I've searched but found very little relevant to my situation and I wonder if someone may be able to give some advice.

I'm trying to get a paper ticket issued (a first issuance, not a re-route) by the AA GSA in Pakistan. The AA rtw helpdesk have set everything up fine and it's been priced and validated such that the GSA is happy to ticket but when processing the record an error comes up in their system along the lines of the itin being too long to print on ATB stock. It's a 20 segment itin.

Does anyone know of a limitation GSAs may have with issuing long itins? Or tricks they might try to work around it? Currently they have a message queued to Dublin for advice on a work-around. The GSA here are very flexible and help as much as they can but they have very limited experience of xONEx fares (last one was an e-ticket a year ago).

One obvious fallback is to amend the itin so it is shorter but I'd like to avoid that - partly as the current price is pre price hikes but I may have to just bite the bullet on that. Another option I'm keen to avoid is going back to BA or Cathay here to ticket as they have been clueless. I only recently worked out that there is an AA GSA here.

I may try and convince the RTW helpdesk to pull 4 segments (I can retain a valid route with that) but not amend the fare (i.e. I overpay the taxes). The aim then being to re-issue a week later in the US with the 4 extra segments put back in.

A cheeky thought was to contact a savvy GSA in another territory - e.g. EMECO - but it feels very odd doing so without having ever used them before. I was surprised that there was no AA helpline the agent could use to gain assistance - all support seems to be with messages through the system.

I only have one half working-day and one working day before I'm due to fly .

Have you seen this very recent post?:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=595091

it mentions a couple of nifty tricks.

I was told by AA RTW that they cannot machine print tickets (or e-ticket for that matter) itineraries that are more than 16 segments and that it is a SABRE limitation and tickets MUST be handwritten.

Isn't that other thread about a reissue after <16 segments are left?

Come to think of it, you are right. I just thought Dublin had set it all up for them and the ticket would not print for some of the reasons mentioned in the other post. Ok, scratch that idea, but if machine printing is a no-no in this case, why doesn't the GSA just go ahead and handwrite the ticket then?

I asked about hand writing and the GSA claimed they don't have the paper to do that.

The other thread cited problems with creating a reissue mask in Dublin so I didn't think that would apply to an initial issuance set-up fine by Dublin. Grr - should have played safe and gone for a 16 segment first issue then re-issued later in London or the US.

Sounds like hand written is the only way for a GSA (who would otherwise print through SABRE) can issue a >16 segment ticket regardless of it's a reissue or an initial issue

I believe it. BA Madrid (BA, mind you, not a GSA) cannot hand write tickets either, precisely for that reason.

Oops. I didn't mean to suggest they lied.

Oh, I know, it never crossed my mind; it was just a rethorical "I believe it", since I went through the same thing here in MAD.

There is an older trick to force the machine to print long itineraries, though IIRC, it was only possible with BA/QF/AY/IB (the Amadeus based carriers):

First they'd issue the first half (or 15-segments) of the itinerery, then an open-return to origin. The taxes would calculate only for the 16-segments included on the ticket.

Then, they'd exchange the last coupon (coupon 16) for the remaining five flights (or twelve, as was my case before the 20-segment limit was introduced). The additional taxes would be listed as an ADD/COLLECT.

It's a slight pain the ... to calcualte all the taxes twice, but it's a lot less trouble than writing coupons by hand.

Not sure if this will work with Sabre though.

Why don't you ticket the thing through AA or CX in Pakistan? Maybe its a bit more expensive on the tax-front, but it will certainly be a lot less trouble.

Good luck,

Checkerboard.

Neat. The GSA did talk about trying to issue it as two tickets. Hmm. I very much doubt that they'll go for it though unless someone from AA walks them through it - i.e. approves it. They have essentially no authority locally.

I guess the steps would be to ask the AA rtw desk if this might work and be considered OK. If so then the GSA here would probably need to bounce a message through describing the process and seeking approval.

I'm tempted if only to see if it works, but time may be too tight to try this.

I initially tried to ticket through CX but they insisted that the Sept 1st fare rise (over $500) came in from Aug 1st (this was last week) and I was having routing approval oddities. I then went to BA who initially quoted the correct fare but were then (a) pathologically unable to actually quote me at all with the thing bouncing between London and Pakistan and (b) insisted that hkg-nyc-sfo was two transcons and (c) wanted to charge me the post 1st Sept price anyway as I'm [maybe ] leaving Sept 4th.

Currently the AA rtw desk seem to be happy, as is the GSA, to have ticketed what is lodged in the system which is c. 15% cheaper than I'd get from CX. Oddly Dublin AA quoted a base fare half way between the old and new fare as I understood it. Go figure. Basically weird things happen in far flung places.

Now that it's heading into another day later I think I'm probably going to have to re-align on the new prices. So I may very well try and ticket with CX at the airport if they can issue more smoothly.

The bizzare idea I'm going to try now is to ask the AA rtw desk if they can just pull four segments (which will leave a valid 16 segment itin) without a reprice (given that the new itin is a subset). That would then be ticketable by the GSA. Shot in the dark but interested in seeing if it flies to just overpay taxes (knowing you'll use the buffer when you reissue).

The OP is using AA for the ticketing. The OP isn't using BA or CX because both seemed to want him to pay the new price before the Sept 1 price increase took effect.
See:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showp...9&postcount=18

Justed wanted to add a thought felt many times before I'm sure: the level of insight and willingness to share here is truly impressive. Makes the heart warm. Many thanks. I'm new to this but try to be a savvy learner and add where I can.

AA/LAX did a reissue with more than 16 segments remaining, using two tickets. At the time I thought they had perverted the system and I didn't have a legal ONE ticket, not that I was going to blare it on the airport PA when I walked in, but if they used the trick mentioned above it apparently was okay. Go for it.

Oh well, possibly to be expected but despite starting off by stressing not wanting any kind of reprice and floating the idea for comment the AA rtw agent just amended the record to drop the segments and said all done. So it's off for repricing - which means I don't think it can be issued till Monday when I'm flying - avoding that was the legit reason I stressed not wanting it to go off for repricing.

With essentially no overlap in working hours between the helpdesk and here it's all fun and games. Off to do better things. Will post back if there's anything interesting to add but I think I'll probably either skip the rtw or ticket a short itin and work it out later.