I'm heading out on a trip in a few days that will have me passing through Cairo one and possibly twice (9/26 or 10/3). I've read through all the posts about the highly esteemed Mrs. Sobhi and the possibility of using AA RTW desk.

As a US based (Boca Raton) AA EXP, I've dealt with the AA RTW desk several times and am comfortable with them but there seem to be many advantages to using the BA Cairo TO. Can this be done comfortably on AA given a short time period? At what times can AA agent deliver tickets? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

If you use a lot of services from the rtw desk when you plan your OWE - getting them to help you with rules, etc - and are comfortable with AA, then you probably should continue with them. The BA office in Montreal (?) seems okay but I get the impression they have been well trained but not all of them have decades of experience.

If you know what you're doing and just need someone to make the bookings for you, BA will do a fine job.

Whether you start with BA or AA, when you contact Cairo to take over issuing of the tix you'll be dealing with a set of strangers and afaik on your own to resolve any issues of rules and pricing, should they arise. The North American folks will essentially have "thrown it over the wall" to the foreign rate desk, quite unlike when they do the whole thing in their own office and handle the interface to their own rate desk for you.

If you don't need the domestic AA rtw desk to help with bookings, the decision on who to use to ticket in Cairo boils down to payment, process, and comfort level.

If you go with BA you deal directly with the airline, and pay them by credit card. The downside is that their CAI office does a lot of stuff by hand, and you may need to cajole Ms. Sobhi to give you a tax calculation, if you think you need it. You'll have to personally pick up your tix in Cairo, probably the day before your flight out (although an early morning pickup at ATO is probably okay). Your tickets will probably not be issued more than a couple of weeks before travel.

If you go with AA, you're dealing with an agent. Perhaps AA will stand 100% behind them, but I don't know that. One FT'er who's done that could not use a credit card, but ymmv. But the tickets apparently are machine-printed with taxes shown, and may be issued well in advance of travel, an attractive feature if you're worried about future price fluctuations.

You have provided me with many answers. Greatly appreciated but now I have a few more questions.

I think I have my itinerary planned out and will just need booking. Going by what you say, it seems like my best bet is to got with the BA RTW desk and have the Cairo BA ATO do the ticketing. Is there a North American number for BA's RTW desk?

Does the Airport ATO need to hand write the tickets as well? Does the CTO do a better job?

I assuming that If I'm arriving in the middle of the night I'll need at least one full day to get everything done in order to leave on the following day's 7:35 flight to LHR. I've looked but it seems that BA 154 is the only option leaving Cairo. Are there as many availability problems with D as there are with M?

You should be able to ask BA CAI to leave your tickets in the safe at the airport ticket desk, if you're planning to arrive on the previous evening's flight and depart the following morning.

The BA North American RTW desk is in Toronto at +1 (800) 828-7797. If you book through them, just get the record locator and FAX it (along with your itinerary) to Ms. Sobhi in CAI (+20 (2) 574-7674). I suggest calling her first to establish the contact (+20 (2) 578-0746). Tell the BA NA operation that you do not need them to submit the itinerary to their rate desk. CAI will need to do that and they use a different rate desk.

If your ticket is >16 segments it will probably be hand written by Ms. Sobhi regardless of where you pick it up. (BA MIA told me Amadeus can print 25-30 segments if you know how to do it -- apparently CAI doesn't.)

There is no CAI-LHR business available on 26 Sep but there is plenty on 27 and 28 and on 3, 4, and 5 Oct. BA only has one turnaround flight a day in CAI, and it runs between LHR and CAI.

Oddly, although AA RTW will swear up and down that any ticket over 16 coupons must be hand-written, AA's agent in CAI, Emeco, has no problem printing AA issued RTW tickets w/ 20 coupons-- printed on red-carbon stock.

Sabre will print 20 (maybe more??) segments. AA's system, even though it is Sabre based, will print only 16. Emeco, is a T/A and also a contract sales agent. As such, they can use Sabre to print 20 segments when AA cannot.

Yup, that's fer sure. But the whole time I was talking to AA RTW desk they insisted over and over and over again "Sabre is limited to 16 coupons" (I can't tell you how many times I was told that-- and by several AA RTW aagents (junior ones, I think)) I knew they were wrong but when I said so, some of them took it personally-- like I was a know-it-all type. So, I stopped arguing.

Thanks folks, you have given me everything I need. I'm flying in to Cairo from Jeddah on Saudi Air so inbound is no problem. So long as I can get out of Cairo I'll be fine.

It's a shame that AA killed off TWA's JFK-CAI when they bought TWA. That would have been very handy.

AA's own system can only issue 16 segments using ATB ticket stock. Which is the hard cardboard type with a magnetic strip in the back.

Most AA offices outside the USA do not have this ticketing system and thus will be able to issue the ticket on regular paper tickets with carbon.

AA (the GSA in Cairo) will not release ticket to be 'delivered'. You have to go to their ticket office and present the creditcard you had used to issue the ticket and you must sign the creditcard slip there. Your ticket will be issued ahead of time prior to your arrival at the ticket office however.

Dahlia, (don't know who this Mrs Sobhi is) is the ticketing manager.



[This message has been edited by Guy Betsy (edited 09-15-2003).]

She is the lady in the BA CAI office who has very efficiently arranged ONE tickets for many of us. Since BA has an Airport ticket office, collection is very convenient for those of us doing the overnight turnround without leaving the airport.