FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - What is a "Circle Trip Minimum" Surcharge?
Old Feb 4, 2007 | 10:45 am
  #8  
Bukhara
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Originally Posted by Smirnoff
The wonderful world of fares!

For some reason combining an LHR-CAI-LCA with a cheapie LCA-LHR in D class, seemed to result in a higher surchage (as in my example above), than doing a full fare J out and back.

The routing I have bought now is LHR-TLV-LCA// LCA-CAI-LHR, which priced up cheaper than in the above example.

The fare calculation says:
LON BA X/TLV CY LCA M1205.20JFLRT CY X/CAI BA LON 5M1265.46 JFLRT NUC 2470.66END

And it is actually significantly cheaper (about half the price) or a LHR-TLV//CAI-LHR booking, with having the extra legs to LCA thrown in.
Because you have a transfer in CAI, there is no need for the circle trip thingy. Turn that transfer into a stopover, and you pile on the pounds.

Originally Posted by frankvb
Just remembered that last year I did a LHR-ORD-SEA-LHR trip (my destination was SEA), which was cheaper than doing LHR-SEA-LHR, as for the fare calculation the BA LHR-ORD-LHR fare was used (including the AA flight ORD-SEA). Now as that undercuts the LHR-SEA-LHR fee with at least £100, why did this work? SEA was the 'stopover' on the way back from ORD....

BTW: booked on aa.com.
Circle Trip Minimum Fare Checks, HIF Checks and all that stuff are only used on 'Normal Fares' (ie, Full fares that are interlinable between carriers. Normally quite expensive). Special Fares (still often expensive, but restricted to specific carriers such as J2BA or YBMI) are not subject to these checks.

Chances are that you had a BA fare LON-CHI combined end-on-end with a CHI-SEA AA fare.