Originally Posted by
Fishwiz
I've spent some time on various sources of fare class information, but what puzzles me, is that that some of the fare classes in use seem to be redundant.
For example on an up coming trip a I have "I" on ATL-SCL, and "C" on the return of SCL-ATL. It looks like the MQM earnings is the same, and I can't find any other differences.
What are the differences? Where can that information be found? And if there are no differences, why does Delta use redundant fare classes?
As a flyer, there is no functional difference in I and C classes. On the flipside, from the airline/industry/GDS perspective, each fare bucket for each flight and each route contains a multitude of published fares, which have different rules, prices, surcharges, validities, etc. Having the many, many fares that are published for each possible flight/route stratified into buckets (i.e., classes) makes identifying fares according to the hierarchies of price and restrictions slightly easier. Classes are also relevant to flyers in certain circumstances, such as SDC on a domestic coach ticket.