Purchasing AONE5 in Canada, originating in Chile
 

I live in the U.S. but am beginning my RTW trip in South America, which saves me about $1,100/ticket if purchased in Canada. There are more than 16 total segments, although only 15 flown segments. The ticket will therefore be paper, though not handwritten (at least that's my understanding of how it works).

Assuming I don't want to use a travel agent (partly because I'm not sure if they can "take over" my existing reservation), my understanding is that I have two options: (1) purchase in person at a Canadian ticket counter using my U.S. credit card; or (2) purchase by telephone and have them mail me the ticket PROVIDED I use a credit card with a Canadian billing address and the tickets are mailed to that address.

First, is that others' understanding? Second, do you see any problem with using a mail-forwarding service in Canada? It seems I could set this up for a nominal amount and have my credit card bills and tickets sent there and then forwarded on to me. Doing this would only cost me around $100.

It seems that this would fully comply with the requirement that my ticket be purchased in Canada, since the requirement says nothing about whether I actually reside in Canada. Thanks.

jgold,

Your information is a bit skimpy for a definitive answer, but some points to consider:
1. there is absolutely no problem in having a Canadian travel agent assume your reservation, if that is your primary concern on this option. Using a travel agent is easy, since most will accept a US credit card and FedEx the ticket to you. This seems by far the easiest route, although some agents may charge a fee.
2. Have you checked the taxes, credit card fees, and costs for the positioning ticket to get to Santiago? If the saving over buying in the US is only $1,100 these may eat up a significant portion. Or did your cost savings estimate include these costs?
3. If you buy in Canada but do not want to use a travel agent, seems simplest to merely book and price via the RTW desk in US and buy in Canada at an AA ticket counter. Depending on where you are located, flite and perhaps overnight costs may be minimal. Be sure you can change an existing US credit card to a billing address in Canada; this may vary by issuer and some may view it as a significant change impacting card validity.


Best of luck in working this out. Please keep us up to date on how this results. It seems a creative way to reduce costs.

For AONE5's, oneworld.com indicates the difference as USD1,400 (11,700 ex Chile and USD13,100 ex USA).

Fair point. I've actually been on the fence about whether to ticket this as a DONE5 or AONE5, and I accidently gave the difference between the DONE5 for USA vs. Chile. Having thought about it a bit further, I'm almost certainly going to ticket this as a DONE5, so the savings would be $1,100. I just can't rationalize an extra $3,300 for the three or four extra A segments (of which two of them would be on my final flights home)...

According to AA's RTW desk, it would in fact be difficult for an AA agent to assume the reservation. Now, part of that may have been due to the fact that I'm waitlisted on a couple of segments, but it didn't seem to be as easy a process as I'd thought it would be for a travel agent to take over the reservation. Obviously an agent could build the reservation from scratch...

Just fyi, the Canadian travel agent I did contact quoted me a price of $500/ticket. This seemed a bit high.

The cost to get to/from Santiago from New York is 60,000 AA miles/ticket + $55 taxes/ticket. When combined with the DONE5, this gives us two stopovers in South America, then a break in the USA en-route to Asia (along with six segments in the USA). We finish in South America at the end and take our mileage ticket home 11 months later.

Also, in terms of the cost savings more broadly, our plan was always to return home after South America and before going to Asia anyway. Because of the anti-backtracking rules (i.e., starting in the US, flying down to South America, then crossing to Asia with a <24 hour transfer in the US), we were planning on using a mileage ticket anyway to go home for a week, so the use of a mileage ticket at the front of the itinerary (rather than in the middle) nets out (actually, it better than nets out, because we can still explore South America at the end of the trip, before returning home on the mileage ticket).

One open question is the taxes for starting in Chile. AA has not been very forthcoming in pricing out the different tax (VAT?) implications of starting in one South American country vs. another. It's been suggested to me by another person on this board that the differences may be considerable. However, AA, for what it's worth, suggested otherwise. I'd be very happy to hear others' views...


This is an interesting point, and is part of why I posted this in the first place. The way it was explained to me is that if I buy the ticket in Canada (i.e., if I am physically at the AA Canadian counter), I can use an AMEX with a U.S. billing address. Alternatively, I can pay by telephone without going to Canada (or from the steps of the Canadian embassy perhaps ...;)), but in that case I would have to have the tickets sent to a Canadian address and the billing address would have to be in Canada. My understanding was that this was an either/or thing, not a both/and (i.e., I either had to have a Canadian billing address OR be physically in Canada at the AA ticket counter when I make the purchase). Is that understanding incorrect? Thanks much for the replies.

Also, fyi, I had checked with AMEX as to whether I could change my billing address to Canada. AMEX said they didn't care.

Zero.

Yes, but it is not going to be easy, because you must end the trip in Chile, yet once you get back to SCL that is the end of the international part of the itinerary. These restrictions are very inconvenient, because SCL is LA's main hub.

Why would AA Canada be different than other AA locations where this is routinely done (NRT, STO, CAI, MAD,...)?

I agree with your understanding. The explanation you were given sounds wrong to me.

Viajero:

Thanks for the answer re: the taxes. As I said, the goal with this routing is largely to save money, so I obviously wouldn’t want to give back all/most my savings in taxes.

Here’s the routing, just fyi:

Mileage ticket: EWR-xMIA-SCL
Visit South America Pass: SCL-CJC (one of several segments I’ll be buying with that)
DONE5: CJC-xSCL-IPC-SCL//EZE-xMIA-EWR-xDFW-OGG//HNL-NRT//KIX-BKK//DPS-HKG-LHR-MRU//NBO-xLHR-xJFK-SCL
Visit South America Pass: SCL-LIM-SCL
Return leg of mileage ticket home: SCL-xDFW-EWR

Thanks very much for the feedback. Right now, I’m trying to persuade my wife that she really, really wants to fly to Buffalo from BWI so that we can see Niagara Falls, and, oh, maybe wander over to the Toronto Airport too. If not, there’s always Plan B…

I'm with your wife; who wants to go to Niagara Falls when you can go to Iguazu. :)

When you get this ticketed kindly give us some feedback. I'd like to have some more data points to the effect that the above is not considered by AA as 3 stopovers in continent of origin.

I'll let you know. Part of the difficulty with this routing, as I'm sure you guessed, is figuring out how to include IPC on an itinerary that starts in SCL. This was the best I could come up with. But I'll let you all know once it's ticketed (presumably in a couple of weeks). My current biggest problem is that my EZE-MIA flight is on LAN Argentina (holding two seats in D). The AA EZE-MIA and AA EZE-JFK flights have no A or D availability yet. And, because this is my first international flight, I can't make ANY changes (even to carrier) once I ticket this should D on the AA flights open up later closer to departure (and after June) (at least, that's how it was explained to me). This is a real pain, because it will mean I won't make Platinum (via a challenge) until way into my trip (my only other AA legs are MIA-EZE-DFW-OGG//HNL-NRT (codeshare)).

On Iguazu over Niagra, we will ultimately visit both Iguazu and Victoria Falls on this trip, so Niagra would complete the trifecta. :)

That's great! May I suggest you do everything possible to visit them in this order: Niagara, Iguazu, Victoria. To do them in any other order will lead to disappointment, IMO.

Thanks. That actually would be the order. Niagra to purchase the ticket; Iguazu in South America; and then Victoria Falls at the end when we're in Africa (in between flying into MRU and flying out of NBO). Thanks for the feedback...