Finally got my ex-CAI DONE done. Mrs Sobhi is really efficient and prompt response.

She seems interpret the rules differently than the AA rtw desk, she accepted my argument to allow me to do MEL-HKG/x-LHR instead of forcing me to fly BA/QF finally after I fax a portion of the rule to her.

However, She insisted that I cannot do the LHR-IST-LHR like this:
CAI-LHR/x-YYZ/x-ORD-DTW-NYC-LAX//LGA-YYZ-HKG-NRT-HKG-AKL/x-SYD/x-CNS-DRW/x-PER/x-MEL-HKG/x-LHR/o-IST/o-LHR/x-CAI

Her reason is that I can only have 1 international departure and arrival at the country of origin in which Egypt and UK is one. ?!?!(p.s. I told her the rule is country not continent, and I am doing 1 entry/exit of Egypt, multiple entry/exit in LHR should not matter)
Then her second reason is that I can only have 2 segments for Egypt and Middleast, which IST in in Middleast. ?!?! (I know I cannot do middleast and Greece, except rule changed, IST is "normal" city)

I asked her to issue the ticket without LHR-IST-LHR (deadline for tkting), but now I only used 18segment.

QUESTION: Can I do a ticket re-issue at, say HKG, to add it HKG-Asia-HKG or even better add the LHR-IST-LHR/x back to my ticket?

Thanks!

Christ: I do follow your advice even for my last ticket by AA (aka "OPEN") and it is GREAT! Tough lecture when I talk to RTW desk but otherwise worked GREAT for all the individual bookings and segment. Never had a problem at any airport I've been accepting the open ticket!

I asked Mrs Sobhi to do it OPEN and give me tax ladder as well. I will post the result when I receive my ticket!


[This message has been edited by HK-UMICH (edited Dec 03, 2003).]

I had exactly the same routing (CAI-LHR...LHR-IST-LHR-CAI) ticketed by her in April. Obviously, Egypt and the UK are different countries. There must be some other reason.

I did have difficulty getting to the real reason for some of the initial objections. One of the problems I recall was convincing her that my second stop in LHR was not a stopover as it was less than 24 hours. She had the problem because it was an open ticket. I sent her a list of proposed flights showing it was not a stopover and she went ahead and issued the ticket open with the appropriate x/o indicators.

In answer to your question about reissue, yes, you can reissue and I expect you may be able to get the IST segment added back.

[This message has been edited by ExMo (edited Dec 03, 2003).]

Thanks for the kind words. I am surprised by what you say about the routing - it is clearly allowed. One problem Mrs Sobhi may have is that she has to pass the routing back to the ticketing desk in London for clearance - if she gets an ignorant person there she may have had some difficulty persuading them.

As ExMo says, there should be no problem with the reroute.

I do find that dealing with Mrs Sobhi by fax on complex issues like o/x is better than by phone, and I have had no problem explaining to her that way why I needed o's and x's the way I did in Europe.

Agree! I use Excel to type all the information of the flight plus counting segment number, segment of continents and X/O etc and she was pleased.

So my next question is:
Which airline is best for reissue?
BA/CX/AA? (less than 16 segment by that time)

Unless you are planning to send your tickets to some central booking office you'll be dealing with airport staff who generally will have relatively little experience with owe. So it will depend more on the person than the airline. I just used BA at LAX for a reissue and had no trouble, but it was pretty much based on mutual trust. The agent wondered if I had run the changes by the rate desk and if they'd given me an add-collect. I hadn't, since it was just replacing 7 NA segments with 7 others.

So considering they have a line of people at the counter it's pretty important to smile, be nice, and understanding of their problems and you'll get what you need.

My agent did an oops and now shows the tickets valid only till the purchase date, not the first-flight date. I pointed this out to her and it was obvious she wasn't keen on fixing it. The later tickets that pass that date are not open, and I'll just carry the first bp's when using them.