Booking RTW through Sabre
 

I'm thinking about building my RTW in Sabre (I use a host agency), queuing it over to AA to price out, and then issuing the ticket myself. I want to do this for all the standard reasons people like to book complex itineraries themselves (mainly, to cut out constantly being on hold with a bunch of agents on the phone).

Are there any huge disadvantages to doing this? My worry is that I'll be somewhere in the world with no Sabre access and I'll need to make a change to my itinerary (most likely just a date change, not a reroute). I know DL now charges a fee for making any change to an itinerary booked by travel agents but I haven't found evidence that AA does this as well.

By the way, for those of you trying this at home: You don't need to queue the PNR to the regular international rate desk queue. RTW has their own pricing queue--QP/TUL91/11.

AA will be able to alter an agency booking for you post departure. I've not been charged anything.

And I assume you're booking ex-USA? If you're starting an itinerary from an overseas location you'd still need to get a local ticketing office (or offices in the EU or Canada) to issue the itinerary for you to get the lower price.

I'm ticketing in the US and flying ex-LGW with the EU exception, so I should be fine in that respect.

Quick check of the rules--"Not applicable for sales made and/or travel originating in Canada or the European Common Aviation Area (ECAA)."

So I should be good to go, unless I'm misreading that.

Thanks for confirming that an agency booking isn't a problem.

Yes you are misreading that.

You cannot ticket in USA as it is considered a 'sale' and you're originating in the EU. If you're based in Canada, then that's fine.

Basically if you even have to ASK the question whether you can book through Sabre means that you are not qualified to even attempt this sort of transaction. Using a host agency does not qualify you as a travel agent. Especially amateur ones pretending to be professionals.

What sort of ticket is this - an xONEx? If so, why don't you use the online tool to book it? If it's some other sort of ticket (xGLOBxx etc.), just call the AA RTW desk at 1-800-247-3247, tell them the flights you want, have them price it and then get it issued. No need whatsover to be "constantly on hold with a bunch of agents" - just call the RTW desk and tell them what dates and flights you want.

Right--I know I'm not a travel agent, which is why I would NEVER book something like this for someone else. I have no problems shooting myself in the foot by trying it for myself, however.

My itinerary came back from the pricing queue--
24.H-UNABLE TO RATE DUE TO NO AA TRANSOCEANIC FLT, NN TO
25.H-REQUEST RATE FROM BA SO THEY CAN COLLECT APPL YQ/YR .
26.H-THX COOPS 0708/03JAN/TK9

I have an AA international flight (BDA-JFK) but none of my over-the-water flights are on AA. Guess I'll need to call them now anyway.

Strange, AA RTW very happily ticketed my current ex-MNL AONE3 with only 5 domestic segments on AA codes/metal.

BDA Shorts is hooked up to Sabre and has DIYed the booking, rendering it an agency booking. The AA tariffs desks won't provide a rate for agency bookings if they don't contain at least one AA overwater segment. They'd do such bookings only for pax who have dealt directly with AA (eg RTW desk).

Ahh... that'll do it. That, combined with having to ticket in London (I'd imagine it's a pain to transfer the PNR over to them, and transferring would defeat the whole point of DIYing this anyway) means I'll probably have to do it the old-fashioned way, through the phone.

I could add in an AA over-the-water piece but that would turn my LON-BDA direct flight into LON-JFK-BDA, which is much less convenient.

If anyone is interested, my itinerary is:
BA LGW-BDA
AA BDA-JFK
AA JFK-RDU
AA RDU-DFW
QF DFW-HNL (operated by AA)
QF HNL-SYD
surface sector
QF BNE-AKL
QF AKL-MEL
QF MEL-PER
QF PER-NRT
CX NRT-HKG
CX HKG-DXB
RJ DXB-AMM
RJ AMM-TLV
BA TLV-LHR

You could switch DFW-HNL-SYD to the AA flight codes and requeue.

Might have been faster to ring up the ATW desk after all that, btw. ;)

I don't see an AA flight code for HNL-SYD... they do codeshare the QF LAX-SYD and SFO-SYD but I need to be in HNL for at least long enough to get a driver's license (needed for tax purposes).

Might be a good time to ask--I'm booking DFW-HNL on QF/AA codeshare instead of directly on AA to avoid the $100 fuel surcharge. Shouldn't be any problems with that, right?

AA7358 HNL-SYD.

You'd only be able to book DFW-HNL on QF if there's a transpacific segment on QF flight code IIRC.

Ohh, perfect. I tried pricing out that segment on a standalone basis and it looks like there are no fuel surcharges... so I'll just switch that over.

Right, that QF shows up as "INTL ONLINE CONEX/STPVR TFC ONLY"--since I'm stopping in HNL and then continuing on QF to SYD that should be okay. Or, rather, it would have been okay but for the above change to the AA codeshare.

And alas, we get to this problem: AA7358 HNL-SYD doesn't have availability in L on 9/25. QF 4, on the other hand, does. I doubt the rate desk will be happy about pricing this out if the AA over-the-water is waitlist.

If I really wanted to I'd imagine I could find another date where AA7358 does have L, book that, price and ticket, then change back to QF4 on the date that I want... at this point, probably easier to pick up the phone!

Either of these would work. Or you can open date AA HNL-SYD, which might be the cleanest solution. Once you are ticketed it is often easy to get L inventory released (need approval by yield management but they make a lot on that over-water sector, maybe more than the sold HNL-SYD discounted fares even in L).

Thanks for the suggestion! I couldn't waitlist the AA HNL-SYD so I open-dated it like you said (specifying AA for the open segment) and requeued. Took AA 22 minutes to price it out--here's what I got:

A few observations:
1) $175 in fuel surcharges. I think I can live with that--or would they be easy to get rid of? Then there's that $2.93 Q charge... I'm willing to let them have that. :D
2) Base fare is the ex-LON fare that I was expecting. In the remarks they wrote "TICKETING RESTRICTIONS APPLY." I wonder if that means what I think it does (that I'd need to get this ticketed in London).
3) Taxes are a fair bit lower than I was expecting. Going through the tax breakdown, Australia's definitely the worst offender.

Observations are welcome... otherwise I'll call up AA's UK office tomorrow and see if they can ticket for me.

That PQR is good for ticketing in the US as it has been built for an ex-US purchase ("SQSD‡TQSD").

Right! Pricing qualifiers sold in QSD and ticketed in QSD--and QSD is the pseudo-city code for SRO RES OFC DFW, TX, which is inside the US!

This makes me think that either I was right about this itinerary not needing to be ticketed in England, or someone at the rate desk wasn't paying attention.

I guess the only way to figure that out is to send the rate desk an itinerary out of somewhere else, like ICN.

The rates desks are generally quite spot on with these things IME. I'd trust them over a lot of the new staff at the ATW desk.

My reading of the applicable fare rule ("and/or travel originating in") indicates that you can indeed ticket that itinerary in the US at the UK base fare.

Just noticed that the EU exemption from "higher of 2" pricing has been v slightly modified to an ECAA exemption now. Definition of ECAA here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europea..._Aviation_Area ;nothing much has changed unless anyone was intending to issue the ticket from an EU state that isn't signatory to the ECAA.

AA offices will still happily price and ticket an agency booking which does not contain an AA overwater segment. I have done this many times.

Then why did they reject my rate request?

In other news: I re-queued my itinerary specifying ticketing in BDA (both because I could easily walk down to the CTO here for ticketing and because BDA tickets tend to have fewer US taxes on them). Rate came back with a Country of Payment Minimum Check! Price was about $2,000 higher.

Odd that COP wouldn't apply for US sale/ticketing but would for a BDA sale/ticketing.

Update: I put a note to the rate desk in the PNR quoting the fare rules regarding Country of Payment not applying for travel originating in London. They corrected the fare!

Decrease in US taxes wasn't as much as I had hoped for (about $25), but given only three domestic segments I'm not surprised. Will still be worth it to have the ticketing done in BDA.

That might well be the case but neither of the tariffs desks (US and Dublin) I've dealt with would touch an agency booking with no AA overwater. You'd get a note back in your booking similar to the one BDA shorts got. Everyone's favourite aagent at the ATW desk told me that the only way to get such a booking rated was to book with them directly. Perhaps you got AA to take over your bookings prior to having them rated?

The one exception to this was a Europe Air Pass which naturally had no AA segments. But it got pass the US rates desk as my flights into and out of Europe (DONE4) were ticketed on AA and had a TATL segment on AA.

Thank you to everyone for your help and suggestions on this. I took my PNR to the AA office downtown and it was ticketed--of course there were a few hiccups during ticketing but I'm not surprised given the complexity of these things. The nice lady ticketing my itinerary had never seen a RTW before, and I was the talk of her office for the rest of the day.

Here's what I learned from all of this: aside from having to queue your ticket for pricing, RTWs can be just as easily DIY'ed as, say, BDA-BOS-BDA for the weekend. If I didn't want Bermuda ticketing (see above for why I did this) I could've easily ticketed this myself.

Subject to POS restrictions and any applicable exceptions. You wouldn't be able to ticket the PNR yourself at the ex-LON fare in BDA or the US if your itinerary had started outside Canada and Europe for instance.

Right. However, having gone through this I find it easier to at least set up all of the reservations myself, knowing that I got it right (as opposed to someone else fat-fingering you to TUL instead of YUL, which almost happened to me today at the DL office), and being able to go through all of the components of the rate quote, then have it all ready for ticketing in the PNR when you walk into the ticketing office in, say, ICN.

Although it is that much easier if you're also in a situation where you can ticket it yourself.

Another ticket now, purchasing now before the rumored fare increases come in. Has a bunch of open segments on AA, QF, BA because planned flights are >330 days into the future. Priced out with the rate desk, converted to a Phase IV, tried to ticket it myself... Sabre can't do it. Two calls to the Sabre helpdesk and apparently it's because of the open segments. Two calls to the AA rates desk and they can't believe that, but nothing they can do.

So I call the regular reservations number and get the international desk (RTW is closed this late at night and I wanted to get this taken care of). Lady takes the credit card... and says she has to get a paper ticket issued!

No complaints here... but why?

If it helps, itinerary is LHR-BA-CAI-RJ-AMM-RJ-DME//PVG-JL-KIX-JL-HAN//SIN-open-PER-open-AYQ//MEL-open-CNS-open-syd-open-HNL-open-DFW//IAD-open-LHR

I find it easier to book these segments with sequential dates booked well in advance (but obviously not the date you are actually intending to travel) and change later. Save all that hassle.

e.g. Last year in Feb I booked a LONE4 with travel dates USA/EUR in June and Asia/Oz in Nov/Dec.

In July a simple call to AA resulted in the Asian segments being re booked for April and Oz in May.

Last year I purchasd an AONE4 (the day before the summer price increase). Booked through AA RTW 800 number, ticketed by Mindpearl in CPT. I ended up with a paper ticket (handwritten, on three consecutive four segment tickets, the old stock, complete with red carbon). After some discussion with Mindpearl, it appears that open segments=paper ticket for xONEx itineraries.

About halfway through my travels, I nailed down specific flights and dates for the remainder, and had it reissued as an e-ticket. It was an interesting, complicated and time-consuming (50 minutes at BOS ticket counter) procedure, but it actually worked just fine. Ticketing supervisor at BOS understood what I was trying to do, but had never done it before and had no idea how to do it. All remaining flight coupons of paper ticket lifted, e-ticket issued, and receipt/itinerary printed.


I completely agree, and that's how I've handled it since then.