DL can't issue PDX-ATL-SJU in C

Old May 5, 2015, 2:25 pm
  #1  
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DL can't issue PDX-ATL-SJU in C

Perhaps this is a common thing on Delta, but I've never encountered it before. I used the website to book PDX-ATL-SJU r/t in F/C, and just before I hit the "buy" button, I noticed that the outbound ATL-SJU segment was in Economy, rather than "Business", so I called. After many minutes of holding, escalation, and so on, I was told "that segment [ATL-SJU] is sold out in Business". Well, fair enough. But then I looked up that flight independently, and of course it is completely empty in First/Business -- full inventory available, when booked from ATL. But PDX-SJU, not available. I tried all variations of multi-city bookings, etc -- no dice.

I called back, and said "I don't care what the price is, please book me in First from PDX-ATL-SJU". They couldn't, wouldn't, and seemed to think it was unreasonable of me to ask. They kept talking about how they can't book "point-to-point" flights.

In the 40 minutes or more this took me, I was able to pull up a (slightly less desirable) flight on American, PDX-DFW-SJU, in First for about the same price.

But what gives? Why couldn't they build an itinerary that used available inventory and sell me a ticket on it? I know I could do it with two separate PNRs, but why?
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Old May 5, 2015, 3:17 pm
  #2  
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Sounds like a married segment issue, not sure why they wouldn't just book it with the fare break. You should be able to construct the fare yourself using Google flights and the multi-city option (delta.com's multi-city search is kind of wonky these days). Specify business fare and PDX-ATL and ATL-SJU as separate flights. Without knowing your dates, not positive this will work, but I was seeing something similar for return flights SJU-PDX on Jan 2nd and was able to get around it with the above technique.
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Old May 5, 2015, 3:26 pm
  #3  
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Worst case in this situation should be that you can purchase two separate tickets, but that will be expensive and could cause trouble in IROPs.
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Old May 5, 2015, 3:34 pm
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My understanding of married segments does not explain this.

Married segments means that inventory on A-(B)-C might not be available on A-B and B-C, or vice versa.

But one can always book A-B B-C with a fare break at the summed price of the two legs.

As such, the OP was just a victim of brain dead service.

Can any of the routing guru's clarify if my understanding is correct?
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Old May 6, 2015, 5:50 pm
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I verified that I could book PDX-ATL r/t, and separately ATL-SJU r/t (at a substantially higher combined price), but I wasn't able to book it on a single PNR, even with multi-city routing, and even on third-party sites. It simply bumped the outbound ATL-SJU segment into coach.

And as brain-dead as the service was, I sort of believe them that they couldn't price that ticket without splitting it into two PNRs. In the end I bought the flight on American, and Delta lost an F r/t fare.

Last edited by gnetwerker; May 6, 2015 at 7:08 pm
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