Originally Posted by
Whodunit68
I never really caught on to this Basic Economy thing and I'm kind of glad I didn't. My wife travels with me quite a bit when I have business trips and we can find fares that aren't outrageous. She has done so much traveling by my side in addition to our vacations that she, like me, is Executive Platinum.
When I do this, I find what I want, send it to a TA, and he books for us. Recently, I had a trip to NJ. I found some fares on fareboom.com that was for class S or L or something according to Fareboom but the fare basis was Q3UZNB3. He told me that the "B" indicates that it was Basic Economy. I do not doubt him so we booked a much higher fare (it was ~$180 more if I remember right).
I'm providing a bit of background to lead up to my question - how the heck do you determine if it is, in fact, Basic Economy? If the class is not B and nothing on fareboom said Basic Economy (I read 3 times carefully to be sure), how on earth do you know? Is Fare Basis the only way? I had no idea you could book an N or S and still be in BE?
He explained it a bit but I still don't get it. thanks IA.
I thought BE always books into B, meaning that the fare basis code starts with B. So like you, I am confused that a N or S fare would be basic economy.
After doing some playing around on AA's website and looking at detailed fare rules, it does appear that basic economy can book into any economy fare code (N, Q, V, etc.). It does look like the penultimate character of the fare basis is always B.
In any event, I would have done a search on AA.com and compared prices. In my experience, BE is usually (although not always) about $35 less expensive per way than a regular economy ticket. If BE is significantly less expensive, it might be worth it to book it anyways and pay for seat assignments. As an EXP, you keep your boarding priority and checked luggage benefits. You do lose the extra EQM and upgrade chances. Although how much is (the ever decreasing chance of) an upgrade on domestic flights worth these days? Not very much in my book.