A quick question for any of you who have recently bought/used a RTW from the AA office in CAI.

While I've, reassuringly, got the paper tickets in hand, every time I log on to check the itinerary on AA.com it confirms a valid locator but displays no information other than the pax names.

Also when trying to check seating for one leg on QF, I was told by AA to contact QF. On contacting QF they said AA had yet to pass on any information re the booking and that this may also be the case for other OW airlines included on the same itin.

Should I be concerned (the booking was made 3 months ago...) or is this just the usual thing of AA's booking system not syncing up with Amadeus? Don't want to find that my requested seats, erm, haven't been requested when commencing travel.

I would be nervous. If you are ticketed then your rez should be in all the systems. Have you checked the Sabre site, www.virtuallythere.com ?

Hi Bob, thanks for the reply.

Tried this on Sabre but it's not recognising the reservation.

If AA booked it then it won't be on VT. I would personally just call the individual airlines and ask whether they have a reservation for you for those flights.

Are these open tickets or dated tickets? If they are open dated they won't appear in the reservation system until you make a booking. Though I've noticed even when you make the booking sometimes the flights don't appear (on mine, I can see all CX/BA/QF segments on AA, but checking on Qantas's site none of my CX segments appear).

Bar the last 3 segments, they're all confirmed bookings. When I spoke to QF earlier they stated that they had a booking with names but nothing else and that unless this info followed they would let it go. Is this usual practice for AA in CAI? They seemed so efficient otherwise...

[This message has been edited by virtualtroy (edited Feb 29, 2004).]

Did you book it originally through AA RTW desk?

I can see mine o.k. on aa.com. All segments are open except my next leg from Europe to the U.S. and the last two within Europe and ending in DXB on BA - these also show seat assignments. Interestingly I called AA in London on Friday to ask about adding another continent. Even though they could see the reservation somehow they have lost the ticket image. Kind of weird as just a couple of weeks ago at DFW I asked a check-in agent to print off the details so that I had the routing, fare calculation and tax details. It was definitely in the system then. Now I have to fax a copy of the ticket into AA before they will advise on changes.

No with BA, then AA took over the booking.

Does anyone have any expereince using RTW paper tickets's out of order?

I was under the impression that you could not use your tickets out of order. You would need to have your ticket re-issued to change the order.

I was faced with the same dillema, and was advised by all on FT that changing use order of coupons requires a re-issue. In fact the conditions on the tickets clearly state that and most airlines have that condition as part of their Conditions of Carriage.

The consensus was that one might belucky if a check in agent didn't notice or didn't know and let you fly them out of order but one shouldn't take that chance.

I didn't. I re-issued at LAX QF, and managed to argue them out of the $75 by 'pleading ignorance' with the agent that this "wasn't really a re-routing, just a different order of doing the same route"!!

It worked. But I think I lucked out

I think it's useful to point out that, even though it's all we talk about here, OWE and similar rtw's are uncommon in the "real world", and most of the agents that handle them only incidentally (i.e. the ones you'll find at almost any airport) don't know the rules in much depth.

It's obviously foolish to expose yourself to something that might bite later (swapping order probably being such a toothy one) but it never hurts to ask for a free re-issue.

Buying a ticket through the AY web site gets the message - many times over - that tickets must be used in order of issue.