Yes he's going to get me the tax breakdown. The only problem is trying to convince him that something is not done correctly even if I eventually identify what's gone wrong.

To his credit he's been very nice and has tried to get to the bottom of it with his ticketing dept. But he has his hands tied by them and they just keep insisting that everything's done correctly.

Don't think so. I'm willing to bet that if you do identify the error it will not be difficult at all to get him to rectify. Anyway, cross that bridge after you find the wrong charge.

Yes you can extend the ticketing deadline. Get a Sabre equipped TA (not Abacus) who can take over the existing AA booking and then change the ticketing deadline on it.

Don't double book. You're just asking for trouble.

Honestly, QF009, you're just being "kiasu" - Singaporean term for "Scared of Losing"!

You can use those links I sent (or others that are also around) to identify where the problem arises, and asked TA to explain discrepancies.

Well, we live and learn!

AFAIK, there is no trace of this office on the AA website. One of the things that has put me off doing *ONE* (or similar) tickets starting here (apart from the price ...) is the prospect of having to deal with QF to get the ticket issued. India is not a problem because I call the EXP or RTW desks in the U.S. anyway to do all my ticketing (or at least the reservation part). Obviously good to know there's an AA office that can issue the tickets if needed. Very strange that it's not listed on the AA website - not sure what the point is of having an office that no-one knows about ..

Not when there's L0 all over the place. I wasn't even going to book it till next year until I realised that L availability goes away so quickly.

Not double booking. I only wanted to verify the tax with AA and they were able to do it by info segments for the bits they can't see (my TA is on gallileo).

He's finally agreed to contact AA directly so hopefully it'd all work out.

A bit like AA's AKL ticketing office. They go out of their way to make it difficult to use - phone & email numbers not publicly available and unwilling to transfer/forward to the office.

Yet if turn up they are more than happy to work with you ^ This sometimes causes other people waiting in the office to be disgruntled as they think you are pushing in (the AA agents double up for QF when there is no AA work, but the queue for AA is separate to the queue system for QF).

At least the AKL office is listed on the AA website, along with such undoubtedly useful ones as Suriname, "West Indies" (ok, for Americans, geography was never a strong point), Benin (a lot of AA traffic there, no doubt), Korea (South not North, fortunately, based on the listing) etc. Australia - conspicuously missing.

Interesting that googling for AA offices in Australia turns up a couple of lists of 'airlines in Australia' which includes an address for AA at 80 Clarence Street, Sydney - which is downtown, near Darling Harbour (though the listed phone number doesn't work). Presumably, they're long gone ...

This, however, is more recent (dated Dec 1, 2006) -

Dear Travel Professional:

American Airlines would like to advise that effective 30 November our travel centre office located in North Sydney has closed, and AA no longer has a public access office in Australia. The new contact details for Australia and New Zealand are as follows:

Reservations: Callers from Australia: 1800 673 486
Callers from New Zealand: 0800 445 442

Postal Address: Airport Central
Level 9, 241 O�Riordan Street
Mascot, NSW 2020 Australia

*********
OK, back to the topic at hand ...

And at least there's an office to walk into at AKL. The one in SYD doesn't deal with pax directly at all. Pretty efficient though, at least IME. indiAA is rather alright if you get a competent AAgent.

Finally! They've got it right this time after pricing up the taxes with AA. Phew. Now they're bogged down with trying to work out where they went wrong in their own calculations. Taxes and fines now A$201 less at A$446.

Great it worked out for you! The problem with AA and most other airlines is that they do not enter the fare calculation onto Galileo CRS' whereas they do when its a Sabre CRS. Most airlines will set up the fare into a ticketing format that it is so easy to ticket when needed to do so. And if the taxes are entered incorrectly, the PNR will not close. Hence the airlines need to make sure that the fare calculations are exact and accurate.

What doest this mean? i.e. is it a problem to make multiple bookings on the same name for a flight (even if on separate tickets). If you don't issue a ticket with one of multiple bookings, and it expires, is it still a problem?

Sorry for a bit of these side questions, but I thought they're a bit related to the main theme of this post. Please let me know if I shouldn't post like this.

I have a record locator with AA in India, and I was working with them for my own itinerary, but they seem to be a bit confused about rules and all. e.g. they sent it for pricing, then a few days later said that the got a message "transcontinental surface travel not allowed", even though this is for NRT//MOSCOW which according to this forum and other places is an intercontintental surface sector that is legal. They seemed a bit confused overall abt RTW fares.

So i thought its better to start afresh, with the ATW desk and with the help of EF and MM(yay!) and issue the ticket from the local office/TA. For this should I pass on the record locator to the ATW desk, or just start from scratch with a whole new itinerary. In that case, do i need to cancel the current reservation? What if I want to keep a hold on to two separate L-class reservations for two alternate routes for some sectors i'm considering? Is that problematic/illegal/un-ethical?

Incidentally, the base LONE5 fare sold in India actually *fell* by 10,000 Rupees just 10 days back so i dont have that strong a need to issue it out of LHR now. So I'm pondering over that.

All the waiting on hold is a bit bugging, so I thought might as well try with a travel agent. The reason I did not do that earlier was that TAs I found here (DEL) were clueless about RTW rules/fares. On the other hand my regular TA is otherwise reasonably responsive, and I have it very easy when I'm changing travel routings/dates for regular non-RTW in the middle of travel - I just email him, and no need to call airlines.

I think this TA uses Galileo CRS, rather than AA's SABRE I think - will that a problem? Suppose I make a PNR from the AA ATW desk, tell this TA to issue from AA India, will that be beneficial in any way at all (other than the longer hold on reservations as QF009 mentioned) Specifically, will the TA be able to change the date/time/carriers while I'm travelling or will I always need to call the airline for that? If this guy can do the date/time changes or the $125 re-issue when I'm en-route then its great for me, so in that case will book through the TA only. The ticket price should be exactly the same right (plus service charge for TA), right? Or are there commissions on RTW tickets for TAs?

Need to find the right strategy for all this booking :-)

Thanks

Udai

Yes, it is. Airline computers finding a duplicate booking (same name, flight, date) will usually cancel one them, automatically, without asking.

All you need to do is to give the same record locator to the ATW desk and have them take over. Then contact the DEL office when you're ready to pay.