Originally Posted by
JonNYC
You're right, of course, but I've always been under the impression that AA has exactly zero "spare" fare buckets-- which is why a few do double-duty presently (-A- being the most frequently referenced.) I suppose if it's important to them, they can free one up, but again I've been led to believe much harder than it sounds as everything is used as-is.
Interesting. Your post reminds me that DL did do some reshuffling (having various two-letter buckets for upgrades, RP and RO or something, for example) to free up X, V, and E for new, cheap, more-restricted fares, so it wasn't trivial from an IT point of view for DL either. (In DL's case, X had been a complimentary upgrade bucket before it was made into a cheap revenue fare class.)