number_6

None of your segments are high demand in D (except for 1 or 2 days a year), and you only seem to have 2 CX segments (MEL-HKG-SIN) which are easy to get anytime ... not sure why you had trouble booking this, all these routes should have been quite easy to get D/A inventory on.

Keith009

The MEL-HKG-SIN-NRT segments have been left open. I will not be booking them till much later when I've planned that part of the ticket. It's supposed to be for my mid year break next year. And even then I'd only book CX segments when I have ticket numbers or it's pointless with their auto ticketing time limit.

Glad to know that I'm on relatively low demand sectors then - however the majority of the trip (NRT through SYD) also happens around what would be considered peak time (early Jan till late Feb). SWP segments happening around Easter.

I've had no trouble booking at all, apart from a slight BA POS issue on SIN-LHR which was rectified by calling their UK office. I am just curious as to what could possibly happen when AA agrees to hold a booking for such a long time (ie intervention by other airlines upon failure to supply ticket numbers) and possible recourses. Again I apologise for sounding so newbie despite the 1587 post count and Mar 2005 join date, but the booking and issuing of DONE4s is still very new to me - well, booking them from a foreign country that is.

number_6

There is no recourse, and the risk is all yours. AA will try to keep your reservation intact until ticketing, but there are no guarantees and no recourse. Worst case, you get to start from scratch except the yield management software has adjusted inventory based on the "high demand" generated by your prior bookings, and D is no longer available (this is not a theoretical risk, churning a D booking a few times will promote that seat to J inventory; often released seats do not return to the same inventory, though they might come back a few hours later).

Keith009

*deep breaths*

I gotta remind myself that people have often done DONExs ex-<insert exotic city> very successfully.....

number_6

NRT is an exotic city?

Your routing is trivially easy to reconstruct, even on high demand days, with lots of alternative routings available and generally tons of D inventory. The tough routings are those that have just 1 flight per week and no alternatives, or things like A inventory SYD-JFK at quarter-end. Your primary risk is that the fare and/or taxes will go up (I suppose the latter is not entirely theoretical, if AA decides to start charging fuel surcharges it would be done without prior notice and add about USD 500 to the price; there are some weak indications that AA is considering such a move, but it is hard to say when/if it will happen).

Guy Betsy

Most of the carriers have ticketing deadlines when travel involves asia, so in this case, JL, and BA.

Most of the time, the deadline is set by their own reservations computer that cannot be overridden manually. You would need to either give them a 'fake' ticket number and hope that their systems won't catch that it's a false ticket number (CX for example can check if such a number exists).

Keith009

It is not local and different enough from where I live. Good thing I've been there once so it won't be an altogether daunting experience.

Keith009

Is such a deadline automatically generated upon creation of the reservation like the CX one? Or only when more inventory is needed. The ATW agent proofed my itinerary and found no other deadlines other than the AA one. It's been a long time since I got it all booked too, after CX suspended CMB. Guess I gotta check AA.com at least once a day...

Oh and apparently CX has come up with a way to block dummy ticket numbers. AA CMB told me that they don't insert dummy ticket numbers anymore as CX's systems won't accept the real ones after the dummy ones are inserted. At the time the GSA was able to talk to CX and lengthen my ticketing deadline to match the one he set for AA after we discussed when I'd be ready to pay etc.