Budget Travel - Booking Codes

Hello,

Any tricks to book the lowest available booking code for a particular flight? For example, on United.com I see that LT&G fares are available but they only book me at V. Farecompare, travelocity, and others actually find a Q fare higher than the V. Is this where travel agents come in handy (can they manually book the lower codes)?

First step is to know whether the cheaper fare buckets are available for the flight you want. A good starting point for determining that is http://www.seatcounter.com

United's website lets you see all the fare buckets if you are logged in and use "expert" mode. But yes, seatcounter also confirms L, T, and G buckets with seats.

Your routing/itinerary could be another reason for not getting the V. V could still be available on one of the shown flights, but your request (in total) won't meet the fare conditions of V, e.g. your stay at the destination is too short, your rooting has too many transfers or something like that. Just a guess, you better ask this question in a United related subforum.