Paying for an AA Global Explorer ticket

[Tiki]

OK, I have my itinerary booked on AA (direct with AA not a travel agency), the Global Explorer LHGLOB34 I mentioned in a thread last year. I have submitted a credit increase application on my Amex and asked for one of two things: A one-off increase to pay for the tickets or a general increase from $3500 to 5000 to either pay for them one at a time (using Bpay to clear the Amex and paying the other one).

So can I trust the Indian call centre with this transaction? Has anyone paid for such expensive tickets? This may not be expensive by your standards if you are used to DONE tickets but its a bloody fortune to me. I really wish there was a local Aussie number to pay for these tickets.

I am assuming these will be paper tickets since PPT and IPC are involved? How are they sent out?

 

[Dave Noble]

Why shouldn't you trust the call centre for this? They may not be the best place to deal with, but all you are doing is paying for a reservation.

Just phone them, give the credit card details and send back the credit card authorisation form

The only difficulty in this is your credit limit. If you are planning to pay separately for each booking, do make sure that each passenger is booked in a separate itinerary , since if both in one, it may be v difficult to do what you describe.

If they are paper tickets, then they are issued by the AA office in Sydney and posted out

Dave

 

[SeaWolf]

Is it possible to get a 'credit' balance on an AMEX?
I know that with Commonwealth cards it's certainly possible to just over-pay the card and end up with a positive balance that you can spend.
So, for example, if your limit was $2000 and you had a zero balance, with Commonwealth you could put $1000 in and end up with a balance of +$1000, allowing you to spend $3000 on the card before you hit the limit.
If you currently have a zero balance, why not just try paying $10 via BPay to the card, then login to AMEX Online and see if your card goes positive.

 

[NM]

Yes, you can pre-pay into Amex Credit Cards the same was as others. However, be aware that Amex still apply a maximum single transaction no larger than the card's credit limit. So if you have a $5000 credit limit on your Amex credit card, and you start with a balance of zero and pre-pay say $2000 into the card, you still cannot initiate a single transaction of over $5000. But you could initiate two or more transactions to a total of $7000 so long as no individual transaction is greater than $5000.

 

[Dave Noble]

Given that it can take a week or 2 for payment to be taken for the tickets, using the same credit card twice in that manner is likely not to be feasible and there is a real risk that the hold on the booking will expire before payment is made

In the end, surely the important issue is to get the tickets paid for rather than focusing on getting some frequent flyer points for using a specific credit card

Dave

 

[Tiki]

I put the credit increase application in the mail last Friday and I am not sure how long it will take to get an answer if it is approved or not. If they refuse, I am going to ditch the card before I have to pay an annual fee, the first year is free and switch to the Virgin NAB Amex.

The booking status is "Ticketed" if I go online at AA.com and I made it direct with the Indian call centre (not US or UK ATW desk) over a month ago and there is no 21 day expiry on it. I think I got lucky and got a good agent who was willing to follow the AA Star rules for the Global Explorer. I told her I was going to pay for the tickets in Feb so I still have a ways to go before the end of the month. She noted it in the comments but not in the ticket time limit field.

I was actually hoping that someone had a "secret" phone number to the AA Mascot office who would be better equipped to do the fancy payment I was imquiring about if I don't get the credit limit. I was also wondering if anyone had purchased RTW (LONE, DONE, whatever) tickets since the walk-in SYD office was closed. I haven't seen anyone else post about this since last Oct when it closed.

 

[Dave Noble]

I was actually hoping that someone had a "secret" phone number to the AA Mascot office who would be better equipped to do the fancy payment I was imquiring about if I don't get the credit limit. I was also wondering if anyone had purchased RTW (LONE, DONE, whatever) tickets since the walk-in SYD office was closed. I haven't seen anyone else post about this since last Oct when it closed.

I did a couple only last week and a couple at christmas

Dave

 

[serfty]

... The booking status is "Ticketed" if I go online at AA.com ...

As posted by Mal elsewhere, the important part on this is that it's not "set in stone" until you see "ticketed - <date>".

 

[Kiwi Flyer]

As posted by Mal elsewhere, the important part on this is that it's not "set in stone" until you see "ticketed - <date>".

Indeed if the booking was made a month ago I'd say it isn't ticketed at all. Hope there is still availability for you (not sure how long AA will hold an unticketed booking).

 

[Dave Noble]

As posted by Mal elsewhere, the important part on this is that it's not "set in stone" until you see "ticketed - <date>".

That is correct for electronic tickets however when a paper ticket is issued , it does not change to ticketed - <date>

If the status is showing as Ticketed , then there is no expiration on the AA record, however there is a risk of losing bookings. Some of the other carriers , when a reservation is made, send back a message to indicate that if no ticket number is provided within a timeframe ( I have seen CX return a 2 week requirement ) that the reservation will be cancelled on their system. Even with the status of ticketed, I have seen the flight bookings disappear and then was unable to reinstate them since the inventory was gone


Dave

 

[Tiki]

If you book with the AA ATW desk in the US, they will automatically insert a 21 day expiry into the booking. I had one of those and let it lapse last year because I couldn't afford to pay for it right then.

OK so I called back in Dec to the call centre and got the itinierary booked and they actually read the AA Star which states the ticket must be paid for 21 day prior to departure. They were also going to let it default to the 21 day expiry but I got them to read the Star and they apparently got around the expiry by putting in the status as "ticketed".

So by what people are writing above-if there is a paper ticket issued, the status will not change to indicate a date so how am I supposed to make sure that no one cancels my booking? And since the OW alliance is supposed to have the same rules for these ATW L class tickets, why would one airline cancel their portion of the booking if it is booked according to the rules?

Yes, I do have a Visa as a last resort back up but I want to exhaust every last effort to make sure I can use the Amex to pay for it before resorting to the Visa which only earns Flybuys points. The value to be gained by getting the points isn't simply a matter of a bigger seat for 8 hours or being able to sit in a lounge for a couple hours. There is no question that we will always be economy class travellers. It is a matter of two hard-working but lower income people getting an extra free night in a nice hotel a couple years down the road.

 

[Dave Noble]

So by what people are writing above-if there is a paper ticket issued, the status will not change to indicate a date so how am I supposed to make sure that no one cancels my booking? And since the OW alliance is supposed to have the same rules for these ATW L class tickets, why would one airline cancel their portion of the booking if it is booked according to the rules?

They are entitled to. CX in my experience has put them in for ex-CMB departures; provide a ticket number or lose the booking. They will only hold seats for another airline for a limited period

Dave

 

[Tiki]

:mrgreen: Good news, I got the credit increase. Not enough to do both tickets at once but definetly one at a time!

I was also looking at AA online booking and got a sched change, the AY via SIN is cancelled (altogether not just for me) so we are rerouted via TYO on AY/QF code share on JL. We will only get 50% of the points on the QF segment but JL gives nothing in L class. The upside is we have a full day to look around TYO, which is one city I wouldn't want to have to pay for a hotel in! :shock: So I guess that's a fair trade off, that segment is worth 2220 points using the 50% figure but a free day in TYO is worth more than that so we are happy!

Looks like we will only get a Gold Challenge done since only AA/codeshares count and we have GIG-JFK-LHR on AA so that is 8243 on AA.

We still have an easy Plat challenge next year because we are going to the States and will use AA QF codeshares, plus use AA for all the domestic segments.

The lady at the Indian call centre was very helpful in rebooking us and she also confirmed that we don't have to pay until June. She said she can't ticket one at a time, but I didn't ask her about splitting the PNR, plenty of time for that later. I still want to try the option of paying extra onto the Amex with pre-arrangement and paying the whole thing off. There has been no price change since we first booked, not even with fuel fines, she still quoted me the same fare. $4445 each all inclusive.

 

[drron]

Good on you Tiki.However AA has now confused me.We are flying BKK-SIN as part of a DONE 4 in October.AA couldnt get us on AY so they booked us on CX713 which now flys the return leg back to HKG via SIN.So why would they route you via tokyo?
I have no recent experience with Amex having on 3 occasions cut up their card in frustration but in the dim past they did allow me to put money on the card to pay an expected large bill overseas above my limit.I did ring them though to organise it.DC have done this for me in more recent times-although they dont officially have a limit it was way above my normal spend.Again i did ring to organise it.