E-ticketing for OWE available yet?
 

Does anyone know if E-ticketing for Oneworld Explorer tickets is available yet?

It seems like that AA and CX now have interline E-ticket agreements. Anyone try booking an OWE with only carriers that have interline E-ticket agreements?

Not until all CRS have equal ticketing agreements set up for e-ticketing OWE tickets. While AA has been the pioneer on setting up e-ticketing systemwide, the same does not hold true with other airline partners elsewhere.

Note that once e-ticketing for OWE takes place, you might be charged every time you make a date change and that placing -open dated- tickets may be a thing of the past afterwards.

It will be interesting to see how e-tickets will be issued on segments above 20. It will also be hard to reissue tickets issued by one carrier to another.. (ie issued by AA, but attempting to reissue on CX) even though the same information may be on hand, different CRS systems will create different problems.

AA hope that it will be by end of next year. Agencies in Asia think it will be the end of the decade!

Well I am happy to say I just got a DONE4 on an e ticket. I feel a bit naked not having a book of tickets. Booked it throguh the AA RTW desk.

FYI-I was told that any upgardes (VIP) in my case made AFTER ticketing would result in a paper ticket. So I got the UG before ticketing and allis good.

great thing is if you use AA you can pull the itin up on the website.

So how many segments in total for your ticket? What airline combinations?

Did you call each of the airlines for which you have a flight to see if they have your E-ticket record on file? (or perhaps ask them to fax you a copy?)

And, importantly, was it more than 16 segments?

This is very interesting indeed! Personally, I would feel much, much better at this early juncture with a paper RTW ticket, especially when dealing with the inevitable unforeseen circumstance in a far and remote location. This could be for occasions such as voluntary change of plans: "Maybe it would be interesting to go to SUB instead of DPS". Or maybe the involuntary: "Oh, Mr. KIR@GCM, we (CX) have upgraded you to First Class on today's HKG-LAX flight". :D

Here's the Itin.

BOS-LHR-BKK-SYD-MEL-SYD-BNE-SYD-HKG-NRT-LAX-ORD-BDL

So 11 or 12 seg depending on how you count the segments (BA9 should be 1 seg not 2).

Airilines are:
AA
BA
QF
CX

FYI-no MR or side trips

Like I said I can pull up the res on AA.coma nd I got an E ticket confirmation/receipt via email from the RTW desk. I did ask that they expidite the tickets as I am leaving within 7 days of of ticketing and the agents said, 'Don't worry, it is no longer paper."

I do feel a bit naked without the book of tickets and I assume any changes will also cause a paper ticket to be generated.

What did you pay (all in) for the trip?

According to conversations with the AA RTW desk (and reading between the lines), if your entire itinerary uses airlines with which AA has an electronic interline agreement, then you will get an e-ticket. As far as I know, AA, BA, CX, and QF have such arrangements. Not sure about the other OW airlines. I also inferred that if you have an e-ticket, it is limited to 16 segments and that it may be the procedure sooner than Guy Betsy has suggested in a prior post. Maybe time to add that IB segment to make sure you get a paper ticket and 20 segments. I was also told that SWISS is joining OW at the end of July.

Once this all gets set up, I'm not sure that simply doing that will prevent the 16-segment cap...

So what if you wanted to fly one of your segments on another OW airline - according to the fare rules you could do so without a ticket re-issue. But it sounds like you would need a paper ticket issued. Would they charge the $75 fee?

E-ticketing works only if you have all your dates down pact and will not be changing dates that much. It may not necessarily work on open-dated segments either. The problems come in when you've got an e-ticket on AA stock, and you have an open segment between say HKG-LHR currently booked on BA. At the airport, you realise that the flight is full and you'd rather take CX. You cannot simply mosey on to CX and say you want to get on their flight. You have to call AA, who will then reissue the ticket as you are basically changing airlines. Whether or not they will charge you the reissue fee is unknown at this time.

Also, with date changes, in my previous experience, AA's stupid system sticks in a "valid on date shown" even on full fare ticktets that permit date/airline change. I, again, don't know if they will charge you a reissue fee because once you change dates on an e-ticket, or for that matter, once you change flights even on the same day, AA has to reissue the entire ticket!

Basicallt it will involve a lot of long distance calls to AA res agents. If they're in the US, that's fine. The problem is when you attempt to call an AA office locally and they don't know what's going on. Reissuing a simple segment may take at least an hour or two. What if you're somewhere where you don't have an AA rep? Would CX be able to take over the AA res and assist with reissues?

You can do that for paper tickets and even for tickets issued by other OW carriers (not AA) if Sabre has your itinerary info. Until the first schedule change and then the whole thing disappears with the admonition to phone AA for details of the schedule change. The sole advantage of e-tickets is not having to carry the paper tickets around; but lots of disadvantages (in the past 2 years I've had 2 e-tickets disappear from the system -- not on AA -- and the onus was on me to prove that the reservation existed ... one of those airlines is now on my blacklist). I'd love to have e-tickets work, but they are just not quite there yet for interlining.