1st sector surface segment, route-cancellation etc on a xONEx
 

Am planning an ex MRU AONE5 with the first segment MRU-JNB. Comair operate this segment only once a week. So,

1. If this day of the week is not suitable for me, can I have a surface sector on MRU-JNB as the 1st sector of my ONE ticket. (I'll buy a separate ticket on the daily SAA flight from MRU, to get to JNB.)

2. If the above is not possible, and I get MRU-JNB ticketed as the first sector, what happens in case of

a.) the route being dropped by Comair after ticketing. Will I be automatically protected on the SAA flight?

b.) flight cancellation/ long delay etc on the 1st segment
What if I have a connection to say MRU-JNB-HKG or MRU-JNB-SYD? Will they again transfer pax on the next SAA flight or wait for the next Comair flight a week later...!!??

3. Anyone know any travel agents in MRU? Or would I have to call BA/Comair in MRU?

TIA!

1) First sector cannot be a surface sector.

2) Depends on if you have open dated or not. (Not even sure you can open date the first flight). If not open dated and ticketed, then you have a confirmed seat. So normal protections should apply
2a) ie I'd expect you to be put on alternative flight

2b) you get to take the next occurence of that flight, so if it is a week later, then that is it. I've actually had this happen and was given the choice (in my case it was 2 days later) or refunding the RTW as it had not yet started (though the 1st coupon had been pulled). Comair is bitter enemies with SAA (or that was the case 2 years ago) and will never reroute you onto SAA.

I always wondered why they had that "no first sector surface" rule, obviously it is precisely to prevent what you are doing, also to prevent buying fares from countries without OW service (and cheap filed tariffs). Absolutely no way around that first sector rule and I wouldn't count on irregular ops being used (they will argue that your travel hasn't started yet). However wouldn't the flight operate the next day, if it were canceled (presumably it has to fly this route every week)?

I think AJ is possibly more worried about the route being pulled.

QG reported starting a OWE in MRU in this thread you may want to contact him. He booked through the BA travelshop I believe. ReelChief reported being in contact with the BA travelshop in other threads and was working out the details of issuing an AONE ex-MRU.

Has it started yet? It was supposed to start at the beginning of September. Comair has been having some problems the past year. In any case if they issue a confirmed ticket for a specific date, then it would be fully protected, while (as mentioned) open-dated is not protected. My experience with Comair is that they just won't issue a ticket if they are not sure a route will operate, so it may not be possible to get this issued until after they run the first flight.

I dealt directly with BA in Mauritius and found them very responsive. To date they have had very little experience with RTW tickets and so are very cautious and are more inclined to say things can't be done, when they can, rather than the reverse. But they try to be (and are) very helpful and I began my AONE5 from MRU last week. I considered waiting for the Comair MRU-JNB to be operational but went ahead with MRU-LHR. The start of MRU-JNB seems to be repeated delayed and I'm sure that BA MRU will not ticket such a RTW until this segment is flying and seems to be set. Of course, if business isn't good it may later get pulled and that is what you seem to be referring to. If that happened, I'd guess that they would require you to fly MRU-LHR but then if they allowed MRU-LHR-JNB to replace MRU-JNB, that may be what you are hoping for.

Firstly, thanks for the helpful replies everyone. ^

Correct. I'm planning to ticket now with travel on the first sector in March. Hence the worries on the route being pulled.

I would be delighted if they did an invol rerouting from MRU-JNB to MRU-LHR-JNB! But I'm worried BA LON wouldn't authorise that. It'd be more of a case of refund the ticket as travel hasn't started yet, as per number_6's experience above.

ReelChief There were some reported problems on this board about the inability to find A bucket seats on the MRU-LHR flight despite EF showing them as being available. I can't find the relevant thread.

Was it you that reported that? If so how did you get around the issue, or did some open up when you needed them to. If it wasn't you did you encounter any difficulty in obtaining A on that flight?

MRU - LHR operated by 2-class BA aircraft. That's probably why you can't book A class.

Huh?

The BA timetable tells me it is a 747 on this route.

Yep. Sample: F9 A3 J9 C9 D1 I0 W9 T9 Y9 B9 H9 K9 M9 R5 V5 N5 L9 S9 Q9

Nope. Firstly BA doesn't operate any long-haul "2 class" aircraft. Even the 777's without F, still have 3 classes.

Secondly MRU, is always scheduled to be operated by 747 aircraft which are 4 class with the F cabin certainly being sold.

And there is A availability. But I seem to recall someone mentioning that even though EF shows these A the MRU BA guys couldn't see them.

I wish search would work! :mad:

I believe this is the thread or maybe this one.

Search is nearly useless when it does work. The fact of the matter is that traveler(s) starting AONE's ex-MRU posted that they had been told by BA/MRU that there was no A availability on their intended travel dates even though it was showing on EF. Iirc A space was made available to them on alternate dates, probably after MRU asked London for it.

I never read any rational explanation about why such a situation existed, including a thread I started on the BA forum. My own guess is that BA's availability is posted to the CRS according to an automatic recipe with less human intervention than one might expect, but they have the ability to insert a check-point in the reservation process on a segment basis that defers to the "real" availability, which on that thin route might be pretty meager.

If it mattered to me personally I would simply fax/email the BA travelshop in MRU and ask them if the situation still exists and what a would-be traveler should do in order to effectively plan travel.

As a further non-sequitor, last summer I thought about booking ex-MRU using IBL Travel rather than the Travelshop, and they promptly booked 3 A seats for me on the date I wanted. (The agents at IBL were uninformed and non-responsive, but I bitc.ed and got the attention of the office manager who seemed to know xONEx very well, and quickly quoted the correct price and was ready to ticket. Only real problem, they wanted wire transfer, although the real show stopper for me was the tedious flights CMB-MRU, misconnecting MRU-LHR, misconnecting LHR-LAX on AA, all of which would have wasted 3 days getting home, where CMB-HKG-LAX arrives almost before leaving.

FWIW, AA and CX have offices in MRU, too:
http://www.teleservices.mu/yellowpag...ing=0000000376

On MRU-JNB, apart from SA there's an additional daily service on Air Mauritius as "backup".

Yes, as noted in these threads, my experience was that A inventory showing on EF was not necessarily bookable by BA-MRU. When I was in Mauritius last week beginning my itinerary, I talked to the agent who set things up for me, and questioned her about the inability of BA-MRU to book flights when EF showed A seat availability. She didn't have an answer but did indicate some asymmetries in the system in that she knew that BA-UK could make bookings for A seats that BA-MRU could not. Whether they were holding them back from being gobbled up by RTW trips originating in MRU is not clear.

Are the flights in fact going out full in first?

There is a little know yield management tool, class availability by point-of-sale. The same booking class has more availability in higher fare POS. It is prevalent in Asia, less so in Europe, Africa or USA. EF shows availability for POS USA.

One way to get around it is to book in higher fare POS, UK in this case, then queue the PNR to lower fare POS for ticketing. The problem is to convince BA UK to book it for you knowning that it will be ticketed in MRU (it will be tough to convince them). ;) If you have access to KVS Availability Tool, you could sometimes see that by switch hosts to different POS.

Would this work: construct the itinerary LHR-MRU-LHR-..... and delete the LHR-MRU segment (or change the date to the end of the RTW) after queueing to MRU?

I don't know the general answer but our MRU-LHR flight was not completely full-- it had one unoccupied F seat. But then the reason we chose that date was that, unlike other mid-October dates, it did show available First seats.

It is where you book the flight that matters. It has nothing to do with your flight origin. Maybe you are thinking about married segments availability which is a totally separate issue.

If you book LHR-MRU-LHR with BA MRU, then the availability would be the same which is probably none. If you book LHR-MRU-LHR with BA LHR, then it should be available. The problem is how to explain to BA LHR that you want to queue it to MRU when you are originating from LHR?? :confused: The reason why it is available when booked through BA LHR is yield management correctly presumes better yield through BA LHR office. Also, the whole itinerary needs to be re-queued to Dublin for pricing as you are changing the origin.

Bottom line: yes, it is possible. But you need to be convincing and/or to get a dumb BA agent at LHR office. ;)

I just thought that booking MRU-LHR in UK will raise suspicion about the true intentions immediately, while booking LHR-MRU-LHR will go through easier at the beginning. And then, there are always good reasons for ticketing outside, like: "It's a birthday present for me from my grandma living in Mauritius and she wants to pay in cash over there." ;)

As long as you could convince the BA LHR agent! ;)

Seems to have nothing to do with the intelligence of the agent in London. If I were to ask him to book an rtw beginning LHR-NBO//surface//MRU-LHR-on-around and after he books it and prices it, I simply call up BA/MRU and give them my PNR and ask them to drop the first leg and reprice it, are they really going to say "no, we're going to have to cancel all your reservations and start over"? I'd assume MRU would simply cancel LHR-NBO, tag whatever you want onto the end to make it an rtw, and queue it up for pricing with the rest of the space intact.

I understand the point of your post, but I think it is not possible to include MRU-LHR on an eastbound OWE starting in Europe.

Is is possible to change a continent as part of a reroute ? for eg:

If I have Africa - Asia - US - Europe - Africa can I drop Europe and change it to Africa - Asia - Australia - US - Africa instead at a later date ?

Yes if everything you have done up to that point is consistent with the new routing.

The minor problem being that there are no OW flights US-Africa, so it is currently impossible to book such a routing on a OWE ticket. However, when AA starts to fly JFK-JNB, you can certainly book that. From either North or South America you must presently route through Europe to get back to Africa, so Europe is mandatory continent on this type of ticket. If you want to add Australia, you will have to buy another continent.

From my talks with BA in MRU it seems there was a little subjective discretion here regarding using London as a transit, however now thay have the MRU - JNB a few more options have opened up giving them reasons to refuse connections via London when an easier/shorter option is available.

In fact as flights from MRU - JNB - HKG is not available until the 20th Jan she offered to try MRU - LHR - HKG and do JNB/CPT at the end. Of course they may not allow it if I dropped Europe entirely...but that is what I want to find out on a AONE5 as follows

Africa - Asia - Australia - North America - South America - Africa

If they dont agree, I can always drop South America and include Europe.

I will know only on Monday.

No need to wait until Monday as the answer will be NO. As #6 stated above, you cannot get to Africa from either North or South America without connecting in Europe. And if you touch the continent, you pay for it even if you don't get off the plane (except the AA ORD-DEL flight).

You must add Europe to the above itin. That makes it an AONE6. If you want an AONE5, you must drop South America.