Importance of Ticketing
 

I am in the process of purchasing a DONE4 in conjunction with CX in CMB.

I have been using e-mails and the process has been quite painless so far; it is just about complete, only awaiting ticketing and payment.

The most recent email I received has the follwing sentence: "If above details are all satisfactory, I can go ahead and put your mail on file. Let me know the date you want me to issue the ticket as well.". It also had a text attachment which I assume is screen capture of a PNR; abridged version is included below.

The first day of travel is mid October; I have already advised I wish to pay in mid September.

As I have not purchased one of these fares nor dealt in this detail with such a large/complex booking before, I have a couple of questions. The answers may be obvious, but some level of clarification would be appreciated.

•Does the attachment imply that seats have already been reserved?
•Does one normally need to ante up with the payment in full before the ticket is issued.
•What happens to the PNR when the ticket is issued?
•Should I pay now, or wait another six weeks?
•Do I risk losing some of the booked segments If I wait? (Any other risks in doing this?)

Thanks in anticipation for your responses.

(The October sectors will elevate me to Emerald status.)

A couple of reasons for ticketing early.

To lock in fare/taxes/surcharges.
To be protected for schedule changes.


A couple of reasons for ticketing late.

Hold onto the $$ longer.
Schedule changes may open up improved routing options.
Ability to change routing w/o charge until ticketed.


There are no doubt many other reasons.

Thankyou Kiwi Flyer, you have now loaded both sides of the scales for me :) !

"SS: QF009 D ••MAR MELLHR HL1 1710 0525+1 E"

I think this segment indicates that you are only on WL status for this flightm therefore you better check with the TA. You cannot ticket WL sectors on the ticket (but can ticket Open date segments)

Also I think you should take out your QF/BA and AA PNRs from the post as it is not wise to publish such things in the public.

Note also that when resvering and before ticketing, CX especially have givne me a deadline by which must be ticketed or reservation on their segments in cancelled. Apparently this can be extended, but something to note.

Thankyou for that, I'll check with CMB. I am getting "F6 A5 Z0 P0 J9 C9 D7 I1 U0 " from expert flyer (and was similar beforehand). Obviously the flight is at a popular time, so the email is being sent.

Thanks for the advice. I did not realise that were booking codes :o , I thought they were fare codes. Used the QF ones with checkmytrip and there it is! :eek: . Gone they are off my post!!!Yeah, I'm getting to that point more and more.

I suppose my main question is (and alect has ½ anwered it) is the first one:

"•Does the attachment imply that seats have already been reserved?"

The HKs are confirmed, the HLs are waitlisted. Assuiming that there are PNRs on your original email, those are the confirmation numbers. So, yes, it appears that you have seats reserved. Personally, I would ticket it. Last thing youre going to want is someone to accidentally put in an auto-drop date that is earlier than your intended ticketing date thereby losing all your reservations. Although not for the same reasons, I had that happen and it is a huge pain in the arse.

When I have booked my DONE4s through CX, I have had to specifically request certains seats as none have been pre-allocated. I did this after ticketting. Simple enough task. The emailed itinerary that CX has returned to me has shown the CX seats. They told me that they cannot book other OW seats. All I did in that case was to ask them to quote me the QF PNR that was generated, I rang QF and booked QF, BA and IB seats. I also rang AA in SYD to request the same.

The latest CX BKK would allow ticketting after making reservations was a week before travel - for reservations orignally made 3 months prior. I suspect that may be a bit negotiable, but they absolutely certainly would not do it the day before.

Actually I don't think you can ticket a DONE4 that has HL in it.

When you want to allocate seats, you can actually use the aa.com online reservation retrieve tool and select your seats. Same for BA flights through MMB.

Unfortunately CX's CUPID does not link too well with other Oneworld partners.

As for the ticket deadline, CX's policy is 1 month prior to departure. But of course you can negotiate that (depedning on the mood of the CSO)
For DM MPO deadline are moved.

BTW, if you don't mind me asking what is the price for your DONE4 ex CMB, as I am planning my DONE4 ex BKK and I find CMB is too far and cost more $$$ to get there and the savings might not be worth it (only around 300USD?)

Just make the flight open for ticketing but waitlisted for reserving.

No problem; standard SLR523,200 for DONE4 & SLR76150 in Tax/Levies/Charges for my routing. Total of SLR599350.

The Sri-Lankan Rupee "Is Tied" to USD and = 1 US ¢.

So about USD6,000

Had a reply back from CX CMB:I tried the CX ITN booking tool and it returned no results at all. The AOW CWT shows "R0 F4 A4 J4 C4 D4 S4" and Expertflyer still shows "F6 A5 Z0 P0 J9 C9 D7 I1 U0".

As an alternative, Expertflyer is showing BA18 on the same day as "F7 A6 J9 C9 D9 I9 W9 T9". Anyone care to comment on BA J service and accomodations for this flight compared to QF9?

You may want to check availability on BA7309 (same flight but BA codeshare) - although if QF D availability is L then unlikely BA has any either - but stranger things have happened.

As for comparisons of BA and QF J, there have been many both on this board and QF board. It comes down to a personal choice - and apparently if you are 5'10" or below BA is a better sleeper. I now prefer the Skybed as it is roomier. Crews are hit and miss and sort of about the same, although in my most recent experience BA crews were slightly better and helpful and did not forget as many things as the QF crews we had.

One world RTW tickets from India and SriLanka have become much too expensive since the new price increase. The Srilankan and Indian Rupees have also become very stable. The best at the moment for a DONE4 and AONE4 appears to be Zambia and Zimbabwe. Any better except cairo?

CMB works well for me as I live in MEL. This makes it so much easier to get to than Zimbabwe or Zambia. Also for a DONE4, it's USD140 less than both those places.

BKK for me was an option until I realised it's USD564 more to buy from Thailand.

Of course, If you are talking AONEx then it's a different story, but I'm happy to take my 2360 QF SC's @ USD2.54 each. (>140,000 qff points at AUD0.06 each)

How long to Ticket?
 

Last week, I completed the booking process for my upcoming DONE4 and have reqested ticketing. The CMB CX agent has the funds (Nearly SLR600,000: I used 'Telegraphic Transfer' to avoid a 3% CC levy).

Last Wednesday I received an Email "I'll instruct the ticket office to issue your ticket.".

I still have no confirmation of ticketing. The Amadeus Record Locator is showing the booking's segments but there is, as yet, no ticket number at the end of the page. (By way of contrast, a ticket number is showing in other ticketed bookings I have.)

I am quite keen to see this booking ticketed as, 1)There is a routing in it that was OK when I commenced the process, but is no longer valid (Since 15th August, -MEL-PER-CNS-) and 2) Fuel levies increases are imminent.

Does anyone have experience in how long this 'final' part of the process should take?

edit: CC fee -- assume you mean charged by the CMB agent.
Then on top of that you'd also have international credit card fees.


OT: But Wizard has just launched a Wizard Clear Advantage Mastercard
-no fees, 55 days int free BUT more importantly no international purchase levies. Very useful card for overseas holidays, or booking foreign air fares.
(and a relatively low interest rate)
http://www.wizard.com.au/creditcards/task.aspx?id=580

The changes you mention apply to all tickets issued as of/after 15 Aug. So it depends on what you mean "commenced the process". If you are referring to the booking process then you are out of luck - booking does not lock you into the prices and rules as of that date. If you are referring to ticketing and your ticketing occurred before the date of the rule change then you are OK.

Having an illegal routing probably explains the lack of a ticket number. Probably the agent is trying to convince the ticketing authority to allow this routing; strictly speaking it is not allowed in the rules unless they back-date the ticket issue to be 2 days before you "commenced ticketing". Obviously that is fraudulent but perhaps normal practice in CMB. You may have problems with any reissue catching the rule violation if the original issue date is after August 15, usually this is checked fairly thoroughly on reissues (presuming that the ticket will be issued at all for this routing).

As to your question of how long it takes, all OWE tickets that I have purchased were complete in less than 24 hours. However CMB may have limited ticketing facilities (I have no idea on whose stock they issue the ticket).

I have used the CMB CX office for an ex-CMB ticket to the US. I found them to be superb communicators and very quick to make the changes that I requested. However, my ticket experience was other than anticipated. I sent them a scanned copy of my passport photograph page and back and front copies of my credit card in order to get the ticket issued before arrival in CMB. In fact, they issued the ticket after i arrived, leaving me quite confused as to what the point was of having me email scanned documents. In my case, I ended up having to eat a 3% credit card service fee that only took effect on July 1. The downside for you appears to be even greater than for me. Perhaps a phone call is in order?

Yes there would have been a credit card fee charged by the CMB office. By using TT saved me about USD180.

I do have two available alternate routings; -MEL-PER-DRW-MEL- gets the same QFF SC's but the times suck & -MEL-DRW-CNS-MEL- nets 20 less SC's but the times work better. Both give me less miles, but it's not the end of the world.

What I would really like is some feedback at least, yay or nay. I will give it another day.

Well I have received an email from CMB and the news is good:Thankyou to all for your advice and help so far; this is an ongoing project as I have not yet locked down all my flights.

As for how I was able to ticket with that itinery, maybe I scraped in as I had already paid ½ before the changes came in on 15th August.

There were two main reasons for this: 1) For security reasons my bank has a limit on what I can TT in any one day & 2) I wanted to be sure the funds went to the right people so did not 'put' all my eggs in the one basket.

CMB CX office
 

I have found the CMB CX office to be very professional and one of the most helpful offices around. They do have their problems sometimes in issuing tickets promptly, but if one reminds them by email or phone they take care of it.

I hope this is a misunderstanding and relates to the typical 3% added to foreign transactions by many issuing banks. Visa and M/C charge 1% and your "unscrupulous" bank often adds another 2%. "Unscrupulous" because it's strictly a gouge - they do nothing to earn it. Fortunately there are still a few customer friendly banks who don't add the charge.

If airlines are suddenly adding 3% of their own to c/c charges I'd be surprised.

JohnAx,

No was Not the 1-2% bank fee, it was detailed in the very first e-mail I received from them:Note the earlier post here that confirms this:The "CMB Fare Group" is an agency as the bank a/c name I transferred the funds to was: "FINLAY AIRLINE AGENCIES LTD.".

That's fascinating. I wonder what the relationship between them and Cathay is? When I booked with them I was using a contact that I got from the North American CX res office, and never had an inkling I wasn't dealing with Cathay.

Since they're an agency, I wonder if it's worth asking for typical agent-type services, such as Fedex'ing tickets.

I would be especially surprised because such credit card surcharges are illegal in many states (incl. California), and contrary to credit card issuers' contracts. If it were me, I would seriously consider paying the surcharge, then disputing it with your bank. In California, by law you're actually entitled to recover three times the surcharge wrongly collected -- so in principle you could even make money on the surcharge (putting aside the time and effort required to collect, which could be considerable).

I would really be quite surprised in Californian law applies to transactions which take place in Sri Lanka. Credit card surcharges (or discounts for cash - the same thing in practice) are very common in many parts of the world.

Even in the UK it is quite common; e.g. see question 7: http://www.travelbag.co.uk/contact_us/faq_credit.html