I am faced with a curious situation.

I am ticketing a DONE4 ex-BKK. Have made the reservation via QF Premium Desk. First segment is BKK-HKG on Aug 15. At time of reservation I was advised that CX requires ticketing by 25 July or they will cancel the reservation on their flights.

Now I have received an email from QF reminding me of this and telling me that should I not ticket by 25 July QF would cancel entire reservation also.

Since when is there a advance booking requirement for xONEx ex-BKK? Is CX being unreasonable? I woiuld think even if there was an advance booking requirement, it would be 10 days not 21 days as in this case.

I currently have a TA in BKK trying to ticket this and have warned him of the deadline. Should I call CX and challenge their requirement on 25 July ticketing deadline?

I am unaware of any rule saying "ticket by x date", but as you are getting close to flight time, and that D seats may be filling, I'm sure the airlines want certinity. I suggest ringing CX (and QF) and asking that the ticket time limit be extended to a date you are comfortable with.

For origin in Area 1 (North and South America) there is a 7 day ticket issue deadline for D and A OneWorld Explorer fares. But for Areas 2 and 3 there is not pre-purchase requirement.

I have a DONE4 ticket issued on Friday night (8:30pm) and collected at the airport for departure on Sunday morning.

Ticket issue for these fares is pretty complex and tales quite some time and effort to get all the taxes correct. So I can understand why a TA prefers not to leave the issue process until the last minute. In my example above, the agent was expecting to issue an e-ticket, but ran into problems and eventually could only issue as a parper ticket for collection at the airport (for a A$50 fee).

But the OneWorld Explorer fare rules appear to show no pre-purchase requirements. Perhaps you could ask the agent to point you to the pre-purchase rule?

Note, however, that the business and first class OneWorld Circle Pacific fares does have a 7 date pre-purchase requirement no matter which continent it is purchased.

My set of rules states

Origin in area 1: DONE Reservations are made X days prior to departure of first flight 7days, ticket must be issued 7 days prior to departure.

Origin in areas 2 and 3: DONE reservations any time, ticket must be issued 1 hour prior to departure.

What you appear to be encountering is a D class restriction for purchasing that as a BKK to HKG return in D class, not a D class DONE restriction. Most D class will disappear 2 or 3 weeks before the flight to stop business persons from being able to buy them at the last minute. However, DONE is not like that and agents can still book against D until the flight departs, if available. By issuing later, you risk losing the D allocation on that flight and travelling Y with a waitlist D. If they do not release D and there are spare J seats on departure, they might keep you in Y. It has happened to me so often...

I would suggest the polite enquiry route and check on the D withdrawal policy of CX. What a pitty that there are no QF or BA codeshares on this run for you.

spotwelder.

A good TA will be able to enter a dummy ticket number in the reservation which will be good enough to fool CX. As far as I am aware CX doesn't have online access to QF ticketing info currently, and frankly it could always be a handwritten ticket for any number of reasons.

I called CX in US. Explained the situation. I was informed that irrespective of the advance purchase rules for fares, when a reservation is made on CX, the system (depending on the flight involved) automatically sets a deadline for ticketing.

She suggested that the TA could request for the deadline to be extended.

I suggest you call each carrier involved and ask them what their "ticket time limit" is.

Your travel agent should see the messages sent by each carrier in the PNR.

Each carrier is different.

It is best to ticket before the "closest" ticket time limit.

Always keep in mind that irrespective of what the "advanced purchase requirement" is, the ticket time limit may be different.

Based on my experience, when I book directly with CX, I always ask them to "enter" a ticket time limit that is inline with the advanced purchase requirement for OWE fares. However, they warned me that other carriers on the itinerary can still choose to have different ticket time limits.

I called QF and asked them to request an extension. CX extended the deadline to July 30.

CX tries to set ticketing deadlines, while other ow airlines mostly don't. So you might be able to avoid the problem by booking the flight as an AA or BA flight number, if available.

Yes that is always my aim since QF FF don't get status bonus on CX flight #s but we do on AA/BA. Alas in my case (BKK-HKG) there was no codeshares on QF/AA/BA.