Both agencies (BA/Emeco) seem to change their minds periodically on what they will and will not do. I did a c/c with Emeco, then six months later they insisted on wire transfer. BA seemed happy enough with c/c and pickup, and these days (based on a posting in the Warsaw thread) might be willing to let you buy at x-country rates and pick up tickets at a local BA station. Ms. Sobhi has email now and I've asked what their present situtation is.

Both Emeco and BA in Cairo produced hand-written tickets without much backup detail in my case(s). When it came to changes, BA was about a million times easier to work with than AA, so it will be a very cold day in a traditionally hot place before I use AA tickets again. Of course it's a big YMMV.

It is a lot different for my hand written BA ticket. AA won't touch a reissue because it can't 'see' the ticket. So, after my first BA reissue I swore never to do it again. Well, I am doing a 2nd reissue and BA does not have the tax calculations. So, please fax your entire ticket to Toronto with tax/fee details. Well, BA lost that 4 page fax and told me to fax both original and reissue to them. Luckily I had not discarded the original receipts for that BA Cairo ticket. YMMV a lot!!!

Thanks be to Allah.

Ms. Sobhi did indeed quickly and positively reply to my inquiry about ticketing rtw. If anyone wants to explore that route, she can be reached at Nabila.Sobhi@(you know)airways.com. My impression was that she's most anxious to generate some rtw revenue for her station. Gotta justify that computer, perhaps.

Anying going forward may wish to be reminded that BA has, in the case of one traveler's WAW origination, been willing to hand over the tickets in London, for a gbp 26 fee.

Oh dear, an email address posted on the web. Mrs Sobhi can look forward to an inbox full of invitations for penis extensions, fake university degrees and people doing things I'd long thought anatomically impossible.

Hmmm, hadn't thought of that - this place seems such a safe haven. I'm not sure bots can navigate it as easily as usenet forums.

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You might think of posting something like [email protected]. The bots have a slightly more difficulttime with that, but most of us can handle it - depending on how much pub time we've put in today.

So let me resurrect this old thread to ask people about doing wire transfers to BA in IST.

I finally got a rate from them on my DONE4, but they say that because the itinerary includes other airlines I would have to actually sign a c/c charge slip (by visiting their office :D ) or pay via wire transfer.

I don't really have a problem with doing a wire transfer, except for the fact that I'd be losing all the miles, of course. My concern has more to do with the additional protections that purchasing a ticket by credit card affords you, such as extra insurances, baggage protection, etc.

Any thoughts or suggestions on the matter would be appreciated.

The wire transfer thing must be new (like the Euro denomination). We used a credit card with no problems.

You shouldn't have to visit the IST office to sign a credit card authorisation; it should be sufficient to fax over a letter of authority, together with a stat of both sides of your credit card and the last 2 pages of your passport. Ask them about this to see if it's acceptable.

I scanned and e-mailed them copies of both sides of my credit card and the ID page of my passport and they had no problem with this just 8 days ago. And of course my ticket, like all RTW, had multiple airlines - actually the IST-LHR leg is one of the few BA sectors on the ticket.

I did exactly as Jerry_M above, this was in March - that was actually the course of action suggested by them as the default...19 segs ticket with multiple airlines...

Ok, so apparently the issue is that BA will only accept CC payment without a signed CC slip if the flight out of IST is on BA and if the first trans-oceanic flight is on BA as well. At least that's what they tell me. They offered to just hold the reservation until day of departure, when I'll actually be there, so that I can pay by CC then, but they also implied that airlines will ask for ticket numbers before then and that this won't work.

I guess I'll have to do a wire then....

Sounds like they're making up the rules as they go along. Ex-CAI veterans will recall the same thing happening there...

[QUOTE=sxpsxpsxp]Ok, so apparently the issue is that BA will only accept CC payment without a signed CC slip if the flight out of IST is on BA and if the first trans-oceanic flight is on BA as well. At least that's what they tell me. QUOTE]

Then they are changing the rules, since the ticket I collected on May 23 was BA to LHR, but my first international segment is later this month, CX from LHR to HKG. I do have one BA trans-oceanic segment, but that is YVR-LHR toward the end of the ticket.

I am again backing up Jerry_M's experience, only BA flights on our tickets are IST-LHR rtn.

CX in BKK insisted on no less than one week prior to departure for ticket payment.