Where is ONE e-ticket unacceptable?
 

A few months ago something like "couldn't issue xONEx e-ticket because (route included)..." was mentioned here. Are there still segments that can't be included in an e-ticket?

At last reissue, AA gave me one of those. I still prefer the paper kind, but even getting to that step took the agent at ONT two hours. Good thing AA has essentially no ops there on Saturday afternoon. In any case I wasn't about to send her into tears by saying "Miss, could you please issue this as a paper ticket?"

To AA's credit, it was a complicated reroute - the original ticket said CMB-HKG-LAX-LHR-HKG-CMB, I had flown to LAX, and was adding LAX-SJO-LAX - and the original was Cathay paper. (Cathay won't reissue at LAX.)

So the AAgent, finally social again after her long ordeal, smiled and said "now that your tickets are electronic we won't have to go through this again." But my next re-issue will involve adding a continent and a bunch of LAN segments. Will that necessitate paper and/or agony?

I don't know the answer to your question but it is experiences like these that make me wonder about the strategy (that some advocate) of ticketing a very simple itinerary at the outset and then adding the complications later.

In my case the complications/re-issue was going to happen anyway. A few years ago I stopped knowing ahead of time what I was going to do for all 20 segments, and always re-issue once or twice.

And I'm convinced that issuing 20 segments and later dropping some of them results in a net loss. In some cases it's in the rules - no refund if you buy an extra segment and then cancel it, for instance. That may also be true for taxes/fees/surcharges for dropped segments; if it's not explicit in the rules, at least it's seemed that the reissuer often can't figure what's been paid, and credits nothing. Thus my personal "start simple" plan these days.

Yes, I expect to reissue 2 or 3 times and I agree that I'm not sure that I get full credit for surcharges on the dropped segments. I wonder whether anyone has ever received money back on a changed ticket- regardless of how much is eliminated. The offsetting concern is that fuel charges, etc. may increase after your original issue on segments that you are quite sure that you want. I'm also concerned about more restrictive conditions or interpretations being imposed. So if there is some questionable aspect and if I can get a "favorable" decision about it, I want to build it in at the start. If the interpretation of the issuing agent goes against me, I agree, I forget about it then and try it with someone else later.

The question of fuel surcharge increases (and other taxes/fees as well) is valid but "building something in" at the start is futile - each time a ticket is re-issued, that airline's rate desk reviews the whole thing (at least unflown segments) and is free to deny those built-in goodies. Afaik. My hope, when starting from a one-airline port like MRU, is that I can re-issue in a city with lots of OW choices. Armed with reports of various airlines' rule interpretations I know which one to approach.

(I used to think that the original issuing airline would have records in their computers and would be the easiest place to reissue. Since, I've learned that there is no more of a computer record of a paper ticket than of the paper check you write and send off to someone, until either is "spent" and makes it's way through the clearing house. None of them really want to do re-issues - there's more than $125 in labor involved - but know they have to play along.)

Question for the experts, unrelated to this thread: when an e-ticket is issued, do all OW airlines "see" it in its entirety, or am I now bound to the issuing airline for further changes?

I've only had success with e-ticket reissues by the issuing airline, there were always problems with what the other airline could see of the ticket. There is some procedure to pull the master of an e-ticket, but most agents are not familiar with it (as they would never do this for any other e-ticket except the OWE tickets -- most other e-tickets can only be changed by the issuing airline). It is a definite problem, but can be worked on by phone.

As for the original question of what routes require paper, there is no list and it changes all the time (sometimes irrationally). In general small secondary airports lack e-ticket retrieval capability. All OW airlines claim to have full e-ticket capability implemented. In the past I've run into absurdities like BA can issue e-ticket on BA codeshare of AY flight, but AY requires paper ticket for the AY code on the same flight. This seems to be slowly improving each month, with e-tickets everywhere. I would guess that South American regional flights are the most likely to require paper tickets.

Not so - Qantas issued an award ticket for me and my partner, including LanPeru flights Juliaca-Arequipa so even these small airports have E-Ticket capability. LAN do have their act together pretty well in some of these very small airports!

Another Qantas award ticket for next year was a paper ticket - because it involved travel from Croatia (Dubrovnik), so in some instances the type of ticket varies by the country - if your ticket touches one of these countries, paper tickets must be issued.

Seems that to this day HEL remains a "problem" - I have a LAX-LHR-HEL-LHR-LAX AA issued ticket. LHR-HEL is AY and HEL-LHR is BA. AA had to issue a paper ticket. So much for OW e-ticketing!

Off my original topic, are re-issues of electronic xONEx's an absolute waltz in the park, or do the airlines agonize over them just as much as over paper?

Not minding the wad of paper I have to stuff into a myriad of hotel safes (well, no more than 19 of them) I still see no benefit to the traveler of the electronic non-ticket.

A few months ago there was a thread here about the perils of e-ONE's in that there was quite a serious problem with one airline's computer not knowing you'd flown the previous segment, so what the heck were you doing trying to check in *here* (or something like that???).

The major peril is the e-ticket not existing at time of checkin. This is easily solved if you have your ticket number (not just PNR locator) with you. This happens about 1% of the time to me (and each time it was easily found with the ticket number). Re-issue with a different airline for e-ticket can be problematic, but reissue with the same airline is much easier than for paper tickets. However e-tickets have 16 segment limit on most systems (maybe all). The problem you allude to is unlikely to occur, as on e-tickets the airlines generally cannot see all of the preceding segments and it simply isn't an issue (what can happen is missed flights result in cancelling subsequent segments, but that has nothing to do with being an e-ticket).

Paper RTW
 

I was told last year that tickets with CMB as a stop could not be electronic. But since you had already flown CMB, I'm not sure why this is issue. Does the 16-segment limit for eTickets still apply?

In the case of AA, yes, others I don't know:

Duh, what's an ARNK?

Arrival unknown (fancy talk for surface sector).

Not completely related to the question asked, but BA does have a list on their website of all their destinations that are not e-ticket eligible:

http://www.britishairways.com/travel...e/public/en_gb

The list seems to be getting shorter every time. Ankara, Turkey was on it when I flew from there in July for example, and there was at least one city in France before that's isn't there now. 3 airports in the UK is quite a surprise though.