I just received my 20-segment DONE5 (ugly) paper ticket from AA, and I notice something that bugs me, although I am fully aware that it is technically correct and probably my fault anyway, so this is not a complaint, just a heads up.

When I booked the itinerary I told AA exactly which cities were to be connections (gave them a list). I assumed (my error, I now see) they would understand that those cities NOT in my list of connections would be stopovers. Logical? Apparently not. AA has marked the ticket with an 'X' on the left of ALL the cities where the transit time is less than 24hrs, including those NOT on my conections list. Not a major deal, and if I stick to my itinerary all will be fine, but if for some reason I want to change a date (normally free) I am going to be up for a reissue fee.

The computer does this automatically. The agent probably thought they were doing you a favour as it reduces the taxes on the ticket, if they spotted the difference. You really do have to explicitly specify if you want other than the default and you want to pay higher taxes than the system automatically calculates. Maybe the fuel surcharges will drop and it will be advantageous to reissue the ticket at a later date.

Yet another reason to keep the ticketing and the reservations separate? If you don't give them any date/times for the flights then they have no choice but to do the O/X exactly as you tell them.

Why would it need reissued? Maybe an add-collect for the taxes but there is no routing change. This is of course beside the fact that the rules say that you can change date and time for no charge and no reissue. If the change causes a tax to be collected then there would still be no charge because you are still only changing date and time. Most likely it will be collected at the airport anyway.

I think you would be extremely lucky to get an agent who didn't regard replacing the ticket coupons with X on them with some with O and reprinting all the pages with a different tax calculation as a "reissue". It clearly is a reissue by any reasonable definition. Changing the date/time is not a reissue because it doesn't require any ticket coupons to be reissued!

You are right, and it sure looks like they must have spotted it, because my DONE5 taxes (20 segments) come to a total of only 196 euros. I was very surprised.

I hear you, and see the benefits of doing it 'your way', but there are cases, I think, when this is not the best idea. I have in my itinerary several 'touch and go' flights, where I know there's a strong possibility the airline will change the schedule and make my selection of O/X and/or flights problematic. For instance, when I made the reservation+ticketing my connection ...LAX-LHR-DXB... was 23 hrs 55 min, so the ticket shows an X and I managed to avoid the hefty LON tax; now, only a couple of days after ticketing, that 'connection' in LHR takes in fact 24 hrs 05 min, so if I had done as you suggest, and had in my hands an open coupon, with an X, I'd be up the creek (right?). Instead, my LHR-DXB coupon shows the flight I want and the fact the connection is no longer legal is not my problem (right?). (if have all of this wrong please correct me)

Interesting -- I just pulled out my 20-segment AONE5 (ugly) paper ticket and noticed that the "X/O" column is BLANK for ALL segments. Is this going to be a problem? (only 2 segments are open, the rest are reserved)

Related question: I am currently booked SIN-HKG-NRT on a same-day connection. I am now considering doing an overnight in HKG, with transfer time of only about 12 hours, so I believe this does not constitue a stopover. Will there be any hassle in changing this reservation?

There should be no problem changing the reservation (I would recommend doing it direct with CX if you have their PNR). It is still a transit within the rules of the AONE5.

You might have a problem at check-in because the rules for waiving airport taxes at HKG are "same calendar day", not a transit within 24 hours. If so you might be asked for a payment at checkin. However, I would think it's quite unlikely they would bother with this, particualrly at the F check-in counter.

The only problem with the lack of X/O would be if you were trying to do a reissue and didn't have an explicit tax calculation - it is impossible to reconstruct without the X/Os. However, my experience of getting reissues done at Airport ticket counters is that more often than not they deem the recalculation as too hard and don't bother (from which sometimes you win and sometimes you lose).

The one time that I did change a HKG transit to stopover it went smoothly at the F checkin but CX did collect the additional tax! Wasn't much bother for them at all, computer seemed to be set up for it (what a novel idea, letting the computer do the right thing instead of having the agent struggle with a zillion over-rides).

For some reason, HKG will count a "x" on an open ticket as a stopover and hence the HKG departure tax will apply. It will only exclude it when there are actual dates on the reservation.

The reason for this is that the departure tax is only waived for "same calendar day" connections, whereas an X could be next calendar day. However, if you have paid the tax but transit within the same calendar day then you may reclaim the tax at the airport by providing the relevant evidence. The procedure is described here: http://www.hongkongairport.com/eng/aguide/tax.html

Too mah fan !

Maybe to you 千金難買心頭好, but I tend to my mother's view on this sort of thing: "look after the pennies and the pounds look after themselves".

Just wondering is there are way to find out the taxes I paid on the XONEX tickets. I have a printed ticket and it did have the TOTAL tax printed on it and whole bunch of codes in the fare calculation (but I can't seem to work out what they mean and add them up to equal the total tax in the price?)

In the past I have being told by my travel agent thay they always overcharge me (and subsequently he refunds me - around 50USD).