phasing out tango???
 

Why is tango plus always $1 cheaper with better benefits? Are they trying to incent us not to buy tango? Any reason to do that other than to discontinue tango and simplify things?

Tango fare is really only for the intra-canadian flights, where LCC competition is forcing AC to offer a cheaper price. The miles are non Q.

Tango Plus is competiting with the US based airlines, where you could fly UA or US and get full Q miles, AC had to offer a comparable product.

I know this will sound stupid, but Tango Plus was called "something else" but AC had to change the name to T+ because the "something else" was already used by another airline. Could someone remind me of that name please? :o

But for the new Tango Plus fare policies and the ability to get status miles on these fares, I likely would not have recieved my E status this year given my organization's policy to always buy the cheapest fares.

I say, AC...keep up the good work on fare restructuring !

cheers ;)

[
I know this will sound stupid, but Tango Plus was called "something else" but AC had to change the name to T+ because the "something else" was already used by another airline. Could someone remind me of that name please? :o[/QUOTE]
I think you are refering to the 'fun' fare. There was also 'econo' that was rolled into the 'tango +' category if memory serves.

I think you are refering to the 'fun' fare. There was also 'econo' that was rolled into the 'tango +' category if memory serves.[/QUOTE]

GG,

Thanks for the info. It was indeed the fun fare, but the "fun fare" was already used by Southwest or America West (can't remember) and AC had to stop using it.

It is not always cheaper.

I believe you are looking for "Fun" fares that were branded first by South West.

DF

You are correct, on most flights from Canada to the US, T+ are set at $1 cheaper. However, as mentioned, on intra-Can flights, this is a whole other ballpark. There is a signiicant difference. I think eventually, the Tango will be a strictly intra-Can fare. Until then, I doubt if anyone will by a T fare, when the T+ is cheaper....

exAC is right -- I bought a transborder tango fare for a friend once as it was $150 cheaper than the T+ fare.

Absolutely. YYZ to any sun destination (e.g. MCO, MIA, TPA) is almost always cheaper in Tango.

I think the freedom fare (lattitude plus) was also changed because of someone else's use.

Both Freedom and Fun Fares are used by Southwest

I've been messing around on ac.com for transborder flights to BOS and ORD that I plan to do in the next couple of months. Unless it's a fluke, it looks like ac.com isn't showing Tango anymore for transborder, starting today(?)
All transborder prices under the Tango column are showing "-" for flights later in the year and even into 2006. I guess I missed something. FT search did not reveal anything special about transborder Tango changes. No mention in the fare class sticky thread. KVS is still showing N/G/P/E/T for future flights even into 2006. I've refreshed my browser, rebooted my computer, and yet everytime I go to aircanada.com and do a mock transborder booking for October, November, December, January, infinity and beyond it still shows Tango dashed out. I'm confused. Hold me.

Please forgive me if this is a false alarm or has already been discussed ad nauseum during my absence. Let this be a pre-emptive mea culpa if I am in error.

Edited to add: Ok, ...... checking for YYZ-FLL, YUL-FLL, YYZ-MCO, YYZ-TPA, YYZ-MIA in Jan 2006 still shows Tango, but no Tango for trips like YYZ-PHX, YVR-SFO, YYZ-LAX, YUL-ORD, YYZ-IAH, YYZ-DEN, YYC-LAX, YYZ-SEA, YYZ-STL, YYZ-EWR, YYZ-LGA, YYZ-ATL, etc. It just looks like Tango will exist only for Floridian destinations? :confused:

I am clearly on drugs here(?). I've taken several screenshots too in case anyone calls me a liar! (LLPOF!)

This makes perfect sense if you think about it: Tango is meant to compete with the low-fare carriers that do not offer status miles, etc. Since there is quite a bit of charter/Westjet/Canjet competition to Florida, it is natural that Tango fares are available in these markets. In the other transborder markets, AC is competing against legacy carriers hence the lack of Tango on those routes.

Agree with Cedric, this is a good move to eliminate confusion that exists when another STAR carrier books one of their FF members onto a TANGO transborder flight, and then receives grief from the member who finds s/he no longer earns status miles for the segment(s). And as pointed out, on these routes where AC competes with US carriers, the TANGO fare has actually been set higher than the T+ so "lowest fare" gives a full points accumulation fare. This is part of an evolving process to deal with the anomolies of a low fare environment. But like everything AC does, when they try to simplify things, they only make them more confusing. In a quest to eliminate the vast number of fares, AC created more fare codes! Then continues to regroup them into seemingly logical categories, but then inserts a whole other regime that doesn't quite fit the neat categories they've just created to simplify things!

When is a TANGO fare not a TANGO fare? When it's a TANGO PLUS fare. And when is a LATITUDE PLUS fare not a LATITUDE PLUS fare? When its a CITY PASS fare. And when is a LATITUDE fare not a LATITUDE fare? When it's a SUN PASS fare. Or something like that...

[QUOTE=yyznomad]...... I'm confused. Hold me.

.....QUOTE]


My crystal ball says you will find comfort on August 30th,AC150 :D :D :D

[QUOTE=acysb87]
Hope he doesn't wear those fancy glasses and scare the kid off. :D

[QUOTE=acysb87] LOL :D:D:D

That's because you're looking at the wrong thing :) -- for this, you should really be looking at fares, not availability data. To see fares for the routes in questions, just click the large [VIEW FARES] button in the KVS Tool.

Using the YYZ/PHX/10JAN2006 route as an example, you will see that the lowest existing fare is Q14XFN.

There were Florida (and perhaps a few other) "tourist" destinations where AC used lower Tango fares to combat LCC's. The rest of the time they priced Tango $1 higher than Tango Plus for the reason already described. It looks like they've finally fixed the programming to zero out the Tango fare for "business" destinations where they are competing with legacy carriers and need to offer pojnts but keeping the fare (and extra low price) on the low yield tourist runs where they truly need a bare-bones offering. Good change IMHO.

I agree too. I guess I was just surprised to see this all of a sudden given that they were still selling Tango on the YYZ BOS flights I was searching for just last week. It's nice to see Tango gone for good though on 95% of transborder.

Oh ok... another possibility I was thinking of was that AC was going to shift N/G/P/E/T (and maybe R/K) back into Tango+ (thus inflating Tango+'s number of fare classes) for the non-Florida flights, but that would be too damn confusing and lame anyway. :)

I've noticed that T is gone for good as well SEA-YYZ. This only makes sense:

- All other transborder mainline carriers offer 100% mileage accumulation.
- Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity will only display the lowest fare for each airline. If T was cheaper than T+, you would not accumulate Q miles when using these websites for booking.
- Mileage accumulation is an important benefit for non-domestic travel, since the competitors are mainline carriers.
- Thre were too many issues with booking United tickets on AC metal and getting the correct AP miles.

I am glad that Tango is gone for this route. Tango is still important for domestic because:

- no other competitor offersr EQM. Therefore, to the Cdn traveller, mileage accumulation becomes less of a factor.
- Aircanada.com is well advertised in Canada and is likely to be a booking engine of choice for those who want to accumulate Q miles.
- There is no codesharing of AC flights within Canada, so there is no mixup of different booking classes with different airlines.

My suspicion is that T still exists for some transborder flights to compete directly with other transborder Canadian carriers and the charters.

I've checked for most routes and only found T existing for Florida (TPA, MCO, FLL, MIA) and LAS.
SFO, LAX, DEN, SEA, STL, BDL, LGA, EWR, ORD, ATL, IAD, IAH, MSP, PHL, PIT, CLE, DFW, PHX, LAS, MSY, BDL, MDT, MHT, ROC, ABE, IND, DTW, BOS, PVD, RDU, MCI, CMH, MKE, and ALB are the ones I checked and don't have Tango.