Will there ever be an online xONEx tool?
 

Has OW ever addressed the need for a tool to allow pax to book xONEx's online? It would seem to make things a lot easier if pax could do their own planning and purchasing.

You can do your own planning with the OneWorld electronic airline timetable.
http://www.oneworld.com/travel_plann...me.cfm#desktop

It's a very complicated product (as evidenced by many of the posts here...) so I can't imagine they'll move to online booking anytime soon, if ever.

I doubt it because the tax calculations are so cumbersome. Although it seems AA and BA are the only OW airlines with specialized reservation desks, I would hate to lose them. If you're spending more than $4,000 US on a ticket, I want to interact with a human by phone/fax/email.

I not sure I agree with either the 'compex' or 'cumbersome' issues.

An FT'er has managed to sort a pretty accurate routing validifier on a hobby basis. It not difficult to imaging that the few oddities could be fixed with some full time input.

As to the taxes beign cumbersome - surely that's exactly the sort of stuff computers are designed for.

My one concern about it going online is that I could see a global pricing strategy being adopted - and I don't imagine that they'de be looking to CAI/IST/CMb for pointers.

CX has one too, but they won't deal with you unless your first (intercontinental?) segment is on CX.

Thanks for the responses, but I'm not too sure I agree with the tax calculations being cumbersome. As was mentioned, that's what IT systems were designed to do.

I do understand the desiret to talk to a human being when issues arise.

Fair point - but if you've got a properly set up computer system, no 'issues' will (or at least should :) ) arise.

What would you like to see in an online tool ?
 

Speaking about online tool, I would be curious to know what you guys would be expecting from such service ?

I was already thinking that an online 'collaborative' fare tool where some registered users can update official fares and which would use daily exchange rate automatically would provide people with a rather good pictures of prices anywhere in the world.

I could very easily add this sort of thing to my online validator tool; all I would need is the chart of fares/countries and taxes for each (that's the trickier part).

Tax calculations might be trickier, depending on stopovers/connections, but I could add a stopover/connection delimiter.

I don't know how often it's updated, and it's far from complete down to individual airports, but this site - http://www.consolidatedtravel.com.au/qf/taxes.asp - seems to have a lot of info on taxes, fees, and fuel surcharges.

There's also the Qantas tax pdfs:

Taxes by country A-G
Taxes by country H-Z

What is your online tool ?

For fares there's a list here

For tax calculations, I think it would prove rather difficult due to the sheer volume of taxes and rules...which are not exactly in a computer digestible format. At least we could do something with rules expressed in CLIPS format.

PS: How did you manage to get 2.2M miles ????

The tool is at:
http://jph.bytestacker.com/award.htm

I'm actually at 2.4MM now. It's all a combination of flights, promotions, bonuses, credit cards, Cinemark cups, etc... Just earned 70k+ from the FLY3 promo :)

Ok.. preliminary fare calculations are now included in the OWE validator tool.
It will now show the base fare (currently in originating currency only) depending on your starting country.

eg, departing south africa returns:

Currency Fare *ONE3 *ONE4 *ONE5 *ONE6
ZAR AONE N/A 59960 64990 69990
ZAR DONE N/A 41440 44990 49990
ZAR LONE N/A 19990 24990 29990