hawkfan7314

So using first google flights and then also regular aa.com I am able to find flights for almost $275 less using multi-city routing BWI-CLT-DFW-BWI or BWI-ORD-DFW-BWI instead of normal BWI-DFW RT. Once find the flight and put in all my traveller information, it boots me back to the flight times page and says that the flight or fare isn't available. Only issue with that is that the flight/fares are all there to still check again. I tried a CSR on Twitter and only gave them the CLT routing to which they said it must have just sold out. But it's the same thing for ORD routing where it doesn't let me fully book.

Anyone else ever have these issues or suggestions? Thanks

FYSA Full requested routing is

21 Dec BWI-CLT 21 Dec CLT-DFW 28 Dec DFW-BWI $392
21 Dec - 28 Dec BWI-DFW $663 *Exact same routing as multicity*

Dave Noble

There is married sector availability issues on that route

When checking BWI-DFW via CLT on 21 Dec, there seems to be nothing lower than K class

Checking BWI-CLT on 21 Dec there is V Class available and , depending on flight, there is V or L class on CLT-DFW

Doing a multi city search , it will find the availability in V/L classes, but come to final payment it will not be allowed

Also, multi city may be pricing on sectors as in cost for BWI-CLT, CLT-DFW and then DFW-BWI . AA has a r/t BWI-DFW fare whch it would reprice with

hawkfan7314

I tried booking them seperate but the cheaper flights aren't there when you book seperate. I have been reading more of the forum and most say it's because GF hasn't updated yet. But that wouldn't explain why the AA website tells me it's available as well, until I actually try to book it.

Dave Noble

Have you tried booking all 3 flights separately?

Booked as a r/t ticket it seems that booking classes G and L and being chosen fot the outbound and it seems to go as far as taking a credit card

It looks like the site is finding availability based on sector by sector - quoting based on the r/t fare for the availabiltiy on a sector by sector basid ( hence the $392 ) - but there is not availability for a through journey in that booking class, so fails when trying to book

hawkfan7314

Yes, ends up being $605 BE

BWI-CLT $203
CLT-DFW $239
DFW-BWI $163

I'm sure it's just glitches but I got excited I found a good flight/routing but it's just not working out.

Dave Noble

It isn't really a glitch - it is to do with the way you are searching.

If on Multi city search you search from origin to stopover , it will price correctly
If you try searching from origin to transit point to stopover , it will check availability for each sector independantly and price based on this - if the availability in, say, G class is there for A-B and for A-C , but not there for A-C via B, you will get an invalid price shown and it will fail when you try to book

For the journey that you want to do, you need to do a r/t search for BWI-DFW and the avaialbility will be correct

From Expert Flyer ...

Checking BWI-DFW , the availability via CLT shows

AA 609 BWI-CLT J7 D0 I0 Y7 B7 H7 K7 M0 L0 G0 V0 S0 N0 Q0 O0 E0
AA 553 CLT-DFW J7 D0 I0 Y7 B7 H7 K7 M0 L0 G0 V0 S0 N0 Q0 O0 E0

As you can see , lowest offering is K class

Checking the 2 sectors independantly

AA 609 BWI-CLT J7 D5 I3 Y7 B7 H7 K7 M7 L7 G7 V7 S0 N0 Q0 O0 E0
AA 553 CLT-DFW J7 D7 I6 Y7 B7 H7 K7 M7 L7 G0 V0 S0 N0 Q0 O0 E0

lower booking classes are available

hawkfan7314

I appreciate all of your help. I guess I just consider it a glitch because I don't think it should show me that fare if I can't actually book it. It's also frustrating that the website doesn't tell you what is wrong so you can fix it. I guess I will continue to search but the cheap flights on SW may be calling my name..... :-I

Dave Noble

You can avoid the issue on a multi city search by only checking for origin to destination/stopover
Do not check for origin to transit point to destination

When you do the former, the website will show you connecting options ( such as via CLT ) and will also find the availability based on the through journey

single and round trip searches will also always be ok

aztimm

I was able to get this routing to price at $365 on the AA website:
https://goo.gl/flights/h5qeM
I didn't put in pax details and such, not sure where you were getting the error.

Dave Noble

.....

xliioper

The problem is that ITA Matrix/Google Flights doesn't correctly check married segment bucket availability when performing multi-city fare searches. The price in the Google Flights example above consists of two fares -- VUAIZNB2 covering BWI-DFW, and GVAIZNB2 for DFW-BWI. You can find this in the fare rules when pricing it out. The problem is that there is no V bucket availability on the BWI-ORD-DFW segments when married on a single fare. While there is V bucket on the individual flights, there is only K bucket on the married segments as you can see below from ExpertFlyer. aa.com will bomb out when you go to purchase and it actually validates bucket availability and finds that Google Flights was lying about the married segment availability being there. ITA/Google Flights is who you should be angry with as the bug rests entirely in their fare search engine. It's a long-standing bug that has been documented numerous times.

AA2582 J7 D7 I0 Y7 B7 H7 K7 M0 L0 G0 V0 S0 N0 Q0 O0 E0
AA1408 J7 D7 I0 Y7 B7 H7 K7 M0 L0 G0 V0 S0 N0 Q0 O0 E0

Those who suggest buying each flight separately aren't understanding what's going here and what married segment logic is about. When purchasing separately, you end up with 3 fares, one for each flight. The reason the price is so cheap is because it is quoting only two fares with the V fare for the first two segments being incorrect because there is no actual V bucket availability.

By the way, Google seems to have somewhat addressed the issue with Delta flights (see below) and does a final inventory check on the married segments. It initially quotes $115 below, but then sees there's no married bucket availability for that fare and gives the correct $180 fare quote (L fare). Not sure why they haven't done so with AA.

https://goo.gl/flights/Pcs8w

rotnkornkid

I used to be able to book these sort of flights on obscure third-party sites with advanced search but that doesn't seem to be working anymore for me...