Hi,

First of all, thank you to everyone for the wealth of information on this forum which has allowed me to book 2 x DONE4 for myself and my fiancé for our wedding and honeymoon this summer.

I booked with Tal Aviation ex ARN and they have been very helpful throughout the whole process. They gave me an AA reference locator which says the booking was ticketed on the 19th February but so far they have not taken payment from my credit card.

I queried this at the end of February and they emailed back saying:This I find strange - mainly because the available credit on my card hasn't reduced when they claim they have reserved funds.

I left it a couple of weeks and decided to check with BA as our first flight is with them on 23 March ARN-LHR. When I put the reference locator into manage my booking, it eventually found my booking but gave it a different reference number from the AA reference locator (The Qantas website recognised the BA booking reference but not the AA one).

The booking status says 'confirmed' for all flights in manage my booking. I read on another thread however that I should be able to find an e-ticket reference at the bottom of my itinery on checkmytrip.com. There isn't one. I called BA who said it hadn't been ticketed yet as the booking hadn't been paid for. I was told I couldn't fly the first leg until it was paid for.

I emailed Tal Aviation straight away to tell them this and ask them to take payment. They have come back to me and said that there is no problem, the booking is ticketed and they have checked with BA who confirm everything is ok. They can't understand why I have been told otherwise.

Any advice on what I should do? I don't want to be stranded in Stockholm because BA decide my booking is invalid. Even worse, I don't want to discover our tickets to Sydney for the wedding don't actually exist!

A further concern I have is that one leg in the middle of the trip is missing from the BA, Qantas and 'check my trip' websites (although is correctly showing on the AA website). It is a 2 class flight with AA and so we are booked into 'A' rather than 'D'. Could this have something to do with it? Again, I'm worried that there could be a problem with this leg of the trip (albeit slightly less concerned since it is an AA flight and shows on the AA website).

Any advice / reassuring tails of similar experiences would be much appreciated!

Firstly welcome to Flyertalk!

I would insist that TAL tell me the ticket number and then call the airline on whose ticket stock it is allegedly issued and check that they can see it. If TAL can't tell you the ticket number then I would be getting pretty concerned (I've never used TAL myself although many others here have and they do seem to get good reports generally).

I have walked out of airline offices in CMB with tickets in my hand that don't hit my credit card for 4 to 6 weeks. I've also had that happen with tickets issued by Emeco in Cairo. So the lack of a credit card charge is not in and of itself worrying.

christep's advice is spot on - get your ticket number.

From the OP's description it could all be normal (or there could be a problem). AA flights do book into A for US domestic on a D fare (enjoy!), so that part is normal, also normal not to have all flights show up in a single airline's system for various reasons. The acid test is precisely the ticket number, as suggested by christep. You need the ticket numbers in any case -- they should be at the bottom of your confirmation e-mail. This is that long circa-16 digit number that starts with the 3-digit airline code (001 for AA, for example). You need to always have the ticket number with you when you travel using e-tickets; if the airline cannot find your ticket when you check-in, the ticket number must be supplied by you (and then they can usually find it a different way). For e-tickets, this is crucial. And once you have a ticket number, everything else is irrelevant.

Agree with all. I have had RTW tickets that were not charged to the CC for a month and a half or so after ticketing.

Have ticket number (or paper ticket) will travel.

As many others suggested. No Ticket Number = No travel!

Make sure you get your ticket numbers or paper tickets.

I think with eticket many agents can play tricks on customer, purely printing an itineary wirh PNRs and then treat it as the eticket!

Thanks for the welcome and all the helpful responses!

I will do as suggested and pursue my e-ticket numbers - I can't see anything in the correspondence between us that looks like a ticket number. At least it's reassuring to know that the missing segment and the lack of a credit card charge is not too unusual.

IATA has set standards for the format, content and handling of e-tickets, these are 722f/g/h for airlines, TAs, and ground handling respectively. My e-ticket receipt from aa.com complies with 722f and at the bottom of the email receipt there is a block labeled "Receipt" which has the columns "Passenger", "Ticket Number", "Fare-USD", "Tax" and "Ticket Total", followed by "Payment Type" and "Total". This is required by 722f format.

Your receipt from the TA would be in 722g format, which is similar but I don't have a current example. The ticket number must be marked and easily visible to be IATA compliant. It sounds like you don't have an IATA 722g format receipt, when TAL is required to give you one.

Just to update on this.... I never received an email receipt and I think this has contributed to my confusion. TAL responded very quickly to my latest email and suggested I print the itinerary from the AA website (rather than just view it). I did this and it contains exactly the information you list, including two 13 digit ticket numbers beginning 001! ^

It would appear that the BA representative was giving me dodgy information and that there was never a problem. I will still be holding on tightly to the e-ticket receipt when we check-in at Stockholm mind you!

I feel that I better emphasise that TAL were very patient and helpful throughout the whole process and, other than the missing email receipt, provided an efficient and effective service to me. I would happily use them again.

Panic over I guess - thanks again for the help and for putting my mind at ease!

I had the same problem last year with tickets issued by the AA agent in Stockholm (I guess it was TAL). The ticket numbers were in the AA record, but hadn't been sent (or at least not in the correct format, whatever that means), to the other airlines. A call to AA RTW fixed that, and then I was able to verify with BA that they could see ticket numbers. I was never able to see ticket numbers in checkmytrip.com.

BA rep was giving you the correct info -- your ticket numbers are not in the PNR in the BA system. You will need to have this fixed before you are allowed to board the BA plane at ARN! They might be able to do this at the airport, but it might take a long time and worst case you miss the flight. Luckily it is very easy to do ahead of time. Best approach is to phone the AA RTW desk and have them send the ticket numbers to BA. TAL is supposed to do this, but obviously hasn't. Having the printed out receipt with you at check-in is a necessity, and BA could easily fix it based on your receipt, but it depends on the goodwill and diligence of the agent. Better to take care of it now, with a phone call.

This is the Sabre booking reference
BA's Manage My Booking and Qantas's My Bookings both retrieve information from their Amadeus view of the booking, not from the original Sabre booking itself. That is why the Sabre booking reference was of no use to BA or QF sites. BA found your booking from other details you supplied such as name, date and flight details.

When the booking was made the TA using Sabre, the Sabre system has pushed the information needed by BA and QF to their Amadeus booking system. Only the information needed by those airlines is pushed to them, which normally includes the flights operated by that airline and any connecting flights that may be of interest for through checking of baggage, schedule changes or delayed flights.

So each of BA and QF will have created their own booking reference number for the reservations, and those booking references can be used to view the reservations from that airline's perspective from their on-line systems.
This is normal and expected. Note from my description above, only the information that is deemed relevant to BA and QF has been pushed from Sabre to Amadeus. So flight segment that is missing from the Amadeus view is one that was not deemed necessary to be pushed from Sabre to Amadeus. I posit that this particular segment does not have any direct connection to any QF or BA flights and hence there is no need for them to know about it.

The best thing to do is find out the ticket number. I have had success in seeing itineraries booked by my TA in Sabre on the virtuallythere.com site, where you can view and print a copy of the e-ticket receipt. However, I think the TA has to include your email address in the reservation for you to be able to view it at that site.

This is a security feature of Sabre (and a very annoying implementation). The record is invisible until the TA or airline enables the record for web view (and this is rarely done, even upon request). While Amadeus defaults to showing it.

Its good for me then that our corporate TA does enable this capability by default. Then even email us a link with the booking confirmation.

I think my longest was six months. Talk about a surprise.