Experience with Cathay OWE reissue in Los Angeles?
 

Has anyone had Cathay do an OWE reissue in Los Angeles? Presumably their only presence is at LAX in support of their evening flights.

Any particular reason you want to go for CX with the reissue? Generally one would think it's easiest with the carrier that has the most expertise at any given location...charges should be (mostly) the same anyway...and (atleast according the the rules) it shouldn't matter which carrier(s) segments you have left...

I believe the OP has had trouble with AA reissues at LAX. Correct?

SanDiego 1k relates her (not positive) experience in this thread:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...ht=lax+reissue

To save the OP having to repeat the experience again here is a link to the original thread:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...ht=lax+reissue

Ooh, cheated of the opportunity to step up on the soap box and repeat my anti-AA diatribe. Drat! Now I'll just have to go home and kick the dog.

But seriously, it's a machine-printed ticket on CX stock, originally issued by Cathay in Colombo. I normally ask the original issuing airline to do the reissue, circumstances permitting. Plus, I figured that if they can print a 20-segment ticket in Sri Lanka, they should have no trouble printing a ticket in Los Angeles. I haven't checked the SD1k thread (thanks for the link!) so maybe my assumption is terrible.

Disclaimer: no dogs will be harmed as a result of this thread.

[I note that the link was to a situation where Cathay was asked to re-issue a ticket originally hand-written for AA in CAI. In that context, I think they did at least an average job, although I was amused by their first comment: "go see AA." ]

CX can indeed issue 20 segment computer-printed tickets; the question is whether they have any terminals at LAX (it could all be outsourced, with maybe the CX backoffice being offsite from LAX). Probably asking the 800 premium reservation number about this is the best bet. Once I was able to have CX 800 reservations set up all the changes for a re-issue and it was under 5 minutes at the airport, however they treated this as an unusual procedure. I know in JFK CX would not be able to handle it as a walk-up but could probably do it by prior arrangement (BA does much of the ground handling for CX at JFK, no idea what the LAX arrangement is).

I never doubt your wisdom, but it'll pain me to learn that CMB, with one operation a day, can do what LAX cannot. I certainly was going to pre-arrange the deal with res - the thing I was most looking for from my question was their business hours at LAX. They presumably have little reason to be there before 8 PM, but that's okay as it has a chance of avoiding freeway traffic.

CX now has a day flight LAX-HKG that leaves around noon, so they should be open close to 16 hours a day (part of the reason that I doubt their staffing is CX and not outsourced). They must open before 8 am for the day flight, don't know if closed in the afternoon but open by 6 pm for the night flights. Paradoxically CX is more helpful at small outstations than large ones (perhaps they have more idle time), so I don't doubt that CMB would be easier for doing this than LAX. JFK would be even worse (despite CX having offices in New York outside of the airport).

Is time of the essence? Anytime I did a reissue with CX, I set up the changes over the phone, overnighted the ticket to them and had it back in two days. IMO the costs to overnight were outweighed by the spectre of spending hours at the airport banging my head against a wall trying to get a reissue done. Admittedly it's been a long while but at first blush that would seem to be the path of least aggravation.