Normally one expects that a saver fare should be cheaper than a classic fare, however, a pricing oddity when departing from Europe causing the opposite. The itinerary is an origin open jaw from GVA to SVO, returning to a different European country, HEL in this case.
As you can see, the "saver" ticket is much more expensive because it is in a high booking class B, where the classic ticket is sold at class N, the lowest possible booking class except promo class.
I then checked the fare rule on ITA matrix, and found out that the following statement only appears on saver but not classic fare:SU NVU GVA to MOW
OPEN JAWS
ORIGINATING AREA 2
PROVIDED -
THE OPEN SEGMENT MUST BE
-BETWEEN RUSSIA AND SIP OR WITHIN ANY ONE COUNTRY
COMBINATIONS ARE WITH ANY ROUND TRIP INSTANT PURCHASE/
ONE WAY INSTANT PURCHASE-TYPE FARES IN ANY RULE AND
TARIFF.
which means, in order to open-jaw between different European countries, this saver fare can't be used but only the classic fare.
A sensible traveller therefore book the classic fare. However this pricing oddity affected me because I initially booked the outbound journey only as a one-way and attempted to add the return journey later, as change rule says that only fares in the same brand can be used when changing the ticket, if I need to return to a different European country as in my case, the whole ticket would be bumped to a sky-high BVO fare which doesn't have this restriction, so I had to buy a separate ticket for my return journey (
Connecting with separate ticket at SVO on SU). In fact I was building a "connection" from GVA to HEL via SVO in form of an open-jaw return ticket since SU doesn't have a GVA-HEL fare, and no airlines serving this market fit my timing (I need to take overnight flights).