oneworld revolved, then wobbled around us
 

So, due to our own stupidity and carelessness my parents and I were too late to check in for our MXP-BUD MA flight and had to change our tickets.

I was on a oneworld visit Europe fare issued on AA paper, whilst the parents were on a regular one way fare issued by QF as etickets. In theory, any oneworld alliance member is able to issue tickets on behalf of another oneworld alliance partner. You know... "Should you require any assistance, please approach one of our ground staff or alternatively, any of our oneworld alliance partners." and all that. We soon found out that yes oneworld attempts to revolve around you, but in a rather wobbly fashion...

First... the good: As there was no QF desk at MXP, we decided to try getting the BA ticket office to change my folks' tickets, as BA are on the same reservation system, before we resorted to calling QF and incur roaming charges. To our pleasant surprise, the lovely staff member manning the BA desk happily rebooked and reissued my parents' tickets on to their own documents. All for a token admin fee. We thanked the very kind agent, as we realised that he's done us a huge favour. BA shall be getting some positive feedback about their MXP ticketing staff shortly. :)

The bad: MA's handling agent at MXP refused to do anything, citing that "it's got nothing to do with us."

The ugly: The AA desk changed my ticket rather efficiently for a EUR30 admin fee, and claimed that they've confirmed with MA that my new booking is all kosher and good to go. AA took away my paper ticket coupon for "auditing purposes" and replaced it with what they claim is the eticket receipt for the new flight. They further claimed to have converted that one segment into an eticket. At check in however - the MA check in agent couldn't find any ticket numbers in his system, etix or otherwise. It turned out that AA MXP had erred in issuing my ticket and the document handed to me was some kind of receipt for the change fee (the 13 digit number on it was a receipt number and not a ticket number). Unfortunately AA's counter at MXP had long shut by that time, whilst there was no one at the BA desk.

More of the ugly: Throughout the whole time, MA's handling agent wouldn't lift a finger to render any assistance or advise.

And more of the good (I think) but more of an internal AA issue: I rang up the EXP desk. and the agent on the phone was most helpful and tried to sort something out. She confirmed that she couldn't see any new ticket numbers generated by AA MXP, and that the MXP agent had erred as all that was required was a revalidation of my existing ticket. The EUR30 admin fee was refunded to my credit card whilst I was on the phone with the EXP desk, and I was advised to simply buy a new oneway ticket to BUD (which cost EUR194) and send the bill to AA after my trip.

Moral of the story: Never attempt to catch a flight before midday. :p

..or travel with your parents ?

I prefer what we did last year.

I went on an LONE4, my parents went on some EK RTW deal. We all left on Aug 5, all returned to Australia the same weekend in Sep.

I went eastwards (North America first), they went west (Asia/Europe first). The nearest we got to each other was half way through the trip, they arrived in New York from Ireland as I was leaving Seattle for London.

MA does indeed sound dreadful and seems to have successfully filled the hole left by EI. Good riddance me thinks. I hope their foray into OW is brief!

The silver lining of course is that fortunately all the other alliance members seemed to have earned their place in the 'quality alliance' with RJ sounding like the new baby star of the group.

Yes, AA messed up, but MA sounded like they were not even vaguely interested in helping which is a big disappointment for a ticket which is theoretically possible to be changed and if necessary reissued by any alliance member.

Yes indeed, it's such a shame that MA (or rather, their handling agent at MXP) was so useless on the ground. In contrast, the short hop on MA over to BUD was pleasant for intra Europe in whY - though I note that there are wildly inconsistent reports of their product on here and elsewhere.

Yes, they certainly did, but that EXP desk consistently gets the job done, and all with a smile.

AA lurkers take note, -- thank you.

Sound like a similar problem as I had with AA late last year! Can SOMEONE please train the AA agents and let them know that NOT all Oneworld airlines or their interline partners use Sabre. Ticket Nos are required to be SSR accross!

So moral of the story ALWAYS get ur ticket nos and carry the plate print out with you at all TIMES! That is why I don't like E-tix at all!

Have u got ur money back for this yet. I am Skeptical that AA will accept the cost of this.

I'd deal with it when I get back to MEL (in 3 days' time). I hope they've noted the whole thing in my PNR (can't seem to log in to Sabre unless using my own ISP connection :confused:).

BA in NRT actually refused to reissue my BA issued AONE6, and told me to go to cathay to get it reissued. (According to them it should be the next flying carrier who should reissue the ticket). I know this was the rule for the initial issue of the ticket, but is this also the case for reissues??

Is it perhaps because you had no further BA segments left on the ticket? Then effectively BA has no stake in the new ticket.

Ticketing automation takes care of the SSRs.
A prerequisite, of course, is that ticketing must occur before the SSRs can be generated. I suspect that in this case the culprit may be the inexperience of a ticketing agent in an airport location with 1 flight/day and very little upline/downline connecting activity. Ticketing is not simple, particularly if the tickets and both international and interline. .

Say what you want, but if there's only one carrier out there that understands inter-system messaging, my bet goes to the inventor of the first GDS, the holder of the 001 airline code, that must send some sort of inter-system message for just about any interline itinerary it tickets.

I am actually not really techical at this but from what the agents tell me in Oneworld, it is actually a MANUAL task to enter any changes/new ticket nos are sent across to the airlines that are not using the same system.

Basically to cut it short my experience was that AA incorrectly issued a new e-ticket on my CX segments and did NOT "tell" them my new ticket nos. When CX tries to retrieve the booking in their system they can't see any tix nos.

From a PAX point of view IMO this is all BS! because we shouldn't worry ourselves with tix nos, pnrs etc.. We paid for a tix and all we have to do should only be showing the airline our receipts/actual tix coupons and not trying to do their work for them and note down all the every single minute detail.

My last flight is LHR-DAR on BA, so that cannot be it. I guess the BA people in japan are just lazy or don't know much about RTW tickets and didn't want to do this. It's disappointing though that they didn't want to reissue a BA issued first class ticket for a BA gold card holder. Fortunately cathay were excellent as they always are, but BA ground services were disappointing (which they tend to be most of the time).

The joys of oneworld.....

I'm currently traveling on a AA issued DONE5 (paper ticket) and tried to change the date of one of my BA flights.

So I called BA, but they refused to change my reservation because it was issued by a travel agent? (and they couldn't lookup the fare rules)

AA told me to call BA, because it was their flight, and they use a different reservation system...

So now I will have to no-show a flight, which BA probably won't like. (I don't care, as most of my flights are open dated, so canceling my reservations isn't going to impact me.)

Are there any rules about which airline is responsible for date changes? I always thought it was the operating carrier?