yyznomad

I'm sure you knew what I was getting at... the gist of it.

I was speaking terms of a fare class letter meaning "squat" in the context of the situation we're discussing in this thread. It's been established that these are economy fares that are not being credited properly, hence requiring the fare basis to assist in several cases.

canadiancow

Branded fares don't currently exist for intercontinental travel.

And I don't know how Basic works on intercontinental travel.

yyznomad

If this is the case, then the fare class letter should be enough then.

D582

Branded fares do exist for international travel, just not the exact same implementation as North America. This is a TATL 'Light' fare (last 3 characters of fare basis are LGT) which in AC world is Basic. The fare classes overlap with Standard and are assigned Brand Codes in GDS. So 25% miles in this case is correct.

jc94

That was my understanding too, AC operate branded including Basic fares on select international travel.

ChrisA330

To add to this, for non-TATL markets there is a BA appended to the fare basis for Basic fares. ie: for YVR-HKG: KKXIT1BA, AKXIT1BA, LKXIT1BA

jc94

Sounds like we need a @yyznomad wiki

WesternCDN

Not sure if this is related, but seems to be the inverse? Or maybe just an AC.com technical glitch? Booked Standard through corp TA but my online booking on AC.com is funnily showing 'Economy - Flex' on the booking page, yet is showing the correct baggage allowance for Standard lower down on the page. Glitch with the website? Or did it actually book me into Flex?

ffsim

canadiancow

I should really stop talking about Basic. I clearly have no idea how it works

yyznomad

I've included information in the master BE thread.
The TATL LGT was added much later and wasn't part of the original set of "rules" when Branded Fares were rolled out for NA.

Matt93

AC Support stopped responding to me. I guess they are hoping I go away.

sokolov

OMG, this is still happening! I just booked an open jaw trip from Canada to Europe and back. It was showing Standard on the Air Canada website. It says Standard in the e-mail confirmation I have received.

But when I check "My Booking" on the Air Canada website, it shows up as Basic. What's going on there?!

sokolov

And another one. This time, the price dropped *after* I had entered my credit card details and clicked pay. No warning, just on the confirmation page a lower price was stated. I was charged the lower price, sent a confirmation email showing "Economy Standard", while it was actually an Economy Basic ticket.

I called in and asked this to be corrected. I offered to pay the higher price for Standard. The guy tried for a long time, but couldn't figure it out. His managers couldn't either.

In the end he constructed a new with the itinerary I wanted and I paid for that. 92 minutes on the phone! Then I had to go and cancel my original, messed up booking.

To wit, Air Canada is not handling those "branded" fares well at all.

skymath

I experienced the same issue as others have above and wanted to document my whole experience here. I wanted to book a multi-city trip all in standard, but clicking through on AC.com showed the latter two flights in basic, first in standard. However, clicking through to AC.com via Google Flights showed everything in Standard at $15 more.

I naturally booked on AC.com via the redirect from Google Flights. Once submitting through to the payment, the payment looked like it was going through, but spit me back out the previous page. On that page, everything showed up as the same ($15 more than Basic and everything in standard). Then upon clicking the purchase button again I see that the payment went through. Email confirmation showed all flights in standard, but $15 less (Basic price). Checking "my bookings" on AC.com showed the latter two flights in Basic! (I booked again to see if I could resolve the issue myself but the same issue happened - canceled the rebooking right after the same issue occurred).

I called AC, and they told me that this was a very rare issue (happened only twice before - ya. ok.) and they would put a note on my reservation saying all my flights were supposed to be in Standard if I need to make changes. After hanging up I realized that I'll have to call back to get the proper amount of miles & I wouldn't have access to eups. So I called again and that agent said they could change my reservation if they charged my CC the extra $15. Gladly accepted and it looks like the reservation is changed correctly online.

Moral of the story: if this happens to you, call AC and insist on changing the reservation to the proper fare, they should be able to do so for whatever the difference in price is. If you don't want to pay the price difference (which honestly you shouldn't have to) you'll be entitled the right # of miles & allowable changes to your reservation, but will have to call in more than once.