Originally Posted by
CalFlyer
I am aware of the married segment capacity management of EK, have learnt to deal with it. But recently (last couple of weeks) I have had several bookings where married segment rules suddenly applied to bookings with long stopovers in Dubai (where, in the past, the individual segments were always available according to single segment capacity rules as long as there was no married segment within 24 hours). Now, it looks like they regard segments as married even if there are multiple days inbetween them - with the consequence that it is impossible to say if there will be seats available if you want to change such a segment.
Case in point: I want to book RUH-DXB-DUS vv. with segment 1 flown today and segment 2 flown in three weeks. In the past, capacity on these segments followed single segment availability (and not married segment). Now that has changed. R-class seats are available on both flights, but fare engine is not picking them up but only offering Y-class. EK explains this with "POS restrictions" (quote). The R-class fare rules do not have any POS restrictions listed, and this routing has priced as R-class consistently over the last 2 years when booked in a similar fashion.
Anybody else had a similar experience lately?
Had something similar with regards to strange availability constraints and visibility - not exactly your issue but I think there are similarities:
I was trying to book LHR-BKK whilst in BKK on very short notice. I needed a specific schedule but on the main website it wasn't showing any availability in Y, not even last seat in full Y class. However, then I tried the mobile app and whilst my specific combination of flights BKK-DXB and DXB-LHR weren't available in conjunction, each of those flights were available separately in conjunction with other connecting flights (so I wanted EK385 and EK1, which showed as sold out, but EK385 connecting to EK15 was available and EK419 to EK1 was also for sale).
I was at BKK anyway so I went to the ticket office at the airport, showed them the discrepancy on the app, which they said was strange too, and they were able to ticket LHR-BKK-LHR no problem at all. It turned out it wasn't even Y class, just E class.
I know it's inconvenient but have you been to a ticket office to see if they can force it through? I think the website booking engine has all sorts of edge case bugs they haven't tested properly...