Codeshare question: Is Air Canada able to change AC to an LH flight number?
 

I am travelling on AC 9101 on dec 21st, and I am booked on a full Y fare and was wondering if Air Canada would be able to change the flight number to the LH flight number for SAUA purposes. Does anyone know if this is possible? The flight is booked on 014 ticket stock

There are times when the flights, especially over the water ones, can only be booked as codeshared flights if you wanted a certain fare. The carrier surcharges could be different if you book it under LH flight numbers, etc.

Without knowing all of the details of your itinerary, it's hard for us to give you a meaningful answer. If you want to, you can call AC and ask. That's much more direct than posing the question here.

In addition, what you can try to do if you want some kind of certainty before calling AC is to price out your exact itinerary using ITA Matrix, one with AC codeshare flight number and one with LH flight number for the same segment and see if the prices are the same. If the prices are the same, chances are it's possible to swap AC flight number out for LH. However, if your itinerary is one way across the pond, it is very unlikely AC will swap the flight number given the ticket was issued on 014 stock.

Both flights are the same price based on ITA, I guess I’ll give air canada a call later today and see if they can swap the numbers

AFAIK once tickets are issued it's not as simple as changing the flight numbers as the ticket would at the very least have to be re-issued with any applicable change fee(s) and possible fare differences.

Full Y fare (according to the OP), lots of flexibility.

If the entire itinerary is in Y, sure. But even then, price might have changed. If that leg is, for instance, part of an itinerary in P, for which there was no P available at the time of reservation, rhen it's a different story.

I recently went through a similar exercise. Having an intra-Europe leg in Y on an otherwise P itinerary. After booking that leg under the AC codeshare number on aircanada.com, I called them and asked them to switch to the actual flight number, which they did, entailing reissue but same booking reference. At the time there was no SA upgrade inventory available however. Still it recently opened up and we did upgrade.

This said, I believe they were only able to reissue because it was within the 24 hours window.

AC9101 (OP's flight) is FRA-YVR under LH492, that's why I was confident it's a TATL full Y fare as it is the most significant segment determining the fare. ;)

The only thing that could have potentially complicated the matter is if this is a part of a return ticket with the other half in a more restrictive fare class.

If SAUA space opened up, wouldn't there also likely have been P class? And therefore you could have just had it moved to P at no cost?

That does not count as a change? This said, I did not check on aircanada.com. On the operating airline, when the SAUA opened up, Z class also opened up according to matrix. Not sure if they have P at all, Z might have been OK with AC. The other thing, in the current context I did not feel like being on the phone for an hour. Also, the miles were from my wife's account, with much more restricted use.