Do surface segments now count towards 20 segments?!
 

I just noticed this on oneworld.com explorer

"You can fly up to 20 flight segments on your trip. Travel between two points by surface transportation will count as one flight segment."

and I was trying to reissue a ticket over the phone and they wouldn't allow me to have land segments becaues it put me over 20 segs. Does anyone have any info on this? And does it apply to tickets that were issued before this rule change.

Yes, it is a new rule but no, it does not apply to tickets issued before the rule came into effect.

how do I get an agent to process a route change -- I've talked to 3 different agents and they all shot me down as well as notating it in my PNR...

With a negative PNR things get tricky. Have you been talking to the AA ATW desk? if not I suggest you do. If it is the ATW desk the one you managed to get on the wrong side of then I can only suggest you try to speak to a supervisor. By the way, are you sure your ticket was issued before the surface segment rule was introduced? Maybe there is a misunderstanding regarding dates. Or is AA firmly saying that the new rule applies to all tickets, irrespective of date of issue?

Edited to add: I suggest you take a look at the entire thread about surface segments, and this post in particular: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showp...8&postcount=97

Do surface segments now count towards 20 segments?

Yes. And sadly it also includes land travel between two ariports in the same city. There is no "co-terminal" waiver.
Which is particularly frustrating if you want to go anywhere other than BA in Argentina, because all Lan Argentina domestic flights go to/from AEP, whereas all international flights are to/from EZE.
So you end up with two wasted "land segments".

There are probably other examples too.

Happy Travels.

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Thanks - I'm surprised I missed that big thread. I think a superviser at the ATW desk should do the trick. I didn't know the change was made so long ago since I reissued a ticket a month ago with no issues. This ticket was issued in march of 07 so it should be good to go.

Hmm... I managed get the ATW desk to reissue an eticketed itinerary originally issued on 29JUN (ie a day before the rule change kicked in) into a paper ticket with 20 flight segments and 6 surface segments in total. All done effortlessly without getting a supervisor when the agent realised the date the ticket was originally issued. Now the people at the SYD office are slowly handwriting it. I spoke to the super star though. [aside]Incidentally the biggest issue I had was convincing both the ATW desk and the rates desk that they still have an office in SYD - that's how secretive that office is![/aside]