Timing on ex IST DONE 4
 

Greetings:

I plan to start two DONE4 tickets from IST in mid Oct. I am set on flights (experts OK + Oneworld Val.) Plan on contacting BA next and also IST.

When should I pay for the tickets?

Would 4/1/05 be to early for a 10/18/05 start???? Beloved wife is a bit leery about IST due to lossing a carpet in transit a few years back.....not same ball game I know ....but.....you tell her that!!! :D

Any suggestions would help.
Thanks,

There should be no issue with paying for the tickets far in advance. It's a good idea if you expect prices to increase significantly. I have an ex-CMB set at the moment that I bought almost a year before first segment sched.

I'm agonizing about buying back-to-backs when we pick up ours in IST next month. We'd be finishing the pending trip around November, so IMO the chances are very good that by then the price may well have gone up, so locking in might be the wisest thing to do.

It seems a fairly straightforward "time value of money" calculation - loss of interest earnings on cash used for tickets plus interest expense (if any) on amount charged to credit cards but not paid off right away, plus currency conversion charges if any (not a problem for us if billed in USD, 3 or 4% if converted), less potential increase in ticket price, plus/less changes in taxes, fuel surcharges, etc. that might occur during the "float" period.... and so on.

As with most such purchases the general rule is that it's never going to be as cheap as it is today, and most investors will tell you that trying to time the market is a fool's game. But it's a big chunk of change and we too are wondering about timing.

Wrong post.........

in a nutshell
1. Not a lot to gain by hanging back...(low intrest rates, able to refund...)
2. A possibilily to lose a lot...(case WAW...)

Need to say more?

Did you really mean that? It's still not too difficult to find banks who don't surcharge above the Visa/MC 1%, and the ones who are so kind to their customers on that matter turn out to be very nice to deal with on most other issues as well. Two choices are AFBA and CapitalOne.

We are certainly looking into cheaper conversion charges but lots of movement in the field at the moment. Have you used a US bank-issued ATM card overseas recently?

Misunderstanding as to Question????
 

Oops....perhaps I should have put my question in a different way? I will write off loss of interest,etc.,etc. to lock in the present IST price (I lost out on WAW due to being sick, instead of booking)

My question should have asked out right........will my paid ticket be there in six months? Will it know me..................? :rolleyes:

As long as the hard drives keep spinning, yes.

I bought a ticket on 31-Dec-2003 ex-CAI that did not start until 1-Oct-2004. Good thing that I did since prices went up about 20% in local currency.

I suppose it shouldn't be a problem, just hope BA has a large safe :)

I have currently 2 ticketed DONEs at their safe, won't be picked until late May...

Thanks...................
 

Thank you one and all......................

I now can present your comments to beloved wife and tell her that we will not lose our tickets as we lost our carpet.............Now on to the next step.....Once again thanks to FT

Now that you're off to convince the spouse, I for one was answering the wrong question.

Given that the agent at IST will let you pay for the tix before arriving (c/c? wire xfer?) why will they not accept another USD25 from you and Fedex them to you? Agents and airlines seem to be getting much more casual about what once were strong SITI rules.

Other than that, the security of tickets sitting in IST sounds to me like it depends a whole lot on the integrity of the entity holding them.

Fed EX ing Tickets????
 

JohnAx...........I have wondered about that also....if the tickets are paid for is there a "rule" out there that does not allow shipping them to you?

It would seem that the BA office would like to close there books on a"sale" if they could. A service charge perhaps?

Seems to me someone did get there tickets from waw or perhaps some other place using there account with Fed EX.....it was not easy as I remember it but he did get it done. (Thought FED EX should have a better system?)

Any enlightment from the front bench?

When doing our ticketing a couple of weeks ago with BA IST I was told that they do not prefer to send the tickets via mail/courier but I think they will do it if someone really wants...they mentioned something about trouble if they get lost etc...Maybe I am naive but I trust BA's safe over my own shelf, anyway we still have to go down there so they can as well hold on to the tickets...