Valid?? - BA taking Ages to decide
 

I'm holding tons of other flight hoterl reservations and BA have taken 4 days already and not yet said if this routing is legitimate. Would the experts here kindly have a look and see what they think?

21 Apr AA1771 10:41 MCO - 13:20 SJU
29 Apr AA239 11:19 SJU - 15:50 LAX
05 May BA268 21:20 LAX - 15:25 LHR (no stopover)
06 May BA89 20:35 LHR - 07:25 NBO (Kenya)
-- ground segment --
17 May BA6419 14:00 JNB - 16:10 CPT
21 May BA58 19:55 CPT - 06:50 LHR
24 May BA2610 10:55 LGW -14:30 NAP
-- ground segment --
01 Jun CX292 12:50 FCO - 06:35 HKG (no stopover)
02 Jun CX504 09:10 HKG - 14:25 NRT
05 Jun CX451 16:00 NRT - 21:20 HKG
08 Jun CX735 HKG 10:40 - 14:20 SIN
18 Jun CX716 18:40 SIN - 22:25 HKG (no stopover)
18 Jun CX880 23:35 HKG - 09:50 LAX

I'm using the special rule that allows a transit without stopover in Europe to get to Kenya, then around the African continent before going back up to go around Europe.

I'd be grateful for anyone's thoughts

Julian

Looks fine to me, but I bet it's the Africa thing that's hanging them up. Also, four days isn't obscene if they are busy. These things do take some time.

Looks OK to me too. Just out of curiosity, don't you want the miles for the extra 4 segments available in N America? E.g. by flying HKG-JFK, then 4 segments to wherever you'd like to finish in the US. This is probably only a good idea if you are in F or J though.

I agree with christep, why don't you just add some NA open segments at the end of the itinerary and retain the value of these segments. If you plan on reissuing the ticket, you may be planning on doing it then.

BA Say its NOT valid!!
 

OK

BA say the Kenya/Nairobi rule doesnt work because...

Although I fly without stopover through Europe to Kenya they say that my flight back into Europe has to be via one of these gateways - EG from CPT back to LHR breaks this... I need to go back from Kenya into Europe.

This is not how I intepret it at all - does anyone else? What does one do when the RTW US desk disagree with you!

Also - the extra US sebments people mention. I thought as a US purchased ticket I am only entitled to 2 US stopovers?

I've never heard of that interpretation. Get the star file here: http://www.hardlink.com/~markdu/OWFi...eExplorer.html from which:
I can just about see that you could interpret that to mean that if you use the exception then both of the entries to Europe must be "to/from/via" one of the three countries, but it's not the usual interpretation. Why not see if you can get CX to issue it? Or simply ask AA RTW desk for their view?

On the N America segments, you are correct about the stopovers - the suggestion was merely that you could return to, for example, LAX by doing HKG-(x)JFK-(x)SJU-(x)JFK-(x)DFW-LAX in stead of just HKG-LAX. This only makes sense if miles are important to you.

Cx...
 

Are CX likely to issue a ticket when the first intercontinental segment is on BA?

They might well do since there is a lot of CX later on... call them and ask!

That was the interpretation that AA had a couple of years ago when I tried to ticket a similar routing, and it was denied as invalid. AA was even more strict, saying that the exception was to allow origination in ghana or nigeria (as there was no way to reach the rest of africa from those places except via Europe). At the time kenya wasn't in the exception list. So it could be worse (interpretting to/from/via to mean the origination of the OWE).

While you may be able to get some airline to ticket this routing, the danger is that any reissue would result in your ticket being deemed invalid (and then you cannot fly the remaining sectors, worst case). I'd only pursue this routing if pretty sure that no future reissue would be needed.

There is no requirement for the issuing airline to be that with the first intercontinental segment. It is a revenue question, most of the revenue goes to the airlines flying the 3 long segments (trans-atlantic, trans-pacific, and europe-asia) so usually they are willing to issue the ticket. Technically any OW airline can issue the ticket, as long as they have 1 sector on it somewhere.