duke2013

I was looking at some early March BWI-LAS, LAX-BWI fares a couple days ago and saw a flight I liked at 1pm. I was planning to use the Delta companion cert which requires a LUT fare. Then I checked online and this flight had been changed to a K fare. Is there any chance it comes back or should I just get a different LUT fare before those change as well?

avidflyer

My experience is that once they fill a certain bucket they do not open it back up unless something happens like AC change (bigger). Pull the trigger when you see sLUTE fares...#1 rule.

eheinz

My experience is very much the opposite ... literally just yesterday I bought a ticket on DL 31/30 on a date where the lowest available bucket had been bouncing around (per both expertflyer.com and test bookings on delta.com and Expedia) from U to Q to K to L to U (not necessarily in that order) throughout the day. When expertflyer showed L was available (as in M9 Q6 K1 L1) I tried to pull the trigger, couldn't get that on delta.com (surprise surprise), seemingly could on expedia, only to have it come back and reprice $200 higher. Then an 30 minutes later a single U seat showed as available, I called the DM line and got it ticketed as such.

Or to give another example, for a good six or eight months solid in 2011 you could not book a seat on DL 31 (SVO-JFK) for the last week of the year (a time of great demand on that route) for less than an M fare, even though the plane was pretty clearly half empty. Then starting in early December, when DL realized it just wasn't going to sell out at that price, Q and even K seats started becoming available.

Granted those examples were from international routes, but I've seen the same situation domestically. If DL's algorithms predict that a given flight won't sell out at the current fare, it is not uncommon for DL to reopen seats in a lower bucket. Of course there is no guarantee of this; and it's less likely to happen when you are talking about a flight that is still five or six weeks away. If the trip is semi-optional or you are flexible on dates, you can wait and see. Of course then you also risk that the flight will only get even more expensive, if the available buckets sell out as predicted by the algorithm (or faster). You also have to make sure that you don't wait so long that you can't abide by the applicable fare rules (which, however, are are lot more relaxed than they used to be ... even T doesn't necessarily entail an advanced purchase).

MSPeconomist

I've recently noticed CHI, which is very competitive right now, and DCA fares flipping around a lot. Neither market seems to just go up monotonically as the travel dates approach. In fact, I've been observing that these fares are very volatile right now. Fares also seem to be pricing as one ways, even for sLUT, which surprises me.

duke2013

The flight I was looking to book was DL1845 + DL1490 (DCA-DTW-LAS) on 3/2. Is there some way to confirm it did go from LUT to K in the past couple of days?

eheinz

experflyer is showing it as L9 U0 right now. I'd call Delta!

duke2013

Hmm...I called in and they said they do see the L availability but on the delta.com it shows only as K...

3Cforme

Certs call for round-trip fares while the OP contemplates open-jaw.

duke2013

Yeah just discovered that...will have to re-arrange my flights. I'm still confused as to delta.com and their phone agent telling me different fare classes though

FlyAO2

I've seen LUT fares open up many times later on.

Also, I have noticed on some segments (e.g. NY-MIA/FLL) that they will sometimes offer a round-trip T fare a few days out, if they are only selling H or Q fares since you're within a 3 day window

Dieuwer

Much simpler rule: fare @ 4 cpm or less? Buy!

robert4travels

Careful, if this is the AMEX companion cert, then availability of a LUT fare doesn't necessarily means that you can use your cert. If there are not LUT fares then for sure you can't use your cert though.

The only way to know for sure if you can actually use your cert is to check the special booking page on delta.com for certs.