Oh what I would do with 36 segments!!

But I think your arithmetic is faulty. Let's see:

• 6 in NAM
• 4 in SAM
• 4 in Europe/Middle east
• 4 in Africa
• 4 in Asia
• 4 in SWP
• 10 extra purchased segments (2 in each continent, except continent of origin IIRC)
• 6 inter-continental flights
• 3 extra inter-continental flights (for 2nd visits to northern hemisphere continents - where 2nd visits allowed to all three continents back then?)

Grand total = 45 segments ??!!

I wonder who got the most segments? Perhaps we need a separate thread where people can brag:D (I can't brag - my max is 17, which only happened due to a schedule change)

These conjuncted tickets are considered one ticket. Even today, an "e-ticket" can still only have 4 "coupons," one for each flight, and any open-jaw counts as one. E-tickets still retain all the fields and structure from paper tickets. You will frequently still have xxx xxxxxxxx00-03 or something like this as your e-ticket number.

Yes, it is possible to have more than one set of conjuncted tickets in one PNR. However, it is against most airlines' rule to issue different tickets across married segments. For example, if TPE-HKG-CGK is booked together and HKG is a transit, you can't have TPE-HKG on one ticket and HKG-CGK on another.

Was the removal of open-dated ticketing was another "Enhancement" brought about by e-ticketing?

That's why. I was just a child back then. :rolleyes:


If you set up a ticket, input your name, phone, FFNo, etc., then cancel all the flights, the PNR still remains intact as a shell.

Very tricky - I believe it is still technically possible for this to be done. Essentially, all the segments would need to be booked in another PNR, and then perhaps you need to change date or something, so all segments are deleted. After a while, the original PNR gets purged, and only the ticket is available. A new PNR is then created, and certain manutal entries are used to link the original e-ticket with the segments in the new PNR.

Another possibility is that when different systems are involved. For example, an agent using Sabre (either a TA or an AAgent) created the PNR and issued the RTW. The original ticket contains LA segments, which is on a different partition of Sabre (so a different PNR). Then, you asked another airline to do date change or re-issue, so the LA segments get further booked into a different PNR because other airlines using Amadeus would create a new LA PNR when booking LA flights.

Historically, most airlines use their own systems, so you have many PNRs and a lot of cross-platform issues (or loopholes). Now, all oneworld airlines except AA and LA use Amadeus, so these kinds of things are less likely to occur.

Back to the question, if someone were to attempt to create two PNRs with segments of the same airline that should be married, I suppose the agent would be looking for an ADM. Sure, the agent may also get lucky and not get caught.

Yes, exactly, because e-tickets are restricted to a "booklet" of 4 tickets.

That's not how you calcalate it, mate. I believe paper tickets are also limited to booklet of 5 tickets (so 20 total), but for this I'm not 100% sure. xONEx were definitely limited to 20 segments total, though.

Open-dated ticketing remains possible! Nevertheless, it can frequently create problems when you are booking flights across different airlines that use different systems, so it is strongly discouraged. I believe the technology is there between Amadeus carriers, but most airlines still discourage / prohibit it.

Yes, they are now, but the point is that they weren't in 1999!

1. Sure, there will be no "live" segments, but the segments (or coupons) dictated on the ticket remain there.
2. No, the PNR has a risk of being purged if it contains no live segments. I know Sabre now doesn't really purge PNRs that "had" a segment in the future (so if on 01JAN you booked a segment on 01APR, and then cancelled it immediately, the PNR wouldn't really get purged before 01APR), but I'm not sure about Amadeus.

It was not limited to 20 segments (not 16) in 1999?

No. See, for example, this discussion here of a 30 segment journey by [MENTION=5]3544quebec[/MENTION] (who is still active here) in 1999 (in FIrst for US$6000!) (and also the STAR file I copied above)
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/1690902-post1.html

Wow that's something for me to learn. The oldest rule I have (from BA) is dated 2005 and had the 20-segment restriction. I only started to learn all these things around 2002.

If it were possible to have 30 segments, it may mean that paper tickets were not limited to booklet of 5, but I wonder in this case how things all fit (fare calculations, etc.).

I remember fare calculations as a simple A4 sheet stapled onto the (hand-written) ticket.

Back to the OP's predicament: if it hasn't been sorted out already, wouldn't a wait-list request for "D" on the JFK-MIA sector do the trick? Sure, it's insane that it can't be booked in one call, but to get the seat desired on the flight in question, asking (via the wait-list) should be the surest fire way to communicate the request to the revenue management team/algorithm.

This said: I also fondly recall the flexibility that paper tickets allowed. The distinction between ticket and reservation was much clearer back then, and I'd often have the bulk of my ticket initially issued as OPEN, simply calling the operating (or marketing) airline and creating a new PNR to hold the reservation of the flights I'd wanted to take next. As long as I provided the ticket-number for them to note along with the reservation request, this was never a problem. I'd sometimes have to have the paper ticket "stickered" to reflect the reserved flight, but often, the OPEN ticket was simply uplifted as-is. Ah - the halcyon days.

Yes indeed - those were the days. And now all "enhanced" out of existence in the name of "progress".

Ha yeah sounds like the practice back then. Because it won't fit on ATB tickets (the "hard" paper tickets), so the only way would be to use the carbon copy ("soft") tickets with something stapled I guess.

The only handwritten ticket I have is an AS "visit pass" ticket issued by the AS GSA (General Sales Agent) in Taiwan from 2002 or 2003.

Ohhhhhh, the nostalgia of reading that thread from 20 years ago I think $US6000 was for a RTW in a bassinet, surely.

I'm sad to say that I have not progressed in life from my infant obsessions (I still suck my thumb too)

My 28 segments DONEWC3 was issued in 2003.
To attach fare calculation to every coupon, CX Tokyo ticketing office made duplicated copy of fare calculation on small papers, and attached them to back side of all coupons.
So, very thick paper ticket.

BTW, It contained day trip from LHR to HEL. At HEL immigration, officer checked my ticket about 30 minutes.

Yes, I remember CX's way of doing it as well. That was on a printed ATB ticket, which I had to have a major reroute on whilst at HKG. The ticketing people there used to be very good.

Keeping in mind the difference between PNRs (reservations) and tickets, in the old manual days, it was possible to have one ticket that had coupons for flights in different PNRs. An agent would create different PNRs, issue a manual ticket, and update the different PNRs to contain the manual ticket number. I'm not sure how it would be done in today's automated world. Ignoring limited-changes PNRs that are automatically issued due to flights on multiple airlines, code-shares, etc., since those are not germane. It might be possible using low-level SABRE or Amadeus. But it's a theoretical question with no practical application.

If you're only talking about a way for a reservations agent to request that RM approve a segment that is otherwise unable to be booked, yes, the segments could be waitlisted or simply desired, then the PNR queued to RM, but none of that is a solution, because it can't be ticketed with that segment missing, unless the segment is added as a surface segment, and the ticket would need to be reissued as a re-route if the flight segment gets confirmed. It's also unclear that RM would approve the segments. A better approach is to book the segments with a long enough time in between to break the marriage, or as code-shares if possible (which may only be possible if the ticket is issued by a TA or an airline other than the one that operates the flights in question).

FWIW, my first J RTW ticket with what would become One World was in 1990 ticketed with BA exBAH. Repeated in 1991 ex DHA with BA. Alas I no longer have access to the full routings or the rules. But I can state I wasn't worried about maximum segments.
But the rules had to have existed at that time.....

Just wandering
Fred

Those were the days when QF/BA had a strong relationship and their RTW fares would from time to time offer the option at no extra cost on an F fare of flying Concorde transatlantic (did it twice) or cruising across on the QE2 and the BA Executive Club actually had a presence in Australia and offered rewards like dinner for 6 at Rockpool in its heyday - where's the emoji for old man reminiscing

Sorry to stray so off topic but us old folks also tend to ramble

I also did Concorde on an AONE3 but by then it wasn't zero cost (later fare rules than the ones I posted).

Likewise, apologies for old person reminiscences.

Now I'm jealous.

I'm there, too.

The rules allow the ticket to be issued with a waitlisted reservation or with an open sector, except for the first international sector.

(The absence of the word "confirmed" before "reservations" is significant.)

Whether you will find a TA or a system that can ticket it in that state is a different question. Amadeus can handle open sectors on an eticket. Not sure about Sabre.

Good to know, thank you. (In my own experience, no one has been wiling to ticket with an open segment since paper tickets went away.)

Perhaps we can organise a Flyertalk meet for those of us with walking frames - but don't leave it too long

This is what I was talking about when I made my suggestion. Of course your original ticket has to be issued from one PNR. But then you have your ticket (open or for a random date) and then you make your reservations for the flights you actually want, in one PNR or two. Then you associate the flight coupon with the reservation. Sure it was easier when you had paper flight coupons, but I bet you could still do it the same way with electronic flight coupons. And you can probably even have 2 different airlines book the 2 AA flights and associate the flight coupons with those flights, and neither airline has to be AA.