Not really - a confirmed reservation is a confirmed reservation. Carriers are getting fussier about what it takes to issue and hold one, but the principle still holds true. When you make a reservation separately from a ticket then you either need to get the ticket number in the reservation or be very clear what the deadline is by which you must have a corresponding ticket in there for it not to be autocancelled. It is comforting to have an email or online confirmation that you can print out, although in at least 20 xONE3s I have never had a problem of a reservation "disappearing".
Certainly the route being discontinued is a disadvantage. But the speed of reissue if you don't have to worry about reservations is a big advantage (at HKG & LHR I have regularly done reissues in about an hour on demand; CX's record at HKG was about 23 minutes I seem to recall). I have also found that checking in for flights with an open-dated coupon (and a confirmed reservation) never causes an issue, whereas turning up with a coupon for a different date sometimes does. Another big advantage of Open coupons is that you can ticket them to a city rather than an airport. So, for example, in the past I have switched my reservation from a JFK-LHR flight to a EWR-LHR. In principle, JFK and EWR being coterminals a coupon for JFK-LHR should be accepted on EWR-LHR, but if the coupon says NYC-LON then there is no doubt that it is valid. This is helpful when you are having trouble with availability. On another occasion I ended up flying LHR-BWI when I had been unable to get availability on LHR-IAD, but because I had seen this coming the coupon said LON-WAS and there was no problem.
I admit that I have never done an xONEn ticket on e-ticket, but I have had open-dated coupons on normal roundtrip e-tickets with no problem at all, so the systems are certainly capable of it - whether the agents know how to do it is another matter.
Basically the advantages tend to be better availability and instant confirmation, although the OW airlines are getting their act together so that they can more often instantly confirm. Also if you have status with the airline that you want to fly then you will likely get a better response from calling them directly. Unfortunately, with the way certain airlines are playing with yield management these days you now sometimes get different availability results from calling, say, CX in London or CX in Hong Kong. This is a stupid way to run a business, but I guess all we can do is play the game and if you don't succeed at one office then try another. Since when you call the airline direct you are just talking about reservations then the method of ticketing doesn't matter.
In principle, an e-ticket should enable this, but personally I am MUCH more comfortable having the ticket coupons in my hand. You are then in a much stronger position in any "discussions" that might arise at check-in. With e-tickets the airlines apparently (from tales told on FT) resort too often to saying "the computer says no". With paper tickets all you have to do is to get them to agree that there is a reservation in your name in the appropriate class on the flight and then present a valid paper coupon. The "three hour" thing really depends on where you think you will be when you need the reissue. I am lucky in that my home base is HKG and that is where I have done most of my reissues - the CX airport ticket desk has never taken much more than an hour and often less than half that. On one occasion where there was some system glitch they simply let me fly the next two segments on CX anyway and I collected the ticket on my return to HKG.

But all this comes with a big caveat: I have never tried doing a OWE on an e-ticket, most of my experience is now 2-5 years old, and I have always had status with at least one, and sometimes all of the airlines I have been flying with.

christep: Thank you for the very thoughtful and thorough reply. Everything in it is very helpful.

One more thing to add. Some airlines are increasingly introducing fees for "revalidating" tickets at airports if they are not issued on their own ticket stock. It seems to me that you a far more likely to require a coupon for a different date revalidating than you are one that is open. However, it is important when in this type of discussion to try to hold your ground. The basic principles of airline ticketing and endorsement are:

- as a starting position, an unendorsed ticket is valid on any flight on any airline on any date within the validity of the ticket (normally 1 year from issue) for which a confirmed reservation is held in the booking class on the ticket by the passenger named on the ticket

- endorsements on the ticket can restrict the validity further, but, in principle, if there is no endorsement on the ticket that prevents you using it then it is valid. The onus is on the airline to show why it is not valid if they are claiming so. Again this is MUCH easier if you are both looking at the same piece of people rather than having an airline employee interpret what they can see on their computer screen.

On OW Explorers normally the only endorsements are:

- "Valid on OneWorld airlines only" (or the equivalent listing all the airlines individually)
- A "Not valid before" date on the last international coupon (and any subsequent coupons) of 10 days after the date of the first coupon. (Except in the cases without restriction, eg origin HKG)

And that's all. There are no valid grounds for charging you for "revalidation" of a OWE ticket because it is open-dated or was associated with a reservation on a different date when printed. Putting a specific flight on a ticket coupon of a OWE does not change its validity.

Just thought I'd get that off my chest!

(By the way, now that we have an official OneWorld representative here I would of course welcome any comments or corrections from them if I have somehow misunderstood.)

That will only happen if you make changes to the first intercontinental (or is it international??) and any preceding flights.

I rerouted the tail end of the ticket before departure and my ticket was simply reissued, ie not cancelled and replaced.

I did it that way because AA NRT would only issue etickets over the phone, and I wanted to save on the US$125 post-departure reroute fee.

I had previously asked (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...907&highlight=) about the feasibility of upgrading individual legs of a DONE5 ticketed by AA, and the consensus was that, while I could upgrade AA segments with AA miles, I couldn't upgrade other segments (e.g., BA or CX) with either AA, BA, CX or any other miles (because it was ticketed by AA). Would ticketing some of the legs directly with the operating carrier (as suggested above) and using open-dated paper tickets give me any greater ability, say, to upgrade BA segments of my DONE5 with BA miles (assuming that the paper ticket will ultimately be issued by AA)? Thanks.

I'm still not sure you're getting the distinction between "reservations" and "ticketing". A OWE can only be ticketed on one carrier's stock. It is the reservations that I make directly with each operating carrier. That doesn't affect whose stock the ticket is on, so if the carrier's miles for upgrade policy depends on the ticket stock of the underlying ticket then that may affect your choice of which carrier you use to issue it.

Note, of course, that if you do a reroute/reissue after starting your trip then the you can change ticket stock at this point. For example, many of my OWEs have started in CAI; some were originally issued on BA stock and some on AA, but whenever they were reissued at HKG the reissued ticket would be on CX stock. Most of my more recent tickets have been AONE3s so the question of upgrades hasn't arisen, but I have upgraded CX segments using AsiaMiles on DONE3s and I don't recall the question of whose stock the ticket was on being raised, although I'm not sure whether I have ever upgraded a CX segment on BA or AA stock.

In order to upgrade a BA flight with BA miles, you need to purchase directly from BA

If you purchase from BA, you may be able to upgrade the AA flights as long as you subsequently get the ticket reissued after doing the BA flights

Dave

Okay, thanks very much christep and Dave for clarifying this. I appreciate it.

Sorry to keep kicking this horse, but what about this? My understanding is that I could book a 20-segment itinerary with AA via a paper ticket, fly 4 segments, and then get it (re)issued as an e-ticket through AA without a reissue fee (since there would be no routing change). The AA flight I want to upgrade with miles is among the first four segments I would have flown by that point. So, what if after I fly those four segments (including the upgraded AA flight), I had, say, BA reissue the ticket (using the same routing) as an e-ticket. Would that be permissible? And if so, would it avoid having to pay a reticketing fee of $125? If that worked, then presumably I would now have an e-ticket on BA (electronic) ticket stock, on which I could then upgrade individual segments using BA miles. I assume this plan is flawed at multiple places, but I'm just throwing it out there. Thoughts? Thanks.

News to me. What rationale would you use to get AA (or BA) to reissue the ticket at no cost?

BA would not only charge you the ticket's $125 reissue fee, they would also charge you their own (GBP25?) "raising a finger" fee.

... and take the opportunity to whack you with their own surcharges, which are often much higher than AA's.

It would be flawed in that , in order to be able to upgrade on BA, the ticket must have been purchased from BA. In your example, the ticket would have been purchased from AA

Dave

Thanks for all the replies. I had thought I had read on a previous thread (possibly even one I started) that I could fly 4 segments on a 20-segment paper ticket and get it reissued as an electronic ticket by the originally issuing airline, and--assuming I wasn't re-routing--not be charged for that. Is that correct? Assuming it is, I thought that maybe I could get another airline (other than the originally issuing one) to reissue the ticket.

I also had thought based on christep's post that I could have my originally issued AA DONE5 reissued by BA: "For example, many of my OWEs have started in CAI; some were originally issued on BA stock and some on AA, but whenever they were reissued at HKG the reissued ticket would be on CX stock." My thought was that once it's reissued in that fashion I would be able to upgrade a BA segment. Maybe the part I'm getting hung up on is whether the gating factor for upgrades is who sells the ticket, rather than whose ticket stock the ticket is on--which may be the same, but need not be in the case of a ticket reissue. But, based on the reasons that Viajero and others have said, maybe this doesn't work. Oh well.

All that is true: AA will reissue a paper ticket as an eticket, BA will reissue an AA ticket, CX will do the same, etc., but always for a reason, usually a rerouting. What I have never seen, however, is an airline reissuing on demand, for no reason other than the convenience of the passenger, and at no cost to boot. I am not saying they will not do it; I'm saying I have never heard of it.