Sent my 23 coupons - 25 sector itinerary to Air Canada RTW desk for pricing. Got a reply with this sentence in bold:

Please note effective May01/08 the Star Alliance Web-site will no longer be processing itineraries longer than 16 segments which would include surface segments. Should your itinerary work out to be more than 16 segments please have your request submitted prior to the 30th of April. Allow enough time for all airline confirmations to come thru (48hours) and your reservation must be paid and ticketed prior to end of business day on the 30th of April.

I really really really hope that is wrong.

It seems odd they would come out with completely updated rules for April 1, 2008 and not have any mention of this if it were in fact true. Don't these things tend to get updated roughly every 6 months? This would be a major change only 1 month after the most recent update.

I believe there is a general limit of 16 coupons with an E-ticket. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_ticket) Anything more than that must be a paper ticket. My guess is that they don't want to deal with that using their tool.

Well I think there are several tools throughout the *A (pun intended), it is not a unified system like One World. The problem is I don't know who has what and which ones limit to 16 segments. The Sabre system (which One World uses) has a limit of 16. I still don't quite understand why... is it just computer code? If only we had the technology for a computer to handle more than 16 segments! I'm getting flashbacks to Y2K.... or Conan O'Brien's "In the Year 2000" skit.

I would hate the fact that some *A carriers cannot handle more than 16 e-tix while others can, and having that force all carriers to 16 max. Or, could this create a system where you'll only want to ticket with certain carriers who are running a booking system that can handle more than 16 e-tix?

In the end, we obviously do have the technological capabilities... it is just an easy way for carriers to cut back this service and blame it on something else while they save a pretty penny. The wiki article says the IATA deadline is May 31... though the OP was told May 1.

New, higher, pricing is rolling out about now... what better time to reduce the actual value of an RTW by 33%.

Actually it is only AA that uses Sabre. QF/BA/LA/CX and I think AY and JL all use amadeus (even AA in Japan uses Amadaeus). Apparently Sabre is from the stone age in airline booking and the cost of replacing the whole creaking edifice is apparently too high.
A possible get around is having a ticket with more than 16 segments split across two PNR's, which AA can do on Sabre (so I'm told), but I think that preventing this is just part of the screws being tightened more and more.
Of course the whole point that we are limited to 16 segments is out of order. Anyway, what is wrong with Paper Tickets. Even if they just use them for the more than 16 segments, it would have to be the tiniest percentage of tickets.

Naturally, the race is on for FTers to see which one of us can be the very last to use a paper ticket!!

Could it be that most booking systems will only auto-price 16 segments? Anything else has to be done manually.

Um, Oneworld does not use Sabre. AA is the only carrier on Oneworld using Sabre (or their special souped-up version of Sabre anyway). AY, BA, QF, IB, LA, LP, 4M, MA use Amadeus, and CX will be migrating soon. JAL use an in-house system and RJ use SITA Gabriel.

Second point. The 16 segment limit is what IATA has imposed. Some systems (1A included) can support more but it is up to the airline to decide.

No - I think most can do more - Amadeus can price automatically up to 23, which is what you could fit onto 5 consecutive conjunction OPTAT tickets.

I work in Amadeus every day and would love to be able to autoprice more than 16 segments, could you tell me how to do that?

Oh. Ummm. You might be right - but I'm sure I was told it was 23. Maybe it changed. Or else I've been lying to customers

I thought IATA e-ticket only policy started from June 1st 2008. The 16 segment limit is pretty poor and a great disadvantage to RTW travellers. Get your paper tickets issued before the policy takes effect, it will be possible to change them afterwards.

It was 31 December 2007, and they extended it to 31 May 2008 because they only predicted a 92% compliance for the original date. Maybe *A is just trying to get ahead of the game.

I am in the process of booking 2 RTW3 in C, involving 23 segments. AC is warning me I must have the tickets issued a.s.a.p:

The reason for this ticketing deadline is due to the fact that our Round the World policies and procedures are changing as of the 1st of May, and we will no longer be allowed to book anything over 16 coupons.