NoWindowSeat, I'll PM you with some additional questions. Thanks.

They are, I was there last month! They have new offices on the 11th floor of an office block. It's maybe a twenty minute taxi journey from the centre of town, a lot further out than their old place. I think I may have been the first from this board to go there, not that I'm competitive

You will need your passport or another form of photo ID to get into the building, which will be left at the reception desk. Since you'll need the passport for the credit card too, get your thinking hat on for how to get around that.

The IST team deserve a visit and generous thanks, they must be getting bored of RTWs by now...

We will be bringing flowers to them next month. Unless somebody who knows more about Turkish customs has a better idea?

I picked up my new DONE4 from the BA ticket desk at IST airport yesterday, and it was a quick and painless process. I had communicated with BA sales staff by e-mail (not sure who � they never signed a name to their messages other than �BA Teleales�) once I had my reservation established with BA�s RTW desk. I sent them a scanned image of my credit card and passport, and they had the ticket issued and waiting for me at the airport.

I had flown in late the night before and crashed in an airport hotel, but a same day turn around wouldn�t have been a problem, as there was no paper work to do � just a short queue to get to the BA ticket window, show my passport and get handed a fat envelope with my ticket. Walk 30 feet to the Club World check in, and less than 30 min after arriving at the airport I was in the queue for security, and 20 min after than seated in the BA lounge having the first coffee for the day.

The only hiccup � I didn�t study the later flights on the ticket until I was in the lounge, but I discovered my 18 segment DONE4 had grown to 20, with 8 North American segments. What happened is I had e-mailed BA IST to change the dates on the first two flights of a TPA-DFW-LAX-SJU-TPA weekend mileage run. For some reason they have issued tickets for TPA-DFW-LAX on two consecutive days. I figure I will need to get it fixed, but will wait until I have flown a couple more segments and can get the ticket reissued as an E-ticket.

Final price was EUR 4150 base fare plus EUR 470 in taxes � the latter seems high, but not unduly so, and there doesn�t seem to be any real way to tell.

Were the electronic birds chirping for you? I thought it was a nice touch.

It's amazing how BA can have such Jekyll and Hyde personas - I had another call with the Toronto BA RTW desk yesterday regarding a reissue that once again was a study in customer anti-service, but when I think of the IST people I get all warm and fuzzy. Go figure.

(No, honey, not that way.)

Those extra segements cost USD 300 apiece if I remember right so you may be in for a hefty refund (though it seems that they have forgotten to charge you for it). The taxes include fuel surcharges which on some airlines can be quite high, depends a lot on your routing and choice of airline.

I wonder why they charged you in Euro's? Turkey is not a member. I would have thought GBP or USD would have been more likely.

EUR470 in taxes and charges does not surprise me. BA are one of the worst airlines for adding additional costs as taxes and charges when most airlines include them in the base fare. The difference between BA and AA in pricing my ex-WAW DONE4 (excluding the base fare discrepancy) was significant.

The change was very recent, from USD 4999 base to EUR 4150 base - a change that cost me almost exactly USD 350 extra at the time of ticketing.

But at least they didn't go the way of Yugoslavia, where the fare went in one jump from USD 5000 to EUR 5000 in line with the fares offered from EU countries.

BA and some other airlines swapped from $ ot Eur over the last several months in Istanbul. As for what to get these people, while flowers are nice, I personally know everyone in that office and most of them would more prefer chocolates than flowers (and for that matter not local stuff, but imported but simple stuff such as Cadbury's etc.).

Personally one of them is a little bt angry at me for having been responsible for starting the RTW avalanche awhile ago!!!

I probably owe them more apologies than you. I didn't even bring chocolates, either. Plenty of thanks were given, but no candy. Sheesh.