Originally Posted by
voyageuse53
... My question ... How can you tell, at the time of booking, what fare class you are in? I had been caught unawares once before on a "V class" fare and resolved this time to read all the fine print carefully ... which I did ... yet it happened again.
Hi Voyageuse,
Welcome to FlyerTalk.
Sites like Opodo are very opaque when it comes to booking classes. To get more information, you have two options I think:
- Once you find a price you like, go to the website of the actual airline, and try to book the same exact flights. They are likely to provide more details on the booking class. At KLM (which you would have visited for this NW flight), you now get more flexibility in choosing a higher booking class to avoid the dreaded 25% award.
- The other option is to visit
http://matrix.itasoftware.com. It's a very powerful search engine, and when you select a flight, you can click on "Show booking details" for all information with regards to the booking class of every segment. (By setting the ticket issuing location to CDG, you will get prices in Euros.)
Hope this helps. (Of course, the question then becomes how much extra you are willing to pay for these extra miles ...)
Cheers,
GenevaFlyer