Originally Posted by
comet2404
Thanks for the replies everyone! This is still rather new to me. I'm a corporate pilot, and my company buys my tickets to and from work. I was with the airlines for 8 years, so I've always been able to jumpseat and non-rev anywhere I wanted to go. I've only had to worry about this stuff for the past two years.
The routing does seem to be the issue. I had two agents tell me since it was a nonstop IAD-ATL ticket, the SDC flight ALSO had to be a nonstop. I said that wasn't true, and I can most certainly add a connection (I don't think you can turn a connection into a nonstop though), and I asked her to send me through MSP or JFK just to get the point across to her. She wanted to charge me a $200 change fee and a difference in fare! They tell me what I want to do is against the rules, however when I ask them specifically which rule is broken, I'm just told what I want to do isn't allowed. I call BS considering it was just done two weeks ago.
If they want to have all these convoluted rules and fares, I expect the agents to know them, particularly if they expect me to know them.
So I suppose the proper question seems to be what constitutes a "valid" routing? And what is the easiest way for us to determine that?
Thanks for the replies and the friendly questions.
The valid routing is determined by the specific fare you purchase. It usually has a code of letters and numbers. Part of the fare is the fare rules - and it is within these rules that valid connecting points with the fare would be listed.
To see these before purchase, on the trip summary page on DL.com, the small text at the bottom of the page has a link to the fare rules. You can also view them on sites like ITA Matrix. After purchase, unless you have an EF subscription or other service that allows you access to historical fares - you will have to take the agent's word.
If you don't want to do read all that - or its after purchase - just search DL.com for the route and look at connecting options. If it isn't a broken fare, the routings on that page would generally be valid for that route and will give you an idea of what agents would find acceptable.
You can tell if its broken if there are different fare buckets used for different segments, or on the trip summary page, the aforementioned fare rules link would list more than one fare code for each direction of your trip.
In practice - many agents would be ok with IAD-XXX-ATL, with XXX being a hub on the eastern half of the US. They probably wouldn't even check the fare rules.
But criss crossing the US twice to go IAD to ATL would likely make many verify the valid routings - and that's where you got stuck (DL doesn't even use SFO for connections - I've only ever seen BOS-SFO-SEA once and nothing else).