Thanks for all the advice - thought I should give an update. I ended up going with Chawla (responded to email quickly and very professional; FF segment requests entered correctly) like the OP. No dramas with paying by credit card and now have the ticket after Chawla couriered to me.

A very painless procedure for a newbie DONE4 ex BKK purchased from a different country taking about 1-2 weeks from scratch.
The only issue I had was with availability BKK-LHR (on the 4th June QF1 showed D9.. currently D2 in EF; but Chawla could only waitlist me); ended up changing routing via HKG to avoid the waitlist not clearing.

Can these TAs set up e-tickets? It seems everyone is talking about paper tickets, and getting them delivered - is this just due to the itinerary, or # of sectors exceeding 16? Or can the TAs only issue paper tickets?

I'm curious as well... are you resigned to using e-tickets for RTW itineraries? Would be nice not having to worry if all your tickets get stolen in the middle of Africa.. Anyone?

I have used Mike at Green Travel in BKK for 3 RTW tickets, with no problem. He has always been very responsive.

The ability to use e-tickets seems to depend on the routing. My most recent RTW itinerary when I booked it with Mike was on an e-ticket but I then changed it after issue to be via CMB. That change was done by BA in the UK and they said that because CMB is involved, it had to be paper tickets.

However, I have just booked LHR to CMB via DOH on QR which is paper, and CMB to GLA via DXB on EK, which is e-ticket, so I am not sure how when the CMB involvement means paper!

But I do recall a recent posting here that if thngs go wrong, it is betetr to ahve paper as they can trace the reservaton more easily.

Re CMB: I've got an AA-issued e-ticket for an xONEx with CMB as the final destination. But perhaps Cathay will be "surprised" when I show up at their departure counter - on a previous occasion, Cathay had to re-issue AA-issued tickets to make them acceptable to their computer, but the circumstances were different.

Re losing tickets in Africa - a few months ago, someone here explained to me/us that getting lost paper tickets replaced wasn't the terrifying ordeal I'd postulated. That makes sense - they have your name written all over them, and typically will require a passport ID to use them, so they're probably pretty scratch paper to anyone else.

JohnAx

If CMB is your final destination maybe it does not matter. But if your ticket is RTW was CMB not also your starting point?

Maybe BA were telling me porkies, although I have the impression that e-tickets are easier to reissue than paper.

For one thing, etickets can be reissued over the phone. No need to find a OW ticket counter or agent.

Yes, the trip is ex-CMB but started as Cathay paper. It's not unlikely that *leaving* a place on a e-ticket is the real problem.

AA turned turned paper into bits on a computer during a re-issue, and I played along because the poor Aagent at ONT was nearing tears after struggling for two hours to get it to that point, and was going to morph into a gate agent soon. (And all I was doing was adding two NA segments into a well-documented, machine-printed five-segment trip.) But she also said "next time will be easy". We'll see - I've got 13 segments still unaccounted for.

I believe I've read here that e-tickets are firmly limited to 16 segments, btw. And another thread discussed a traveler's problems when he tried to reissue a ticket with 16 or so segments flown, only four to go, but the "system" insisted on doing something with all 20 segments and spit up all over him. An expert FT'er explained the special airline code the agent should have used to "roll up" all flown segments into one, and I think I emailed it to myself for future use...

Can confirm that my paper ticket ex BKK needed to be reissued in person. If anyone needs to do it I suggest ring up reserve/hold seats, take ticket in, goto lunch, come back and pick up ticket ~ 1hr of your time. I did this in SYD and reissued ticket was an e-ticket.

On a side note re BKK tickets - the travel agents have some discount FIRST (A) for QF/BA both to UK or AUS if you book by end of this month.

Details also available here on BA.Com

http://www.britishairways.com/travel...s/public/en_th