I'm about to ticket an ex-ICN DONE4 for January 2010. It starts ICN-HKG-SYD-CHC. One issue is that the flight we want HKG-SYD, CX111, has D0. We can get confirmed in a later QF flight. The TA cautioned us that if we ticket with the QF flight and also waitlist the CX, then if it clears the ticket will need to be re-issued and that the airlines usually charge a fee for this (and maybe re-price?). I thought this should be free, which seems to be seconded by this thread.

She suggested instead ticketing with only the CX waitlisted. Wouldn't this require a paper ticket? Would this be a better way to go? Seems risky to me to not have confirmed space on a flight, but then again it's many months away.

If this were me I would ticket it on paper with the HKG-SYD as OPEN. Then confirm on the QF flight and waitlist for the CX flight.

Also Expertflyer is telling me that CX161 (departs 21:25, i.e. 2h20m later than CX111) has D9 availability every day in January, so if you confirm and ticket on that I don't think you'll need any sort of reissue to move to CX11 later if that becomes available.

Sorry for being dense, but what are the differences between paper and E in terms of waitlists, confirmed segments and clearing waitlists? I've never used a paper ticket with a waitlist or open segment.

This is a bit rambling I'm afraid, but hope it helps...

Conceptually, reservations (including waitlists) and ticketing are two separate things. The problem with e-tkts (IMO), for OW tickets at least, is that the two have become too closely coupled so that changes in reservations require changes to the ticket which causes talk of reissues etc.

All coupons on all xONEx tickets are valid on any OW flight between the points on the coupon. They are not "Valid flt/date shown" and they can legally be used on any flight on any day within the validity of the ticket (and subject to using the coupons in the correct sequence and rules about the first segment/s).

With a paper ticket, airlines seem happy to take the coupon with any date or no date on it provided you had a valid reservation and the other conditions were met. The problem is that, for reasons unknown, it seems impossible to issue any e-tkt xONEx with OPEN segments. I have never understood why this is - I have had normal round-trip e-tkts with OPEN segments with no problem at all - but it seems to be the case. Moreover, airlines seem reluctant to take an e-tkt coupon with a date different from the reservation (although there is no reason why they should be reluctant - it's just an electronic image of a coupon that would have accepted perfectly happily on paper).

So with an e-tkt the whole trip must now be in one PNR (reservation), whereas with paper tickets you can have multiple PNRs. I guess the airlines don't like this because in principle you can hold multiple reservations much more easily with a paper ticket, but it is still possible to do.

How you are ticketed makes no difference to whether you clear a waitlist.

Having a confirmed segment is a reservation issue, not a ticketing one, although most airlines these days will only hold a confirmed segment for a limited time without a corresponding ticket number being entered in the PNR.

The advantage of using an open segment ticket is that you can keep changing the reservation without touching the ticket; in the case of a paper open ticket you can have multiple reservations on a segment each referencing the same ticket number. Ticketing is a far more complex process with far more ways that it could go wrong and far fewer people who can do it accurately than simply making or changing a reservation.

Moreover, if you are just dealing with a reservation you can always do so directly with the airline on which you wish to fly, without having to go back to the carrier and/or TA that originally issued the ticket.

So if you get an paper ticket with the HKG-SYD open-dated you can then have one reservation for the whole route except HKG-SYD and one or more separate reservations for the HKG-SYD route which just reference the ticket number, and deal directly with CX (or QF) for this.

I find it much less hassle, and far fewer ways that it could go wrong than with e-ticketing.

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Very educational, thank you! If I'd read this a few hours earlier, I might have opted the open segment paper ticket route. As it turned out, the TA recommended I ticket with the HKG-SYD sector as the CX waitlist only, that is, with the QF confirmed segment deleted. She felt it would be easier to add the CX segment this way, while still allowing the QF segment if the CX doesn't look like it will clear. So, she is in the process of issuing the trip as an eticket with one segment that is not confirmed, only waitlisted.

Thanks very much for this information as well. If I understood it, you're saying that each carrier has its own policy on accepting an open-dated paper ticket coupon as well as on eticket segments, and that currently CX can be a pain in that it may not accept open-dated segments.

I had not previously realized that a ticket could have different segments on different PNRs.