All,

I would greatly appreciate any advice others can offer me. Due to a mix-up over dates, I have some holiday to take, but it needs to be taken immediately! I would like to use this time to start an AONE4 from somewhere relatively cheaper than London. I am considering NRT with CX as I can quickly arrange a flight over there using miles (with VS). What do other posters think my chances are of arranging a quick ticket with NRT, either beforehand by fax or in person at the desk? I know that a previous poster found AA very useful in NRT, but I think I need to go through CX as not planning any AA segments.

Alternatively, anyone have other suggestions for a quick and dirty issuance? DOH was considered, but flights from DOH-LHR tend to have slim availability in A-class this near to the date.

Any help vastly appreciated!

No personal experience with "instant" rtw issues (so I should probably save the bandwidth for someone else!) but from reading previous comments, it would seem that if you were sitting there anxious to fly away, the tariffs people would accommodate you within a couple of hours. Just be careful not to include anything controversial in your itin - if you have grand ideas, you can request a reissue and debate them at your leisure later, for USD125 or so.

Reissues, more or less the same process (perhaps even more complicated because history must be subtracted) tend to work that way - they'll generally be coordinated with the rate desk and handed to you fairly quickly.

Of course pick your flights (verify availability) ahead of time and book them before heading to NRT.

If you have Virgin miles to use, you could also consider South Africa, which for AONE4s is quite a lot cheaper than Japan (or else join the crowds, fly to JNB on VS, then Comair to Mauritius for the cheapest AONEs of all.) Of course you might not be thinking of Africa as your 4th continent, in which case Japan might be your best bet.

I just did a relatively last-minute issue ex-NRT. I called the AA RTW desk, had them set up the booking, and then called the AA Tokyo office for payment. I called AA in the European afternoon (morning in Dallas, just after they had opened), and then Tokyo a night later (morning in Tokyo). The ticket was issued less than 36 hours since my first contact with the AA RTW desk, but I think you could do this even faster. The trick is to make sure that AA has time to price the ticket (I seem to recall they live in Dublin for pricing issues). Once that is done, Tokyo can issue it. Utterly painless process as far as I was concerned.

I would echo the comments by JohnAx above to avoid a complex ticket and to keep it uncontroversial. Better get the ticket issued fast and start flying. You can always reissue later with additional and more interesting segments.