RTW ticketing and TAs
 

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone can advise me on how TAs price up these tickets? Do they have to queue the bookings to the airline they're issuing through for final approval, or can they simply charge any price willy nilly?

Currently I am dealing with a TA for an LLGLOB26 because AA will only hold seats for no longer than 21 days. Availability on some segments is tight and so I was keen to book it asap, but I can't afford to pay for it till at least JAN next year - hence the TA.

The itinerary:
MEL-SYD QF
xSYD-HNL AA codeshare op by QF
HNL-DFW AA
xDFW-JFK AA
JFK-LHR AA
xLHR-TXL BA
TXL-LHR BA
xLHR-HKG BA
HKG-MEL QF

I insisted that the TA issue the ticket through AA for the lower fuel fines and so I can EVIP the AA operated segments, to which he agreed. The total tax and surcharges come up to A$647 per the TA's ticketing dept.

For context I had a DONE4 ex-NRT which was also issued with AA, it was issued with 16 segments, had one hit of UK premium APD (so 80 quid or approximately A$200), and of course had far more stopovers. The tax came up to about JPY71 900 (approx A$680).

So I was thinking that the TA got the tax wrong or perhaps used the wrong airline's tax calculation as A$647 sounds a little excessive? There's no UK APD, only 4 stopovers (HNL, JFK, TXL, HKG), and 9 segments. And as far as I know AA only levies fuel fines for its own oceanic segments, and no fines at all for AA domestic segments nor the QF/BA segments.

So is there any way I could make sure that they've verified the pricing with AA? Or could I simply ring up AA and have them verify the charges myself?

Cheers. :)

It depends....

TAs do have to send the entire itinerary to the issuing airline's ticketing dept to get taxes and surcharges etc. So if they are issuing it on AA document they have to send it to AA for pricing. But some TAs send it to whoever they can get, ie QF as there may not be a AA ticketing dept in Australia. Or that AA will insist that TAs send their itins to QF. So QF may in the end price the itin and the TA will issue the ticket on AA document.

Why not? It's just another quote and who knows, they might even extend the ticketing deadline. I know they usually don't, but they have done it for me, on request, right up to the date of departure.

Thanks.
Well there are AA ticketing people in SYD, so I hope the TA will queue the booking there eventually.

In the event that the TA prices up the itinerary with QF but issues it on AA document, wouldn't that mean the pricing is complete with QF fuel surcharges etc? :eek:

But from the way things are happening it looks like the TA is doing everything through an internal ticketing dept.

I actually spoke to the ATW desk prior to going to the TA. There's no way they'd budge on the 21 day thing. Apparently it can be extended but only up to a max of 46 days. :(

As I already have a booking held with the TA, I don't think I can get AA to make a duplicate booking just to verify the tax though? It'd result in auto-cancellation wouldnt it?

Only if the second booking is in the same name as the first.

Well I managed to get the AA tariffs desk to price out my existing itinerary by giving them the AA record locator and having them complete the bits they can't see with info segments.

I knew it... the TA is overcharging me by approximately A$200! :mad:

Well, the TA does have to put quite a bunch of work into a RTW trip, so maybe they already included their service charge in their quote.

Where? Where? What's the number!?

Unfortunately, I suspect you're referring to the old North Sydney AA office which, as far as I know, was closed a year or so ago .... :(

.... which, I would have to suggest, is pretty good service from AA ....

They list the 'service charge' separately from the 'taxes and surcharges.' What I meant to say was they've miscalculated the taxes and fuel surcharges by an extra A$200.

AA SYD still exists; they've moved to Mascot. And they don't deal directly with pax these days. You get routed to IndiAA to book flights, and your records get sent to the AA office at Mascot for ticketing.

Number is 1 800 673 486.

IME IndiAA is quite ok at straightforward round trips. I've done a couple of ex-MEL itineraries with them thus far, and some domestic USA flights since AA.com doesn't accept Aussie credit cards. I've yet to try redeeming an AAward through them. But don't even think about setting up an ATW with them unless you've got LOTS of time and patience.

Good grief, the TA's ticketing dept insisted that they're correct and that they've used AA's "template" to charge tax/fuel fines.

AA's tax/fuel = A$473.75 (which already includes A$218.65 of YQ)
TA's tax/fuel = A$647 (excluding service charge)

AA's amount also tallied with what was worked out by a TA on another travel forum.

Any idea how I could convince the TA to reconcile the figures with AA?

Unfortunately I can't cancel the itin and book with AA due to reasons cited above and also availability has gone down to L0 on some of the crucial segments.

Get a hard copy of AA's fare construction and show it to the TA?

Find out which segments are creating the extra fuel charges and amend the itinerary to work around them? Even if you have to reissue right after you take off, you might end up saving money overall.

Neither the ATW desk nor the UK office would help me with this.

The only way you are going to be able to do that is by showing the TA exactly where they have gone wrong. Is the TA willing to give you a breakdown of taxes? If yes, you can probably check the line items yourself and discover where the discrepancy lies. If the TA will not give you a breakdown you are up the creek.

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.

and they'll pick which one to cancel - which may create problems with that itinerary