Standard Ticket magically became Basic
 

Hi,

First off, very sorry if this has been addressed. I did look. But I've never seen this before and neither have the agents we've spoken to. Asking on behalf of a colleague, I got dragged in to help as I'm the frequent flyer/Aeroplan guru on my team.

Essentially, my colleague booked a standard return ticket, YYZ-LHR. Her confirmation email clearly shows this...both flights are Economy - Standard. But today, if you log in, both flights show as Economy-Basic, denying her the opportunity to upgrade and possibly screwing up her seat selection (check-in is coming up soon). The ticket number and booking reference match. She booked through the AC app directly. No travel agents or anything weird. She received no communication about a change.

No one at AC can/will do anything; they claim she has always had a basic fare and needs to reach out to customer relations, which she has, but as always they won't respond until long after she has flown. Twitter support says it's nothing they've ever seen before and can't help. I am totally stumped. I thought I'd seen everything but I've never had my class of fare messed with, other than pretty ordinary upgrades/downgrades.

If anyone has seen anything like this or has any ideas, I'd love to hear them. Again, sorry if this is covered elsewhere.

With this being your first post, welcome to FT.

What was the original fare basis on the original booking, and what is the fare basis now?

If OP has a clear proof that the ticket was indeed standard, one option would be to cancel it and buy a new, correct one. Then send a complain to customer relations asking for refunding of the extra charges.

If no dice with customer relations within the interval for CC complaints, then request the CC to cancel the charge for the second ticket.

Thanks! Kind of weird I haven't been here for years TBH. I've lurked forever.

As for the fare basis, I don't see anything from the original booking but it's currently showing as (L) both ways, which I thought was Standard but I am deeply rusty. Thanks again.

EDIT: The original booking was also L.

Thanks! This was my original idea as well but it's just too close to the flight; she'll have to work it out with CR. I'm now mostly interested in how this could even happen, especially since her fare code never changed as far as I can tell.

With branded fares, the fare code itself is not enough to determine whether you have a standard or basic ticket. You'll need the entire fare basis.

Thanks...like I said, new & rusty all at the same time.

Looks like it's LKA73LGT. More than happy to do my own work if there's a repository of Fare Basis info.

List of branded fare basis in link below:
​​​​​​
​​​​​https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-...ango-flex.html

Not sure if you made a typo, but TG is standard fare.

Thank you again...genuinely appreciated.

The mystery deepens...no typo and nothing in her Fare Basis matches anything from that link. I know some kind of $10 Uber-related discount was applied but I can't imagine that could cause all this weirdness.

The fare brand suffix thing usually holds for North America/Sun fares, but international fares often don't follow that convention.

I tried looking up the fare on EF, and it's the lowest L fare, and one of the cheapest Y cabin fares out there. EF doesn't show what fare family it comes from, but when I looked up a couple of random dates in the future, the Basic fares ended in GT.

Have you looked up the booking using the cow's PNR viewer? It might not tell us anything, but it might.

​​​​Never knew that. Good to know, learned something new today.

Oh, and @JDB777, did you try to pull up the fare rules on the AC website and compare them to the fare rules from the e-mail confirmation?

I'm 90% sure LGT is a *A JV basic fare.

Not that I think this matters. I'm still drafting my complaint for when the AC website and booking confirmation email said I'd be seated in "business class", and I ended up in Y.

They regularly advertise things on their site and in their confirmation emails that don't match the PNR (which, of course, doesn't exist before you book).

Thanks very much for looking.

I used the cow tool to find the fare basis. There is evidence of this being a basic fare: Specifically, 0% SQM.

​​​​​The other thing that jumps out is that while the fare is tiny ($121), the YQ box (which I believe is for additional airline fees even though it shows up under taxes) is over $500. So the ticket is primarily made up of YQ fees. I'm new to this side of things so this may be normal, but it felt off to me.

Before advertising all inclusive fares became mandatory, you could often seen adds offering $150 YYZ-LHR return fares. Then, there was, in much smaller font, the $900 sum of all surcharges.
So no, this practice of showing low fares and high surcharges is not new by any means.

Great question. I took a look...the email correctly shows Standard fare rules, including 50% SQM, etc. Her current itinerary on the site shows all Basic rules.

Working theory at this point is someone at AC built a weird Basic fare but somehow managed to market it on the booking engine as standard. As soon as it's booked, it reveals its true nature and no one at AC sees anything but a basic fare, so they don't believe you when you say it was booked Standard, and have no way to handle it when you show proof.