RRDD

http://www.startribune.com/fliers-be...ake/374762851/

The three largest U.S. airlines have changed the way they price multi-city trips, forcing those who book such itineraries to pay hundreds of extra dollars in airfare.

Most fliers buy simple roundtrip tickets and won't be affected. But travelers visiting several cities on one trip, especially those flying for business, are seeing airfares six or seven times the normal price. Many might not know of the new policy or that there is a way to avoid the higher fares.

The simultaneous adoption of new pricing rules by all three carriers has led the Business Travel Coalition to accuse the airlines of illegally coordinating on this "complicated and comprehensive scheme." The advocacy group asked the Department of Justice to add this to its ongoing investigation of possible airline collusion. The group's chairman, Kevin Mitchell, said "fliers and will no doubt be blindsided by this new policy and pay dearly when shopping at airline websites."

To get the best prices, fliers stopping at two or more cities now need to book several individual tickets.


......American spokesman Joshua Freed said the change was made in mid-March to stop fliers from paying fares lower than the airline had intended for certain markets.

However, the new booking rule was "broader in some cases than we wanted it to be" and the airline has since "made some changes because of customer feedback and are watching it closely."

United offered a similar explanation and Delta refused to comment.

mnbp

Already discussed on FT:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...sappeared.html

btonkid12345

No wonder...I tried to multi-city SFO/SEA/ICN (outbound), then ICN-SEA-SJC (return) on delta.com about two weeks ago, and it priced out about 8x as much as the SFO/SEA/ICN/SEA/ICN (in full Y, no less).

Yet somehow, Kayak was able to piece it together and send me to delta.com to book it at a V fare.

If you read the article text, two things stand out:
*Delta has the highest multiple on the examples stated, charging 10x versus up to 2x for AA or United
*Separate one tickets means change fees for each reservation

Bad news.

CodeAdam10

I wonder if they have done this to limit hidden-city ticketing ...

BOSTransplant

The flexible search tool appears to be broken right now for simple roundtrip searches between the US and Asia, but the prices I'm seeing would be consistent with only refundable tickets being shown. The price is correct once you click on a specific day and go into the normal search, but the amounts showing on the calendar overview of the flexible search are wrong. I bet it's an unintended IT issue related to this multi-city change.

rucksack

Booked two RTs (same origin and destination for each) through my corporate portal the other day (simply because I wanted to book the two trips at once).

Because the trips were automatically added to the same record locator, they priced as a multi-city trip instead of two separate RTs with fares S / S / S / S for the segments. My corporate TA manually checked the booking when it went to the rate desk and separated the trips into two record locators forcing the trips to book as RTs, resulting in a savings of ~$300 with resulting fare classes of L / L and H / Q. Suspect indeed.

xliioper

This has no impact on hidden city ticketing which are priced as single fare through the "hidden" city where you want to get off. This has to do with combining multiple cheap fare classes together in a single ticket. The fare rules on many cheap fare classes not prohibit this and you will be forced into a higher fare class in you combine them. The only solution is to buy multiple tickets.

xliioper

If you were able to buy as a single ticket, you were encountering some other issue. These fare rules explicitly forbid this and the only way to get around it is by purchasing multiple tickets. Going through Kayak does not nullify the fare rules.

davetravels

I always ALWAYS string together a bunch of one-ways, or do 2 nested round trips, and have NEVER had a problem til a few weeks ago . . . .

PIT/CHI was $163 and CHI/LAX was $273, but, nested together in the same reservation was something like $1200 - $1500!!!

I thought it was a temporary glitch - - but, I guess not!!! It should have all been in V class, but, together, it kicked up to H and higher!

kenn0223

Kayak (or Google Flights) follow the fare rules when they piece things together and then send the user to the actual airlines' site to purchase (which also validates the fare rules). I don't think anyone should worry if they use one of those major search sites and then buy the ticket on the carrier's site.

xliioper

I don't disagree. I suspect the poster was using delta.com's multi-city search which has not generally priced out broken fare itins for some time now. There's a difference between not pricing them out on delta.com's search, and explicitly forbidding them in the fare rules on many fares which is what is new. If he was able to price out and purchase as a single ticket, then the fares he was purchasing did not have the new restriction and what he was observing was just the normal brokenness in DL's multi-city search. By putting them in the fare rules, there's no way to skirt the combinations by going through Kayak, Google Flights, ITA Matrix, Orbitz, etc. The only way to do it is by buying multiple tickets. Goggle Flights has a new options setting to show multiple ticket booking options to get around the new fare rules and get cheaper priced combinations (although it doesn't seem to be fully functional yet).

MSPeconomist

This is interesting because for most of my domestic travel, namely simple RTs exMSP, I find that delta.dumb tends to offer lots of connections with broken fares, where the broken fares cause the cost of the ticket to increase dramatically. Where there's a nonstop, the nonstop options are much cheaper than any connection (which can limit the choice of times), but if there's no nonstop service, I've learned to always experiment with the "search by fare class" to check the price when I force the same fare code on all segments. Normally I save substantial amounts of money by not permitting DL to sell me tickets with broken fares.

javabytes

Wow. This is huge. Three segment multi-city... about $400 booked as one-ways, and over $1300 booked on a single itin. Get bent.

mAAine_flyer

Last few days, Concur has posted a warning at login about the price increases on multi-city trips. In fact, the multi-city functionality has been removed from our travel portal and we are now instructed to book complex itins as a series of one-ways.

Per this analysis on our portal:

BamaGirl

Makes you wonder how much DL will make off those less informed flyers who think this pricing is the new 'normal' .