Select more expensive outbound, inbound price increases?
 

I imagine this is something to do with selling classes. I'm just wondering if there are any ways around it (such as phone booking perhaps).

Here's my current scenario:

• Flying LHR - ORD in May.
• No business seats left on the outbound morning BA flight (don't want to fly AA metal).
• BA.com offers me a discount First seat (class A) for a very good price on the morning flight instead
• I select that seat and all the Club/Business inbound (Class I) prices jump up to the same price as the Outbound First rate, making the deal harder to justify.

It doesn't make sense to me when the inbound is a different cabin, regardless of whether I was offered a reduced First rate on the outbound. It could just be the way it works - perhaps can someone enlighten me?

The booking engine always works like that. The return fare is broken down into two and when you choose a different outbound fare that changes the inbound half because the outbound is only half the fare. This happens even if you are mixing classes, so say on the outbound there are several flights including an I class and the return is also an I class - if you were to choose both that would be the lowest fare option. Now if you decided to choose a different outbound flight which was D class then you will see the I class inbound fare changing price even though it is still I. That's because the engine did not show you the complete fare difference for the outbound D (from I), only half of it. The other half is shown on the inbound. It comes to the same thing in the end.

You may however be describing something different which is that not all classes can be combined. Possibly A cannot be combined with I - I don't know if that's the case but the best way to find out is to call BA or your TA.

Cheers

economyman

The first test is to price the itinerary using First class only. You may well find that half the applicable A fare is actually more than the "very good price" that ba.com was showing you when you were doing what you were doing. If so, that's a good indication that the situation is exactly as economyman describes - it's a feature of ba.com's algorithm for estimating the fare attributable to each direction of travel, which sometimes can be a bit misleading when you're mixing cabins.

Then proceed to a firm price quote for each specific potential itinerary that you're thinking about. That will almost certainly be exactly the price you'll get if you phone BA to book, because the "very good price" is an artefact.

Thanks chaps!

I worked it out and it was actually very simple after all that.

All BA had done was 'upgrade' the unavailable Club seat to First for £499. Of course, rather than just adding £499 to on the outbound total, they spread £249 across both legs as you have mentioned above.

It should have been pretty obvious to me, but it took a while to get there!