Originally Posted by
jsloan
Companion fares have been around for decades. They’re not commonly used, although I’ll concede that perhaps the airlines have decided to use them more frequently than they have in the past. Still, the article is sensationalizing this quite a bit. Furthermore, I’m guessing that almost nobody cares what the PIA-ORD fare is, because almost nobody but a business traveler is going to pay it (Their AA example of CLT-RSW is another matter). Flying doesn’t save much time over driving, or even taking Amtrak from Normal.
That obviously shouldn’t work, but with UA’s systems, who knows?
They are technically called "Accompanied Travel" fares in the fare rules and are absolutely being used more frequently now than previously. There have been a few posts on FT about them already. AA loaded them on a number of routes out of CLT back in early March to a number of Florida cities and MSY. This person didn't realize it at the time, but the reason the fares shot up on the route he was taking weekly (CLT-MCO) was due to AA making all the cheaper one-way fares Accompanied Travel fares.
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/36946452-post169.html
The cheapest one-way AA Main fares on CLT-MCO are now $400 for a solo passenger, while with Accompanied Travel fares you can get one-ways in Main for as low as $110/per passenger.
I pointed them out on DL (on BOS-TYS route in this case) back in early May -
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/37060319-post8.html
There are still reasonably priced roundtrip fares for solo travelers on many of these routes, but they require a Saturday stay and mid-week trips will all price out as one-way fares in both directions.
For UA fares, Accompanied Travel fares will have 'U' in the second posistion of the fare basis code. Roundtrip fares will have an 'F' there, and one-way fares that don't require accompanied travel will have an 'A' in second position. Here is CLT-MCO (where UA is matching the AA Accompanied Travel fares). I only did a screenshot of the first couple dozen fares. The one-way fares that don't require accompanied travel start further down the listings and aren't in capture.
There's sort of a hack here where if you book connections over 4 hours, it creates a Stopover and will price out as broken fares with a separate fare on each flight which can often be cheaper than booking the one-way itin on a single fare.
