As some of you might be aware that IATA has indicated that all paper tickets will be done away with come Dec 31st 2007, and that all future ticketing will be electronic.

We know that most CRS' can only handle 16 segments maximum on issuing e-tickets, so does this mean the end of the 20 segment OWEs?

I think airlines will put the restriction on the maximum 16 segments to be currently issued, and then the 'additional' 4 segments to be added and reissued after you're flown 4 segments.

For one thing, it will easier to rebook reservations as 'open dated' tickets may cease to exist. But for some airlines, eg AA, even a date change requires a reissue of the ticket, so one hopes that they don't consider that an excuse to consider it a re-issue fee!

I don't know the situation for future 'hand-written' tickets that some Oneworld airlines currently issue on.

But I'd like your comments on this...

Thanks

Would be even more of a problem with *A's RTW which allows 24 segments. I hope they don't reduce the number of segments to 16. That would substantially reduce the value.

Why do you say this? I have had plenty of open-dated e-tkts.

I know on CX you can do 'open-dated' e-tickets but are restricted on some CRS's like AA's system.

Both BA in HRE and CX in JNB have categorically refused to issue open-dated e-tickets.

Maybe my hearing is going but the AA agent in BKK said that she had to handwrite a reissue LONE4 in Jan 2007 because it had more than 14 segments.... OTOH it was also still more than 16....

Prediction: More enhancements which will cost the buyer more when compared with the current scenario.

Happy wandering (while you can)

Fred

I've wondered as well if a fully electronic age for tickets will limit the segments on an RTW ticket. And the problem can be more substantive than 20 to 16. On my last RTW, the computer believed I had 26 or so segments, because I had a number of open jaws. For example, I flew into San Diego and out of LAX. I flew into LHR and out of LGW. I flew into Ayers Rock and out of Alice Springs. It will be quite worrying if we get limited to 16 including open jaw segments.

So does increasing the selling price, adding large fuel charges, significant transaction fees, etc.

AA has some kind of work-around - at the moment I've got an open LAX-LHR hidden in one somewhere, courtesy of the ATW desk.

since each surface sector requires a 'coupon' ( yes , even E tickets have coupons) and I believe the restriction on sector numbers is related to the maximum number of coupons that can be handled on an ET then my belief is , yes , the fare will be restricted to 'x' number of sectors including surface sectors

Excellent question, and I'm sure you are aware that this IATA project has been underway for many years (current project started in 2004, maybe earlier). The incentive is massive: 100% e-ticketing will save USD 3 billion per year for the airline industry (paper ticket costs USD 10 to process, while e-ticket costs USD 1). Technically IATA has the goal of not interlining paper tickets; the airlines are free to have bilateral arrangements for paper tickets. In fact IATA expects some charter airlines to keep paper tickets or go ticketless instead of e-ticket (rather ironic as new LCCs spear-headed the e-ticket movement, though often not in IATA standard format). It is likely that many cities in the world will not be 100% e-ticket capable by the end of 2007 (the IATA "solution" for this is absurd -- offline ticket lists for such flights!), and all of the airline alliances will have to create a paper ticket "inter-alliancing" process. So what I think will happen is that paper tickets will still exist but limited to alliance airlines. For the OWE product that has zero impact.

There are lots of other aspects to the e-ticket that are high impact for some of us:

- must be issued 3 hours prior to departure time.
- valid for 550 days from date of issue. After that date it is scrubbed from the computer systems (expired/used tickets are kept for 60 days). This cuts into the 2 year validity of OWE tickets, and has the danger of missed flights causing the 60 day scrub to kick in.
- most CRS permit only 1 ticket number per PNR (but allow the last ticket number to be used with a series of tickets). This is a work-around for the 16 segment limit (and the reason that the airlines do not view the 16 segment restriction to be significant; they view it as a training issue.
- ARNK (surface) segments always count as one of the 16 segments.
- open-dated and waitlisted segments are allowed by all of the Oneworld CRS systems, including AA; again a training issue.

Great information, thanks for such a useful post! Knowledge far outstrips rumour again.

Really? I had a QF Eticket issued 1 hour before departure?
I thought the validity of OWE tickets = 12 months? Is this a new thing?

Basically no airline can issue a ticket entirely open jaw.. even after the 1st confirmed segment.. For an itinerary to exist, there has to be an active 'live' segment somewhere.

I think number_6 meant that if the ticket was to be issued say in Nov 07, for travel starting next Sep 08, the validity of that ticket is till Sep 09. Thought not entirely Kosher, some people using paper tickets have successfully used it beyond their supposed expiry date. It could be that some ticket offices do not bother putting down the date of expiry on (mostly) hand written tickets. With e-tickets, this loophole will forever be closed. As well as using coupons out of sequence!

I think JohnAx was referring to open dated sectors, not hidden sectors or open jaw. The question was can an eticket sector be open dated, and the answer, as posted, and I can confirm, is yes.