ph-ndr

I've had this happen twice now. I often use a travel agent to book and hold reservations. I check the fare rules up front and they usually say a given reservation have to be ticketed N days before departure, where N usually is between 0 and 7 days for various business class fares.

Suddenly my travel agent calls me, and tells that QR has put a notice on my reservation, etiher ticket the reservation by monday, or they cancel it. As it stands with this reseravtion, monday is nearly a month before the fare rules say it has to be ticketed.

No other airline (BA, SQ, SK, TG, and others) I've used frequently has ever been a bully on this.

Anyone else have this experience?

-A

dlinsider

Every single airline in the world does this.Your fare rules may say you need 7 days advance booking but if you book 3-4 months out they will not give you until 7 days before to issue your ticket.

ph-ndr

I've been travelling far and near for work since the mid 90ies and not had this happen before.

-A

Sixth Freedom

What do the fare rules actually (rather than normally) say in this case?

As dlinsider says be sure that you are not confusing advance purchase with ticketing time line. The former refers to the length of time ahead of a flight that a fare is valid for sale and the latter refers to the time after making the booking that the ticket must be issued.

I would be surprised if QR allow 0-7 day TTL on fares booked months ahead. Their revenue integrity practice is not bad and ticketing time limits are rigorously enforced.

Why not just pay for the ticket?

dlinsider

QR are actually very generous with ticket time limits.All fare rules apart from saying that you need X amount of days of advance limit they also have a clause that ticket must be issued with X amount of hours or days.For example they will say that ticket needs to be issued 7 days before departure or 72 hours after reservations are made whichever comes first.This applies for 90% of fares that have restrictions (adv purchase,penalties,min and max stays etc)....the ticket time limit on a file can be much shorter or longer as ticketing time limits and the time limit to issue at a specific fare are not the same.

Guy Betsy

Oh yes they do. Especially SQ ! Ticketing deadline is now usually x days after reservation is made. Some require immediate ticketing as a matter of fact.

Your agent may cancel and make a new booking thereby giving you a few more days.

US airlines are infamous for requiring booking and issuing tickets within 24 hours.

ph-ndr

Never a day without learning. I've flown more than I want for a long time and never knew of this difference, thanks for pointing it out.

Maybe I've been lucky, I've never ran into this before with any airline.

I decided that for this upcoming trip there's enough inventory left to just drop it and wait it out a few days and rebook it.

-A

dlinsider

For example I will show you the AP(advance purchase) rule for an JFK-DOH full J(unrestricted) fare:

15JAN14**15JAN14/QR NYCDOH/NSP;AT/TPM 6695/MPM 8134
LN FARE BASIS OW USD RT B PEN DATES/DAYS AP MIN MAX R
03 JRT 14409 J 100 - - + - - 12M M
FCL: JRT TRF: 1 RULE: QA29 BK: J*
PTC: ADT-ADULT FTC: BR -BUSINESS CLASS RESTRICTED
AP.ADVANCE RES/TKT

RESERVATIONS ARE REQUIRED FOR ALL SECTORS.
NOTE -
DUE TO AUTOMATED TICKETING DEADLINE CONTROL
DIFFERENCE COULD EXIST BETWEEN THE FARE RULE
LAST TICKETING DATE AND THE SYSTEM GENERATED
TICKETING DEADLINE MESSAGE.
THE MORE RESTICTIVE TICKETING DEADLINE APPLIES.
---------------------------------------------

Often1

US carriers such as UA require immediate ticketing. They do permit a 24-hour cancellation (US law requires that in this instance if the flight is 7+ days out), but the ticket must be bought and paid for on the spot and the fare is not guaranteed until ticketed (or an extra fee is paid to preserve the fee).

In this day and age it makes sense. With vastly reduced capacity and an improved worldwide economy, taking a seat out of inventory without revenue makes little sense. Shifting the risk to the pax is the result. OP believes that there is sufficient inventory so he is not worried. But, if he is wrong, it is OP, not the carrier, which carries the risk.