Commititing to flight dates in RTW ticket?

So, I already got an RTW ticket issued with paper tickets by AA, but today I thought "screw it, I think I will upgrade", but I was surprised that AA told me I would have to have to enumerate all flight dates for it to reissue the tickets (so far I had only committed to the first flight, Boston -> Madrid).

So, here's the question: It seems that given date changes are free, the best course of action is to have the flights way into the future, much later than they will likely be, no? That way one doesn't run into danger of a no-show or having to move all remaining flight dates because one decides to stay longer at a certain place. In fact, it sounds dangerous to me to put the flight dates around the time one expects them to be!
So, my trip starts in mid-July this year; should I just tell them all flights should be June next year? That way I could "pull" each flight into the date I want when I actually need it.

Somewhat confused, any advice would be great!

What do you mean by an upgrade? A LONx to a DONx?

You have to watch with dates too far in advance as some partners, Qantas especially have very few OW seats, got royally shafted by them last year SYD-HNL when they claimed to have no seats for over a month.

Had booked with AA & was problem free, had changed a flight SIN-PER 3 times but once in OZ they left me on my own to fight with the morons at Qantas. Just watch out.

Ooh, I don't know what LONx and DONx is

I'm talking about upgrading from Economy Class to Business Class for the RTW ticket. I got a nice bonus the other day at work, and given I'm 6'2'' I think being in Business Class would make a world of a difference for the long flights. Maybe it also helps with short-notice flights, given that Business Class is less filled-up than Economy?

L is economy D is business, only guessing but as there are way less business class seats it stands to reason that there would be less for an RTW.

Had no idea that things were done that way until it happened to me, of course it might only be Qantas that rips people off that way.

Suggest you check into this further with AA as they treated me well except in OZ but then Ozzies would be staffing their office there so no wonder, sure different than the Thais in Bangkok who were great.

busman7 wrote:L is economy D is business, only guessing but as there are way less business class seats it stands to reason that there would be less for an RTW.

That is true, but from my experience there's usually business class seats available, and they only start bumping people into business class if there's no economy left. That's why I was thinking you would actually be better off with a business class ticket. I mean, wouldn't it be weird if you were worse off with a business ticket than an economy ticket because you couldn't get a seat?

I would check out http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/oneworld ... -faqs.html although not sure exactly which oneworld package you got (and flyertalk in general has some great info, although it can get overwhelming).

For instance, some potentially relevant FAQs include:

Q: The booking classes are A (first), D (business) and L (economy). If I buy a first class ticket and there is no first class on my flight, what happens?
A: That depends on what you mean by "no first class." If the seat inventory (A in this case, but the same goes for D) is not available for the flight you want and you can't get a flight that does have available inventory, you get downgraded to the next available inventory class (A goes down to D, and D goes down to L) and no compensation or refund is payable. Except on two class US domestic flights, if the plane is only one class (all economy) or two class (economy and business), then you get downgraded and no compensation or refund is payable. On two class US domestic flights, if you hold a D class ticket you can book into the A (first) inventory, if it is available, at no extra charge. On domestic flights on AE (American Eagle), AY, EI and LA (which are one class), all A and D tickets book into the Y (full fare economy) inventory bucket which means it is economy seating, but there should be plenty of availability.

Q: What is an open segment and why would I book that?
A: An open segment is basically setting your itinerary in advance, but not confirming your seat on the plane. You do this by leaving the date on the flight coupon (eg. LHR-JFK) open, even though you have decided that you will at some point be flying that route. You might do this as it is easier to change your travel timing as you go. If you set all the flight dates and then needed to make a change at some point, you may have to change all the onward flights and not just the next one or two.

The downside is that you need the inventory to be available on the date you finally want to travel, and on some routes/carriers at certain times of the year, A and D inventory may have limited availability. Further, it gives you no protection should a route be discontinued. If a route between XXX and YYY is discontinued, you then will have to pay the reroute fee and use an additional segment to fly XXX-ZZZ-YYY.

Thanks purplmarsh!

Yeah, thinking some more about it, I think I'm better off leaving it as LONx. Given that my segments are all open, I could see the airlines just shrugging their shoulders and downgrading me to L all the time when I try to get a flight.