The really exciting part is learning that all bookings for the remainder of your trip after the no-show segment have been canceled. No joke.

This is not really supposed to happen, and it can be a real pain when it does. Most GDSes have a keyword that can be inserted into the PNR to prevent autocancellation.

Yeah, I had a bad experience because of BA chekcin agent at CDG.
(I described this before in this forum)
my DONEWC3:
CDG-xLHR-DXB-xLHR-xJNB-VFA-..

I arrived at CDG earlier, so I asked earlier flight for CDG-LHR.
An agnet did. HOWEVER, the system treated as no-show for the original flight.
So, after a few days, an agent at DXB said I didn't have a reservation of DXB-LHR.
Magically, only BA flights were canceled.
Subsequent CX and JL flights (JNB-HKG-CMB-SIN-HND) were intact.

BA policy, alas. Most BA fares do not allow no showing so this is an easy way to open cancelled space quickly.

You can ask them to add "prot" or protection to the PNR to prevent this.

Out of curiosity: Did you check any bags on that jaunt? If so, was the CX agent in HKG able to check them all the way to HEL? I've had two conjoined baggage-tags before, but never three...

No - I was on cabin bag only (the wonderful Red Oxx Air Boss, on which I can survive for a couple of weeks if pushed!)

Fair point - and I imagine you are right. This said, if one did have a bag to check, might it have been possible to omit the DFW-ANC-DFW and LHR-CAI-LHR sectors from the bag tags, thus checking the hypothetical bag "only": HKG-xJFK-xYVR-xDFW-xORD-xLAX-xLHR-HEL.

Nope, you can't. The computer will refuse to accept the bags when connecting through the same station. Tried LHR-xDXB-xLHR-ICN last year. Computer said no, nothing the agents tried could override it. had to put bags in storage.

Correct. There's a practical reason. When sorting bags for connection, the bag handlers (regardless of whether human or automated) won't know which pass through the airport you're on, so won't be able to figure out where the bag goes next. Thus each airport can only appear on the bag tag once.

A few years ago, I was checking in at SIN for a flight to GMP via HND.
The agent first tagged the bag for ICN. When I pointed out that was wrong, that I was going to the other airport in Seoul, they generated a tag with SEL - the Seoul city code.
I wonder where the bag would have ended up if that hadn't been noticed.

Don't the baggage tags have dates as well as flight numbers and airports encoded?

Interesting point. But one can rarely checkin more than 24 hours in advance of a flight, right?

If it's a connecting flight then the flight coupon for the second flight may be available at the time of the first flight.

In any respect the baggage system is separate from the check in system. You can have your bag tagged through to somewhere without being checked in. Although it is wise to then bring the bag receipt to the attention of the next airline.

Very common if flying between say Europe and Australia/NZ for the final flight(s) to be departing more than 24 hours after checking in for the first flight.

If using a surface segment, which city is considered the point of stopover: the city of arrival or departure? Makes a difference in terms of being able to depart from one of those cities a second time.

The following assume SYD to LAX, then surface, then SFO onwards. So, is LAX or SFO considered the stopover city when that surface segment is employed?

For example, if LA is considered the stopover city, then one could/should be able to do:
SYD-LAX-surface-SFO-JFK-SFO-LHR-...

If SF is considered the stopover city, then one could/should be able to do:
SYD-LAX-surface-SFO-JFK-LAX-LHR-...

The Oneworld Explorer has no restriction on the number of stopovers allowed at any one point.
You can arrive at/depart from a city any number of times (subject to complying with all other rules).
So from that perspective, both of your itineraries are valid

(although, as an aside, both are invalid - because both have more than the one allowed allowed trans-con flight. But substitute say ORD or DFW for JFK, then both are valid)

You are only allowed to fly between a pair of cities in the same direction once. Other than this, there is no restriction on visiting the same city more than once.

I'm not entirely convinced your question would make sense, because both cities will be visited. There is one stopover but it is not somehow centred on either city.

IMHO, under usual IATA rule,
both of cities are considered as stopovers. However, in terms of the number of stopover, the count is ONE for a surface segment.

The number of stopovers affects minimum number of stopovers in whole itinerary, and maximum 2 stopovers in the continent of origin (for oneworld explorer fares)

DONE Availability
 

Just wasted 2hrs of my life with QF agent trying to rebook some DONE4 segments in Asia, DPS-HKG-SIN-HKG. Using EF, changing POS accordingly i could find sufficient D availability on each segment, but QF had different availability.

Anyone know the most reliable source of D availability for DONEX other than pin the availability with QF agents?

The EF availability was dynamic with each POS, so I am confident in their availability tool, just would like to know if the airlines have it different or just that i have to accept the agents cannot change their POS, so i'm stuck with whatever the call center has.

One possibility is married segment. The flights didn't included any connections?

Another theory: QF is using call centers in many parts of the world, the call may have been routed to somewhere where you didn't expected, thus they might have been using different POS. That happened to me, called to Oz number but UK call center agent picked up and was using UK as POS instead of Oz than I expected. Did you ask where the agent was located and compared that to EF availability?

At least QF Premium desk (in Hobart) have been able to change the POS when I have requested to grab some flight that have been showing availability in EF only using some other POS than their default POS. Your YMMV, definitely not all of the agents are that flexible.

This is relevant for *A RTW but not for OW xONEx. Both ends of surface segment are considered to be stopovers.

Charging Service Fee in Hong Kong for changing dates- DONE3Ticket Ex-CAI issued by QR
 

Hi guys

Wondering if anyone can Comment on the legality / or whether QR is allowed under IATA rules to start charging a service fee HKD80 for each change of the flight dates on my ticket bought last year (Dec16) that is still valid - without informing me they changed policy in May 17 - and certainly not the rules when I bought the ticket from QR.

They are also messing me around with as they are unable to offer the last leg of DOH-DXB and after a month have offered me an eight hour journey via Kuwait.
They previously told me they would take care of me and would allow me to terminate the journey with a reasonable flight anywhere from DOH and then changed the policy again without telling me.

Whilst they are messing me about the availability of D class seats on the flights I need are diminishing and I might not even get to use the last 4 coupons.

Any thoughts about how to tackle QR?

Thanks in advance!

The rules do allow a service fee to be chargedIf your change requires a re-issue (or I guess if QR decides it is going to re-issue whether it was needed or not), then QR is free to charge a service fee.
(IIRC Qantas charges a service fee for economy class RTW changes, but not for premium classes)

With regard to your routing issue, QR of course faces on-going problems due to its being barred from flying to the UAE (and other regional countries) - see this thread https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/qata...-airspace.html.
In that thread, you can see that generally, QR re-routes its passengers to such destinations only within a few days of travel.
Have you considered re-routing yourself, and so paying the USD125 change fee, to get what you want?

Thanks pandaperth

I have 5 more sectors to fly.

The issue with the service fee was when I bought the ticket D class there was no fee. Now I’m told the policy changed - without previously informing me.

Bit annoyed

QR LONEx purchased through Australian TA. $AU30 to change the dates plus the US$125 if I wanted to change the routing/stopover/transit arrangements. Since I moved the flights forward 8 months I thought it was a good deal. Though I did re-arrrange to keep the same stopover/transits when they wanted the re-issue fee though with the same routing.

Happy wandering
Fred

R has always had this fee -
 

I cannot comment on whether QR has always had this service fee - reports of people purchasing QR-issued RTW tickets were a rarity until the ex-Egypt fares were being purchased last November

When you initially purchase a ticket, there is no provision in the rules for a service fee. The fee only kicks in when you make changes.

Generally, QR service fees vary by the market that is determined by the booking office you contact to. In my experience, main office in Doha still don't charge service fees for ticket changes, even after HK office started to charge those. I was able to avoid the 15€/80HKD ticket change service fee on one of my exHKG R/T tickets by calling directly to reservations in Doha, +974 4023 0000, instead of the local number. It's more expensive to call, but use voip service. At least also Nordics and US offices/lines have the service fees already introduced.

I wonder, too many of these rtw tickets were purchased ex-Cai, ex-JNB, ex-MPM, agents started to get annoyed and so they charged all these fees.

RJ wanted to charge me HK$100 to re-ticket on top of US$125 in Hong Kong office. Their service is extremely good (but their headquarter is really slow), and I am willing to pay.

I purchased two ex-MPM DONEx tickets in July last year.

The first was QF-issued. Made numerous date changes on this ticket. No charges at all (however QF does charge a service fee for economy RTW tickets)

The second is AA-issued. After the first two flights, I re-routed the rest of the ticket - no service fee, just the USD125 re-route fee plus a recalculation of the taxes. I have since made some date changes - no service fee.

I have been flying DONE5 ex JNB for many years all issued by AA and the back half of each trip interestingly are all QF sectors and other than on one occasion all have been reissued by AA with NO service fees as the changes were date changes only.... whilst on one occasion I bypassed AA and used QF who were a pain to deal with until I managed to get hold of a fabulous senior supervisor who told me "to go to sleep and I will fix up all your sectors and email you the new eticket "...which happened overnight with no charges but was reissued on QF stock....will always use AA I think to change dates as I think its a safer way to go

On a DONE3 currently. Had first flight last week.
Wanting to change 2nd last flight ~4 weeks away. (HKG-SIN to a later flight)

Rules state this type of change is free, but I've had some push back on that while trying to do changes like this in recent years.

Who will asking about the change be easier? QF (ticket issuer), CX (operator) or AA (marketing carrier).

If you can find a senior at QF think thats the way I would go but in reality any of the 3 should make the changes

Currently processing routing changes to an existing DONE4 with the first 2 segments already flown. It will become a DONE6. I would like to get feedback on the following new DONE6 routing, specifically the last visit to Europe followed by Africa. I believe the way I have it now is not possible to do, but please confirm if I am right or wrong. Dismiss the AMM segment, it was added to protect me due to QR ban and will not count as an extra segment.

CAI-(xAMM)-xDOH-JFK-LAX-xDFW-JFK-SCL-xJFK-HKG-NRT-CMB-NRT-MEL-xNRT-MAD-JNB-DOH

thanks!

There are potentially a number of issues I see:

1. The rule for a second visit to Europe/Middle East, back when your purchased your ticket (last November?), required that one of the visits be a transfer without stopover.
   When Europe/Middle East is your continent of origin, then this means the first return to the continent (your NRT-MAD-JNB) must be the transit without stopover visit, in MAD; therefore it must be ...xNRT-xMAD-JNB... :eek:
   
2. Your proposed DONE6 is 17 segments, one more than the allowed 16 - this is because of your re-route CAI-xAMM-DOH, which was presumably originally CAI-DOH and had to be re-routed due to the Egyptian government's newish restrictions on direct flights to DOH
   BUT - how many segments did your original DONE4 have?
   If it was less than 16 segments, then the airline might claim that one of your unused segments was used for the extra segment at the beginning
   Note that this is just my opinion, which may well be wrong - maybe an FTer with good ticketing knowledge (such as [MENTION=204888]JAXBA[/MENTION] or [MENTION=648695]Calchas[/MENTION]) can chime in

Thanks for the clarification. Yes, it was booked and ticketed in 11/2016. I do need to make a stopover in MAD... so would either of these two alternative routings fix the issue (and/or raise new ones)?

CAI-(xAMM)-xDOH-JFK-LAX-xDFW-JFK-SCL-xLAX-MEL-NRT-CMB-NRT-CGK-HKG-JNB-MAD-DOH

[or]

CAI-(xAMM)-xDOH-JFK-LAX-xDFW-JFK-SCL-xJFK-HKG-NRT-CMB-NRT-MEL-xHKG-JNB-MAD-DOH


Correct, I was protected due to the QR ban in the region. I had full 16 segments in my original DONE4. At the time of the involuntary re-routing, AA RTW split the original DONE4 e-ticket and created a new one only for the CAI-xAMM-xDOH-JFK segments. They kept the original e-ticket for the remaining segments. They did this to avoid problems with future re-issues and maybe to bypass the 16 segment e-ticket limit that I have read about in other OW threads. AA documented all of this in the PNR notes. I have spoken several times with them over the past weeks and they never brought it up. It shouldn't be a problem in this particular case...

Out of interest: What do they put in the fare calculation box of the second ticket? Just leave it blank?

Both of these routes do not have the second visit to Europe/Middle East and so the issue about one visit being a "transfer without stopover" does not arise
And so you merely have the rules of no more than four flight segments in the continent and no more than two stopovers in the continent of origin, which are not issues on either of the routes.



You were obviously way ahead of me on this one :D
And I was confident that [MENTION=204888]JAXBA[/MENTION] and [MENTION=648695]Calchas[/MENTION] would provide their knowledge^

I think QF, CX and AA would reissue without a fee. Since CX is the operator, I'd try CX first. Recently I had made several date changes by calling CX. All without any problem whatsoever.