Originally Posted by LHR/MEL/Europe FF

Hi Bensyd

A YUP fare (might be called KUPs as well now) are fares sold by American carriers for NON point-to-point travel where you fly via one of their main hubs. The fare books under Y class, but tickets automatically into First at the time of booking. It was originally (maybe still is?) seen as a solution to companies not letting their executives fly First Class - as the ticket is technically in economy.

Being in economy, the fare is also usually well below the normal First Class fare (although AA sell their fares as discounted First anyways).

AA, UA and US all offer them that I am familiar with, I am sure the other carrier do as well. Examples of where a YUP would be applicable would be on a LAX-DFW-BOS flight (ie via AA's hub), but would not be available on the direct AA LAX-BOS flight. The fare is also an incentive to get pax flying via the airlines hubs.

YUPs are not available on all routes, and are typically available in markets where there is competition.

I have posted a guide below on YUPs on AA which I originally posted in another forum.

As the YUP books into First, you get F SCs and mileage. The downside to a YUP is that should you need to change travel plans at short notice and First is not available in either A or P class, then you get to fly coach (with no refund of course), although you will be ticketed in Y as opposed to a discount economy code.

The figures I gave above (over 800 SCs for 2900) was because that included the flight SYD to HNL, it is even cheaper if you exclude your flight to the States.

Know that you know about them - enjoy!

Guide to YUPs:

The booking procedure for YUPs is fairly simple provided you do the following:

1) on AA.com, you must select pricing by fare, not schedule

2) select 'First Class with restrictions'

As for routes with YUPs:

3) a YUP fare is usually only available if you connect, at least once, via a carrier's hub (the best fares are via DFW)

4) look for flights on which AA has competition from other airlines, particularly low cost carriers such as Southwest, Jetblue, Airtran

5) good starting points for YUPs are HNL, BWI, BOS.

6) enter in your starting point, then a destination, hit 'enter'. The fare will appear. If it looks high, try another destination. Always select flights with multiple stops if you can as this will increase your SCs. If you want a head-up on some good routes, PM me.

Bear in mind the following:

7) some YUPs are only available on certain days of the week (like Tuesdays through Thursdays). If you are getting a high fare for other days, try T/W/T.

Advanced:

8) once you have mastered the above, you can play around with the booking engine on AA to maximise flight segments through using the multi-city tool

9) you do the above by taking a simple YUP and then adding in segments. You will know if the routing you have chosen is not valid because the fare will jump significantly

10) when using the multi booking tool you should select the following flight times: early morning, noon, afternoon, evening (for segments 1-4 respectively)

11) for multi segment bookings, always allow a minimum of 2 hours connecting time to allow for delays (late incoming aircraft). You should always try to book on the first flight out in the morning, and make sure that you have at least one other flight choice for segments 2, 3 and 4 so that a delay in segment 1 doesn't mean the end of your itinerary.

12) if you are doing a status run to get SCs, try not to fly during known bad weather seasons (like winter / tornado season) - these all cause severe delays

13) if you are doing back-to-back 4 segment runs, try and allow one day off in between to accommodate flight delays (for example, go outbound Tuesday with four sengments, rest Wednesday, fly back Thursday). This means if you miss the last flight of the day on Tuesday (ie segment 4), you can fly that segment on the Wednesday, then you haven't mucked up your return flight.

Finally:

14) Now I don't want to give away all the great YUP fares, but you can do a 4 segment trip (or you could as of late last year) from a certain city in Florida to a certain city in Texas for USD 247. (I can't check if the fare is still available at the moment because the AA site is undergoing maintenance.)

15) all of the above being said, some of the great 4 segment flights are getting harder to find because AA is giving routes to American Eagle which only operate in one class and hence the fare prices out very high.

Regards

L/M/E FF etc etc