Is there any publicly-accessible resource that allows (Air France) fare basis codes to be decoded, or do you have to be a travel agent or something?

(Of immediate interest to me is OGSCO3RA but I'd also be interested to know the general case for future reference.)

I need to know the route to check, you can do the same in expertflyer for example. RA are business light fares (longhaul)

You can probably read the fare info on ita matrix if you cna get it to come up?

You have to be a paid subscriber to access that in expertflyer, correct?

I could not get the fare to appear in ITA Matrix.

Is this going to be the same thing as I get on the AF website if I ask for the fare details? The load of all-uppercase text?

If so, the thing that I'm not seeing in there, that I was expecting to see, was the "no lounge access" restriction (and maybe also the "only 1 hold bag" restriction).

You won't be able to find either of those.

Hah! Aren't "no lounge" and "only one bag" part of the fare conditions?!

Yes and no. Ancillaries are typically decoupled (and that's what these really are, ancillaries, even though traditionally included) and the fare conditions contain limitations pertinent to ticketing, not to travel/ancillaries.

https://www.afkl.biz/trade/s/resourc..._US&country=US

As of a few months ago (when AFKL restructured their fare bases), whether a fare is light/standard/flex is encoded in position 7.

Example:
OGS8THRA is Light, as is ZGS8THRA
OGS8TJJA is Standard, as is ZGS8TJJA
OGS8TMKA is Flex, as is ZGS8TMKA

So to a first approximation, 7th character of R is light, J is Standard, and K is Flex

Every one of those is a promo fare, so position 6 doesn't necessarily have a fixed meaning.

Very interesting, thank you!

If you have time, can you tell me anything more about this? Where are the possible codes for each position specified? How do GDS and NDC differ in practical terms? How do the booking class and RBD differ?

AFKL haven't publicized the codes.

NDC is a more advanced booking system that has more support for bundling ancillaries into the fares; different airlines use it differently (AA, most notably, pulled all their cheap fares from the GDS).

Booking class/RBD is how so-called "dual inventory fares" are implemented. I'm more familiar with how DL does it (partly thanks to a poster on FT, xliioper), but the basic idea is that PE/Business/First(?) fare availability is governed by both the relevant booking class and an underlying economy class. So for DL (since I have no clue what AFKL's economy fare classes are), a Z fare could have an underlying X fare: they will have the same advanced purchase requirement, roundtrip requirement, etc., differing only in booking class and price. The fare is only valid if there is simultaneously Z and X availability.
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Thanks for this. I am familiar with BA using dual inventory fares but was not aware that AF did as well. Presumably this must be widespread in the industry these days.

If you click on that link, the positions are described, although it is not defined which codes mean what. You can check individual public fares on experflyer to figure out it for yourself (14 days free trial) or maybe someone has a link to a document, I don't.

NDC gives airlines a lot more options to decouple things that are in old-school GDS coupled to a given fare class. For example, a true full-range dynamic pricing, not just selecting from preexisting options. It also makes it a lot easier to offer ancillary services and mix and match offers as needed. But from a pax perspective, there is very little difference usually.

Booking class as we talk about it here (i.e. "the letter") is RBD. I'm not sure if AF uses "dual RBD" which gives like a secondary discrimination in the second leter in other classes, but not in longhaul J. There it is either R or G for direction, but I am not sure what the direction is. But, for CDG-SIN, G is inbound, for CDG-GRU, G is outbound, so....

If you think about multi-class bookings, like for P it's easy to say connector is in full J any time.
But for Premium Economy fares with a connecting Economy feeder, you have to book the feeder into something, and using Y inventory is probably not the best idea given that Y can be a lot more expensive than a cheap PE fare.

To know more:
https://www.afkl.biz/trade/s/resourc..._US&country=ch

Thanks everyone for all this extremely interesting information!

Here are some questions, if anyone is willing to spend the time answering them:

1) If "the letter" is RBD (position 2), then what is the booking class (position 1)?

2) I don't understand "dual inventory fares" -- what's the point? Is this about having a domestic/intracontinental feeding into an intercontinental or something?

3) So fare basis codes are airline-specific, and you need something like expertflyer to decode them (i.e. to know the interpretation of the codes for each position)? How does expertflyer get the information?

4) If NDC is better than GDS, then why doesn't everyone use the former? Is the software more expensive/proprietary? Is the per-access cost higher?

1. "the letter" = booking class = RBD is position 1. Position 2 is optionally the second RBD code for dual RBD.

2. Dual inventory fares means you have to have inventory in both classes, for revenue control. Otherwise you would be bumped to a more expensive fare in the same primary booking class.

3. Yes, they are airline specific. Expertflyer doesn't decode them, experflyer pulls the ticketing information airlines publish that tie with the fare code. If you know how airline constructs the codes, you can learn more than experflier shows, i.e. baggage allowance.

4. Because NDC is New. Adoption is moving slowly.