Endorsing tickets when changing flights

[man in black]

Since arriving in Europe last Summer, I have noticed that: (i) all routes must be ticketed with the specific flight; and (ii) it is usually necessary to get one's ticket endorsed before a second airline will accept the ticket (even when having purchased a full fare business class) whereas in Asia, we always had our return flights left as "open" on the coupon and with this it was almost never necessary to worry about an endorsement. For example, today I had to change from a British Midland flight using a full fair/no restrictions Iberia issued ticket to a BA flight. I had to go to Iberia and have them endorse the coupon to BA. When in Asia, a CX ticket could be left as an "open" return and I could switch to SQ, PAL, TG, you name it. Why is this so? What are the reasons? The whole practice is tiring as many trips see you having to change reservations as meetings go overtime and then at the airport having to run from one terminal to another just to get the silly endorsement, nano-seconds before the gate closes. Help!!!

[This message has been edited by man in black (edited 25 May 2001).]

[Icarus]

Those carriers in Asia probably have what is called a 'pooled routeagreement' in operation whereas they will take each others tickets at an agreed price for the sector, so no need for an endorsement. This was not probably the case in the UK with IB/BM/BA.

[man in black]

Icarus:

Thanks for the response. I wonder why, given that airlines in Europe have almost never failed to give the endorsement, they bother or alternatively don't establish arrangements to facilitate the use of other carriers' coupons?

Further, even the existing practice has problems (other than the one mentioned above)

Three anecdotal points - (1) BA wouldn't accept Alitalia's without endorsement owing to a protest against the lack of landing slots at the in-town airport (2) AF refused to take BMidland's without a fare readjustment payment (whatever that was) despite the ticket being the same price as my colleague's who was already booked on AF (3)When trying to take an earlier flight, KLM refused to endorse my ticket to BM when connecting from Amsterdam to London off of a delayed KLM flight from Sao Paulo, citing some arcane rule about having such discretion (I ended up having to wait for three hours for the next KLM flight!!)

The irony of the easier arrangements in Asia than Europe is the latter is an economic union and the former not! God help us in the monetary union if they can't even handle inter-line ticket changes!

[Squiddley]

MIB

As well as route agreements, carriers have (or don't have) agreements to accept each others' tickets. There's a clearing house that sorts through all the various ticket issuing carriers and those actually providing the flights. These agreements chop and change all the time, sometimes at short notice. Just another possibility.

It's also not inconceivable that the staff concerned just plain "got it wrong". I had exactly the situation you illustrated about using "open" full fare tickets in Asia, but it didn't work.

Had full fare tickets HKG-MNL-HKG with the outbound carrier specified, but the return was open (on the original ticket). A booking had been made on another carrier for the date estimated for return, and a sticker was on it to show the details. Lastly the fare basis was "Y" - which ought to have left no doubt :)

We didn't need the flight that had been booked, so were trying to check-in with another carrier. No end of arguing and checking/rechecking would make them accept the return ticket without endorsement from the other carrier (CX) shown on the sticker. We reluctantly went to the CX office to explain and ask for the endorsement and the duty chap just laughed and said "sure, how many endorsements would you like? They're all unnecessary." I saw the funny side later.