Confused Re Turkey

Hi Frequent Flyers
First of all I would like to wish you all a happy Easter.

My Question is that since The Ist office has closed down , it is very difficult to know where to book my DONE5. I did try to book my fare before the office closed , however twice they came back to say I could not do eze-gru, I tried to point it out that I could do eze -gru with BA , and without dribbling too much , by the time I pointed out their Error , the office close


Has anybody been succsessfull in booking RTW through the german office for travel from Ist? if so I would like to hear your experience
As always thanking you all in advance ELO

Even though I just booked my last ticket right before the office closed (still to be picked up, though) my advice is:

1. Book your ITN with BA RTW (or some other OW facility)
2. Get it validated and sent to the price desk for ex-Turkey price
3. Contact Bremen by phone/fax and ask them to do the ticketing, send/fax them your CC info etc.
4. Ask them to send the ticket to BA IST airport counter/office for pickup (if it's a paper ticket, with e-ticket should be even more straightforward)

It's always good to keep booking and ticketing as separate issues when dealing with small/remote OW locations.

This should work out just fine.

Sorry to have missed the beginnings of the Bremen discussion.

I'm trying to originate out of DAM and despite various attempts to contact BA, BMED, CX, and various GSA's there, except for one email from CX (after which I suppose they shot the guy) I get nothing.

I gather their electronics may not be exactly first-world. I tried to fax the Cathay office but got a voice - that would have worked well enough, as the speaker actually picked up in english, but I couldn't be heard.

Anyway, how is it the Bremen, of all BA locations, seems to be willing to take care of ticketing for pickup in other countries? Is it just IST? How is payment arranged?

This is the new contact point for BA ex-Turkey ticketing issues after they closed the office. The Bremen details also appear in my PNR info now after the office was closed few weeks ago (it was changed from the IST info).

This certainly is the case that Bremen office will now do ticketing ex-Turkey as otherwise it would very difficult for BA to sell tickets there...

Thanks, I got the phone number out of the archives - any name to ask for? - and will see what they say about Syria.

A year earlier, SchmeckFlyer posted a thread about a great BA agent in AMS who was proficient at booking OWE's for pickup in far-flung places. That may also be a viable contact.

[Wonder why so little interest in DAM - for AONE3 it's the practical price leader, easy enough to get to from Europe/Asia, etc. As a Yank I assumed I needed to arrive and depart under cover of darkness or a platoon of marines, but other FT'ers have assured me it's a pleasant enough spot.]

Speaking personally, our passports have way too many TLV stamps in them to make a trip to DAM a good idea.

Of course it's also really important to factor in the "positioning" cost, including overnights etc. For example, I've been looking at a DONE5 to start early in the new year that would go Europe-S. America-N. America-SWP-Africa-Europe. While Turkey is cheaper than, say, Germany, if I ticket in FRA (using AA and therefore bypassing BA ticketing yoga) I can go straight to SCL on LA, without burning a Europe seg, plus I can fly into FRA from the US and not have to connect inside Europe in order to get to the "start" point. Counting the cost of flights to (and later, from) IST, plus hotels and taxis blah blah, that are typically required for such things, the price differential between IST and FRA as origin points is greatly diminished, and I've conserved segments for use elsewhere. (In 5+ continent itineraries one can easily run out of in-continent segments.)

Anyway, just an observation.

I've been going through this process for a while, trying to book a DONE5 ex-IST:

- Called BA RTW desk, the man who answered said they could not book a ticket to be issued by anyone except them at anything but the US price. He also said once booked they'd hold the ticket for 48 hours.

- Called 1st-air.net, they are probably a much easier option to get a ticket issued in IST, but it costs $600 more per ticket (see here).

- Called BA RTW desk again, this time a woman setup my ticket very quickly--I had all flights ready including flight numbers and had checked inventory on all--by just reading city code to city code, date, airline, flight number (in that strict order). Only thing she wouldn't do, is setup the first intercontinental segment on AA--I am flying IST-LHR-[european city]-LHR-LAX-...--and she would not book AA on LHR-LAX, although I am hoping I'll be able to change after issuing (since the rules only say no changes up to the first international segment which in my case would be IST-LHR). She even said that their pricing desk is backed up so she gave me a 40 day hold, I told her I would contact BA IST for pricing and ticketing.

- Called BA IST (IST number which routes to Bremen). I could barely understand the person who answered (both bad line and bad english), but he told me all RTW requests are handled by fax only and gave me the fax number (same one listed on BA.com for IST). Fax took quite a few attempts to send (it's also an IST number which routes to Bremen), and still waiting on a response from this fax.

I am afraid that Bremen will be less flexible than the IST office was and request payment by Turkish credit card, etc. I guess I'll have to wait and see. Otherwise, 1st-Air is still an option ($600 more expensive though, $550 each if 2 people), but the next best options for me are GIB/CDG/FRA (for $600-$800 more than IST) and I would really like to go to IST this year.

Does anyone think I will have a problem changing LHR-LAX from BA to AA? There are plenty other segments on BA (4 in Europe, 1 in Africa and 1 Africa-Europe) so I didn't think they would object, but they did.

Hi No window seat
Thank you for this valuable information, I will let you know over the next couple of weeks how I do with submitting my ITN according to what you have stated above .

Have a good Easter wherever you are

ELO