Unconfirmed BA OWE restriction: surface segments 'count'
 

According to BA MAD when a BA station has no manual ticketing (and MAD is one of them, having no paper ticket stock at all) surface segments count as part of the maximum 20 OWE segments allowed. The reason, again according to BA MAD, is that Amadeus cannot issue a ticket with more than 20 segments, and since surface segments have to be coded in the system as void segments, they 'count'. If the BA station has paper tickets, and is authorised to issue hand-written tickets, they concede the situation 'may' be different, but in places with fully automated systems, such as MAD, surface segments 'count'. :(

I believe this is documented in the sticky "Oneworld Explorer FAQ" post on this forum...

I'm sorry, I must be blind, because I just cannot see it. Could you please indicate the part of the FAQ where this is documented?

Nevermind. I swear I've seen it somewhere, can't find it now.

The surface segment counting as one of your allowed segments came into being when AA went to a max of 16 segments for all awards. It is due to AA's ticketing rqmts and the fact that a surface segment uses on of the allowed slots in the ticketing system. I don't think that it applies to paid tickets.

The bigger question is, what about a 20 segment trip where a paper ticket is needed because a station on the trip is not set up for e-tickets. CMB and TIP come to mind.

I have just been advised that ticketing is complete on a 20 flight segment DONE4 ex CMB which also contains a surface segment MEL-SYD.

So no problems I guess; although until I collect my tickets on October, I will only be 99% certain.