who will do it. This is besides the fact that the airlines get pretty pissy when agents make empty reservations for the purpose of holding space on a plane.

I thought about some AA or Oneworld telephone number oder website. Since I will give them business, it should be possible, to reserve a seat. At LH for example it is not a problem to call the Senator Line, make a reservation without having a ticket. They later transfer this reservation to the travel agency I tell them.
Thought something similar must exist on AA or Oneworld too.

Simply call the rtw desk of the airline on which you'll eventually ticket and give them your itinerary. It's best if you understand the rtw rules so that your requested routing is legal.

You may call any airline to make reservation for you.. HOWEVER, it depends on where you are issuing the ticket from, as each country has their own quirks as to who can issue the ticket eventually. ie who is the first originating carrier, who is the first carrier taking you long haul etc etc.

It is presumed that you want to make a booking yourself, do all the seat selection with that airline and then asking the agency to 'take over the booking' just by giving them a reservation number. Most agencies would prefer if you cancel the booking entirely and they handle it from scratch. Because you may think that you're saving them from extra work since you've done all the 'work' for them. But in fact, you've made life even worse as taxes, routing and rules all have to coordinated between agency and airline before ticketing can happen.



[This message has been edited by Guy Betsy (edited 09-03-2003).]

Personally I always keep the reservations and ticketing as separate as possible. Only the first segment is ever linked to the ticketing and I get that reserved by whoever is going to issue the ticket, which is otherwise issued "OPEN". All the other reservations (and seat reservations) I just make separately (generally over multiple records) through a friendly travel agent.

I never see any value in tying the reservations and the tickets together.

Of course, for this to work you need a friendly travel agent, or a login to one of the online booking systems (I am more or less at this stage now - I can just get my friend to check the bookings I make myself from home).

Of course with the new rules this may be a bit trickier to do in Economy, but it's never been a problem for me in business or first.

[This message has been edited by christep (edited 09-03-2003).]

chris,

which onlime booking system do you recommend for making reservations when the ticket is already issued?

dodn't they rerquire you to complete ticketing within a certain time limit?

cheers!
TLA

Sorry, I didn't explain myself well. What I have is direct access to Abacus through a VPN over internet. To do this you need a (very) tame travel agent who can get you the software, login id, etc. This is not recommended for the general traveller.

But still nothing to stop you making the reservations separately directly with the airline. CX, for example, can make reservations on any OW airline.

As I read the new ticketing rules, you can still just fix the first segment (which you have always had to do) and leave the rest open-dated with separate reservations. You just need to ticket economy class further in advance if you are unsure of the reservation on the first leg. But this isn't an issue for business and first.