Hi all,

Just read in another thread that it is possible to change your paper ticket to an e-ticket after you've flown the first 4 segments. Do you need to do that with the carrier who issued the ticket (in my case BA) or can I do that at a LAN or QF office too?

Would the staff at the lounge in LHR be able to do it?

My experience was with getting the carrier who issued the ticket to do so. This was with AA in Oz. I had to mail the unused vouchers back to them; the booklets with the carbon copies were returned (sans vouchers) with a note to keep them whith us when travelling.

That's really a question for BA. In the case of AA, paper RTW tickets acquired at a foreign station do not have an "image" in the AA computer systems that can be used to re-construct the taxes and surcharges that went into the original ticket. As a result the agents need to work with the RTW desk and the relevant tariff office to reconstruct the entire itinerary and enter it into the AA system. That system has limitations as to the number of characters that can be entered in the fare construction fields, so the agents need to collapse or aggregate some fees to make the whole shebang fit in the little boxes. It's very labor intensive, but can be done. I had a 20-segment ticket converted to an e-ticket at SEA a couple of months ago (I was down to 12 remaining segments) and it took them around 3 hours.

However BA uses a different back office system, so there might be a higher degree of automation than AA possesses. However I would seriously doubt that a lounge attendant would either possess the know-how or the time to do it for you if the BA process is even half as complicated as AA's.

I've got a somewhat related question.
I have a 20-segment, AA-ticketed, ex-CPT, DONE5 departing next April. We'll need to switch OZ/NZ for North America in the middle of the trip (already looked into changing upfront and it didn't seem worth the cost). Our options to make the change look to be MAD or SCL. Any experience with either location?
Right now, we've got an 8 hour layover in MAD (4PM-12AM), and several days in SCL.

Only other alternative would be to try and do something during a 5 hour layover in LHR, but it would mean schlepping between T5 and T3.

Not sure that I understand the question. OZ/NZ on a OneWorld DONE5? Am I missing something?

I don't see why it is hard to understand. I'm assuming it currently goes:
Africa-Europe-S America-SWP-Asia-Africa
and instead they need to go
Africa-Europe-S America-N America-Asia-Africa

I can't help with the OP's question though. In either case I suspect it will help enormously if you they speak Spanish!

Sorry... I was referring to the countries, not the airlines. I've currently got SWP as a continent and need to switch it to North America instead.

My experience was similar with AA Sydney. And they couldn't simply "queue" the itinerary to Dublin nor to mindpearl in BNE (which apparently has a tariffs department) to work out the reissue mask because what I have flown isn't visible in Sabre. In AA Sydney, there appears to be only 1 person (the "Ticketing Officer") in the entire office responsible for working out tariffs and that person only rocks up to the office 2-3 times a week. They received my ticket on a Friday and could only work on it the following Tuesday; they'd called me to take down my CC number and 30 mins later it was reissued and I could see "Ticketed <date>" on AA.com and eticket numbers on checkmytrip. So AA in SYD is not an option for anyone wanting a quick turnaround.

I thought that he was referring to the carriers. Obviously, I missed the boat on that one.

I have some recent experience of this (Oct 24) with AA.
In the middle of a DONE4 (paper ticket) with 12 segments left, I needed to make some changes and re-issue the ticket.
AA RTW office made the changes and said I could get the ticket re-issued when I check in for next flight at JFK. I asked if it could be re-issued as an electronic ticket, and they (AA RTW) said that in theory, "once a paper ticket, always a paper ticket". However, some AA stations will re-issue as an e-ticket, but they are not really supposed to.
So I show up to checkin at F/J counters at JFK, and ask if they can reissue as an e-ticket. Agent calls RTW who says no, it must remain paper ticket; they spend a long time on the phone because they cannot see the ticket image, and agent ends up reading the long, detailed tax coding off the paper ticket.
She gets off the phone, and then starts hunting for paper tickets, and after checking all the desks, she can only find 2 paper tickets, but she needs 3 (12 segments). Eventually a super comes over to see what is going on, and she says, sure we can do this as an e-ticket.
And it's done.
I don't know what the actual trick is, but it can be done!

Happy Travels