Desperate 4 help in BKK
 

I am in BKK and need to reroute.
I went to BA Office (I bought BA ticket) and they said they don't do ticketing. They sent me to a Travel Agency they contracted with to do ticketing. THat travel agency wanted to charge $30 above and beyond the $125 reroute fee. They sent me to AA. AA does not have any OWE info (who flies where) in their office.

So, I went to plan B. I called AA. They are closed due to time difference.

I went to plan C. I called BA. Their RTW desk only handles sales, not rerouting. Their gen'l inquiry number told me to go to airport to make changes.

I convinced them to work with me, but am not optimistic.

1. How do you get a ticket changed in BKK, when you also need info on what options are? Any ideas.

2. Is the following kosher:

I already did
GIB-GAT//LHR-EZE//SCL-IPC-SCL//BOG-JFK-MIA-NRT.

Now I want to change remainder to

BKK-BOM-HKG (for a mileagerun) HKG-DEL-HKG-JNB-MRU-JNB-CPT-LHR-LED//MME-LHR-GIB.

BA says JNB-MRU-JNB is not valid. WHere else, in Jan, can I use African segments. I've already been to Tanzania, and Kenya is too touristed.

3. In addition, I am rethinking LED and MME, since it will be February. Where can I go interesting and warm (other than Morocco, since I'll go there by H2O after I am back in GIB.

Thank you for all your help. Without you, I'd still have a job and home instead of being unemployed and homeless and seeing the world. :0.

Rafiki Yangu

Honestly, pay the $30 and get someone to help you right away.

Cathay would be the obvious people to work with since they are the next 5 flights on your route. Call them on +66 2 263 0606 and see what they suggest.

But they only seem to have an office at the new airport...

Your proposed routing looks fine to me. The difficulty with the JNB-MRU-JNB may be that flights are not yet loaded into the reservations systems for the dates you want. Once they are it shouldn't be a problem. Remember that you can always get segments issued open-dated if that helps.

But also - $30 is par for the course these days. BA and QF would charge you that at least if you managed to deal directly with them. It does raise the question of what exactly the $125 is for, but at the end of the day it's irrelevant if no-one will actually do any work without an additional fee.

Which airline do you have status in as a result of your trip so far? Particularly if it's AA then you could call the AA RTW desk and get them to set up a PNR for the reissue for you. But this is likely to cost you more than the $30 that the TA wants...

I did a reissue of my DONE4 in BKK ealier this year.

I tried Cathay first, but they didn't want to do the reissue because it was a BA ticket. They send me to the BA/Qantas office which did in fact do the reissue for me.

BA made a big mess of my ticket (they replaced coupons of my paper ticket with etickets), but at least the reissue was cheap. (No extra fee, and the saved taxes were subtraced from the 125$)

Maybe
 

Not a bad idea and I confess I didn't think of it since it's not, as far as I know, supposed to happen plus, I thought BKK was an easy city to do reissues.

Afriad of this
 

I went to Cathay late in day and they said they would help me. I will have to go early tomorrow (Sat), since they are only open half day. AA office in BKK said they would have to handwrite tickets (not sure why) and I am afraid of that.

Cathay said they would help and I'll go back tomorrow. But BA in BKK and BA General Inquiries line, and Cathay Pacfic Website do not have JNB-MRU-JNB in it. How can I get them to book me on a flight not in their reservation system. How do I convince them the flight exists. In fact, how does everyone know it does? Thank you so much. I'd like to visit MRU, but the only people who seem to know it is FT, not the airlines. tx.

My dates are January, and I think BA said the ComAir flight is not part of OWE.

BA is wrong.

IF CX is doing the reissue and they say the flight does not exist, you have to go by their rules. If BA says that the flight exists, then you have to go with BA's ticketing. You can't convince CX that the rules exists in BA's system as they can only go about what they have in THEIR system.

AA's office is in the same area as CX's - just next door. If you can get AA to interpret the same rules as BA's, then get AA to reissue the ticket even if it is a paper ticket.

The same way that I asked CX BKK to issue me with a ticket SYD-PEK for a QF flight that CX could not see in their system. They just issued it as OPEN and shrugged their shoulders saying that it was going to be my problem if I couldn't later on get some OW airline to make a confirmed reservation and fly me on the route.

BA won't book own flight
 

First of all, thank you for trying to help.

I can (try to) rebook using BA General Inquiry line. But BA itself is saying JNB-MRU does not exist and they can't see it on Res system. I read

http://www.britishairways.com/travel...ource=comairza

a BA press release that says it does exist and can be booked, but I can't convince BA to issue the ticket. Should I have them book it "open"? Will their RTW desk approve that? thanks

Maybe what they mean by "not exist" is that it does not operate that day (it's not a daily flight) or that there is no availability in your class of service?

The Comair JNB-MRU flights (Wed, Sat, Sun) exist on BA.com, Amadeus, Worldspan and Sabre. The return MRU-JNB flights exist only on Sabre. According to BA, it's the Roach Motel of the Indian Ocean. (Old US advert - roaches check in but they don't check out.) There would soon be an interesting collection of Comair 737s at MRU. Obviously this will be rectified in due course.

Good advice has been given. Work with CX. If they can see MRU-JNB in their system, get it ticketed but open-dated, and wait until you're in Africa to add the "real" dates. If CX in BKK can't help, they can send it to HKG where surely someone will be able to sort it out, even - gasp - BA??

I see MRU-JNB on ba.com.

Curious. Are you logged into the SA or Mauritius BA site? What days? I was looking in January (e.g. Jan 10, 13, 14.)

Edited to add - just tried again, nada.

Wed, Sat & Sun in January, for example 7,10,13, logged on http://www.britishairways.com/travel...s/public/en_gb

Edit to add: and it accepts bookings for those dates from the home page, same link.

Weird. Not for me. I can see the timetable following your link, but when I click on "book flight" it takes me to a secondary screen that asks for the same info (originating country, etc.) followed by an announcement that prices are displayed in MUR, then when I click further I get a red message that says there are no BA flights for that route on that day, along with the dialogue box encouraging me to ask again. I tried this using both IE7 and Firefox, thinking it might be a cookie thang, but got the same drill. Can you click all the way through to the credit card screens?

I can get all the way through right to the brink,... and stop there, of course. :)

But, payment details aside, the thing is both legs are visible on the ba website, at least logged on the site mentioned.

Curiouser and curioser. They love you better I guess. Oh well, BA's website being FUBAR is no news.

Edited to add - fully visible and bookable on aa.com - as usual.

BA's web site is IP address sensitive, in line with BA's decision to sell differently in different markets. So they are willing to sell this flight in Spain but not in the US, or something like that.

Makes sense to me. :confused: Not.

I understand what you are saying about the ip, but the ba website lets me change to any country I want, and in fact before answering the question I changed to the UK site, so as not to quote from the spanish site, in case Gardyloo's Spanish is a little rusty. :) So, I believe you, but would like someone else to try the link posted before I'd be ready to accept that the MRU-JNB flight can ONLY be seen from here or there but not from some place else. By the way, the timetable can be downloaded too, in case someone wants to try (I would be astonished if the timetable was also ip sensitive).

¿Oxidado? ¿Yo? Simplemente decrépito.

Well, us both, but I meant your Spanish, not your/our joints. :)

Dubai for Europe MR/Karachi for Asian
 

Thank you all for your help. Gardyloo's idea to book thru another airline seems to have worked, i.e, I opened a Skype a/c (so I can call 800#s), called AA RTW in middle of night in BKK (daytime in USA). The lady could access JNB-MRU-JNB and put it in my schedule. Now, theoretically, on Monday I go to local AA office in BKK and they can print re-routing. Thank you all for help.

Second question: I have two extra Asia segments that I want to use to get to HKG. Many suggested BOM. But I can't get on the flights. Someone else suggested Karachi. That works, but I don't have a Pakistan Visa and it looks like I would need one. I can't find any info on UAE website about not needing a Visa to transit and/or about visa on arrival. ANyone know about this?

Anyone have other ideas on how to get to HKG from BKK using Asian segments and maximizing miles? Tx.

It is the same issue with Europe. I will be in LHR (or GAT) with two unused segments. Dubai was suggested for a MR, but it is the same issue: I don't have a Dubai visa and can't find info about getting one on arrival or not needing one for transit.

Any other ideas on a two segment MR starting from LHR.

I can't thank you enough for your help.

No visa is needed in DXB for transit. As for info about KHI on the UAE website, that isn't too likely as KHI is still part of Pakistan and not part of the UAE yet. I have heard that KHI is a nightmare for mileage runs, up there with Lagos; also a quick trip to KHI tends to get the rest of your ticket flagged for special inspection.

Thanks for DXB info.
As for KHI, gulp, now you understand why I'm having trouble traveling the world. grin.