FozzyBear1980

Good morning,

So I've been looking to book a return trip to ZRH from YYZ on Air Canada from Nov 7 to Nov 19. What I planned to do was book one revenue ticket for myself and use Aeroplan to book a reward seat in the same itinerary for my partner. I'm looking to book Business Class (lowest).

So upon my search I came across this weirdity where the cost for 2 pax for the same itinerary is cheaper than the cost of 1 pax. I checked again this morning, the return fare is $7153 for one person, and $6948 for two people. I didn't understand this, and I thought this didn't make sense so I called Air Canada. The agent on the phone said he had never seen this before and called into the website people to figure out if there was a problem. After being on hold for almost 20 minutes, he came back to me to say that it's a "companion fare" and two people need to be booked. He said he had been working for Air Canada for years and thought they got rid of this , but apparently was surprised they had such a thing. When I asked him if it was possible to just book one person at half the cost of two people, he said he couldn't override it in the system. This seems ridiculous to me, no? Has anyone ever seen this before? Is there a way I can get this flight for the per person cost of booking two people but only booking one? Thanks for your help!

SparseFlyer

Yes. This has been reported here before.

I guess what you could try and do is book 2 passengers, then call in and ask to divide the file and refund the other ticket as the passenger will no longer be travelling.

Report if it works.

midnightmartini

I didn't know about this.. thanks for posting!

If I were you I would book revenue tickets with this companion fare for both you and your partner, and save the Aeroplan points for another trip.

Funnily enough I will be flying into ZRH on the 19th - maybe we will cross paths!

Adam Smith

Would the fare rules allow cancellation of only one ticket? Might be worth checking them before booking.

alc

i would think the idea is to cancel using the within 24 hours rule.

YEG_SE4Life

So, if I read this correctly, you have found that you can accomplish what you wanted to accomplish, without even using the Aeroplan Miles, and do it for less cash, in terms of IKK and fare, and you have found a way to complain about that. Did I read that right?

D582

There are the fares in question:

They carry this rule:

Cancellation of one ticket is supposed to force a re-price of the other, but in reality, YMMV.

Dorian

Wow, had no idea about this!!!!

We always book our tickets separately....this could have saved so much money!

D582

AC has offered these fares off and on in many markets for TATL travel for quite a while. They tend to have high minimum stay requirements (the ones I posted have a 10 day minimum stay), as they are geared towards leisure travel.

SparseFlyer

Need to hang around different parts of FT. Not just do threads and threads without time stamps

Stanbury

In fact these "2 for 1" fares are not limited to AC. Which, I suppose, is hardly surprising. I get emails from AF and KL advertising them (never from AC!)

Looking at a r/t BIZ YWG-CDG for random dates in Jan/Feb shows similar fares (not absolutely identical but very close) being offered by AF, KL, DL, LH, UA and maybe others. All seem to have the same 10 day min stay requirement and all require the passenger to be accompanied by at least 1 other passenger in the same cabin, max 8.

SWMBO Stanbury and I have used these several times, and the savings over "single" tickets are indeed very nice. Only issue is where our outbound destinations in Europe are different -- we use these fares to a mutually convenient gateway and then book separate cheapo tickets to our respective destinations.

They are not available for all European destinations, but they do exist for some joint fares (e.g using AF for a sector from CDG to a destination on France not served by AC), and they also work nicely for open jaws.

Stranger

Sounds like these might be a case of AC matching their fares?

canopus27

Fascinating. I also had no idea that such a thing existed. Looking at ExpertFlyer, I see these fares available on most (actually all that I've looked at so far) TATL flights ... YYZ to ZRH, LHR, CDG, FRA, MUC ...

It appears to be only a feature of TATL flights, I don't see equivalents for TPAC or transcon.

MSPeconomist

IIRC TK and maybe some of the ME3 carriers started doing these companion fares several years ago. In particular, I remember a Valentine's Day sale on long haul business class tickets, but it might have been one of the major European carriers such as BA.

I'd be afraid that if you try to split the PNR and cancel one ticket, this could be discovered on the day of travel (or even later) and you'd be charged a full unrestricted walk up fare for one person.

OTOH, the fare rules say "must be accompanied by...." without mention of being on the same fare or on the same PNR, so maybe the companion can technically be using an award ticket as long as they travel together on all segments in the same cabin (so no OPUPs for one person only, if OPUPs are possible on the flights--maybe there's a partner operated segment with a FC cabin?).

rehoult

They're a convenient way to separate business from leisure.

Leisure is far more likely to travel with a companion, and even business people travelling together tend to be booked separate tickets. So instead of the Sat night stay, which every one knows about and smart companies will take advantage of, you have something that is nearly impossible to utilize for business purposes.

^ to RM. That's a job well done.