jmbfrance

Dear friends,

I see that in march the PV flights from BCN to LIM or GIG or BKK, class W BCN CDG and A CDG to LIM GIG or BKK are non refundable.

Do you have any clue about that ?

brunos

There are many fares in the same letter bucket. They would be called W**** or A****, where the **** refer to the specific fare. Some premium fares are indeed nonrefundable, even Business class (typically some Z fares).

cityflyer369

As W(midhaul)+A(longhaul) is the cheapest booking class combination for PV, I am not surprised to hear that some of these fares are non-refundable. (If I remember it correctly, they even had some non-changeable promotions W+A when they introduced PV.)

jmbfrance

Sure, that makes sense, but I cannot get why the booking class is only "A" (you have to read the fine prints to see that it is APRES and not ALSFES) and I think it is confusing for the average customer.

It is impossible to book through the search engine ALSFES, you have to call.

Mokshu

So long in advance, booking engines will retrieve the lowest fares available which are currently highly restricted fares.

On af.com you can select more flexible fares during your search if you want flexibility.

jmbfrance

Mokshu,

Same problem trying to book BCN LIM Oct 20 Oct 27, it is impossible to find ALSFES on line...

DO you have any hint how to book ALSFES on line ?what is af.com ? I searched French, Spanish and US www.airfrance.xx...

NickB

I know of no public booking engine anywhere (whether on an airline website or an online TA) which will allow you to specify a fare basis. Most will let you choose at most between cheapest and fully flex and some (very few) will let you choose within an inventory subset (eg: Delta) but that is pretty much your lot.
If you want a specific fare basis, you need to call the airline or have your ticket booked through a TA.

jmbfrance

I cannot make me clear !

If I try to book for instance BCN LIM 10/6 return 10/13 the very interesting but in fact rigid 1300 € PV fare pops up. It is absolutely impossible to choose somewhere "I want more flexibility" (KL site allows that).

I am stuck to this fare or have to call.

I suppose that PV traveling people know that a normal fare from Europe to Peru in PV is about 1900/2100, and that an unexpensive fare (ex BCN for instance) is 1600.

brunos

Hi jmbfrance. Not sure what question you are really asking.
If you are complaining that AF website only offer you one PE fare (or biz fare) and no other choice, you are right. So you have to call as there is a large number of PE fare from BCN. They have various levels of penalty for change and refund, different flexibility/penalty for stopover in Paris, different min/max stay, etc...
Some of the fares are "public" or "standard" (not sure I am using the right word and Mokshu might correct me), meaning that they are available all year and widely accessible. Usually (but not from all destinations) you can find those on EF or KVS. For example, I see on EF 4 PE fares: ALFES, SSFES, SFFES, WFFES. Others are promotions offered at specific times. This is probably what is the low inflexible fare that you quote (APRES?).

The only way to get all the fares is to go through a diligent TA (if the TA is willing to do the search) or call AF. Even then, my experience is that you should have done your own research beforehand to guide the local AF agent through a maze of fares. No website will have the ability to let you choose among a large number of PE fares with so many different characteristics.

Mokshu

In fact, this fare is available but not offered through af.com as a lower fare is available.

For Economy, you can select if you want flexible or lowest fare available. But it seems af.com did not implement the ability to select between flexible or restricted fares for Premium Voyageur.

So indeed you will have to book either by phone or through a TA.

I would advise you to send a mail to customer service about that.

brunos

Even in Y, AF let you only select between lowest fare and highest fare (full fare). Nothing in-between with different level of flexibility/penalty/validity)

orbitmic

Exactly. To be honest, the AF website is very poor when it comes to booking. As NickB mentions, for instance, on delta.com you can specify a fare bucket which is much better. On AF, for instance, you may well be offered only highest full fare Y even if fully flexible B (or whatever has replaced bucket B now) is available! Even between the very poor BA/AF options and the best DL options, QF or KE manage to offer at least 3 or 4 different fares in economy on the booking page with different conditions, and for KE the same in business.

Mokshu

Could not agree more. Even FB award booking engine is better as it offers flexibility ;-)

jmbfrance

Dear Friends,

I called twice "Le Club" and the two persons who answered told me the same thing and suggested to write to the customer service (Mokshu !)

Looks very much like a kind of promotional price, which cannot be booked by phone, only through the site.

The "semi-flexible" price is not very high, 1482 € (100/200), and the inflexible is 1305 €.

IMHO, PV BCN LIM for 1482 € is a very good deal for a good product, it is sad to say that what I call "poor marketing of the PV product" strikes again !

To Bruno : My point was that Frequent Travelers generally know what A, Z and so on stand for (miles rewards...) and they believe that the change/refund rules are somewhat the same departing ex one given airport (for A, 100/200 BCN or CDG). It should be better to give those very restricted tickets a special name, I dont know what. I was about to make a booking and I fortunately checked the conditions ahead (I must admit they are very clear on the AF site, they are unclear on the KL one, where this special rate appears refundable).

orbitmic

I personally can't say I agree. I really don't like AF PV and find it very much overpriced. BA WT+ which is more or less on par (i.e. I don't like it either) is at least typically quite a bit cheaper on most routes (don't think they fly to Lima though).