Fare Class Inquiry
 

I recently did a RT from YYZ-HNL earlier this month and paid a premium price for 3 tickets under the same itinerary to be in first class. I expected the 150% MQM for paying for first but when I checked my account history it lists Class Paid/Flown as "U/A". My itinerary after booking showed A seating for all the itineraries and my tickets all had A class.

When I contacted Delta customer service about this I waited for more than 30 minutes on hold while they were trying to figure out what happened. The rep contacted 5 people above her but ended up saying they would contact me in 3 days to make a decision. The rep said the people that have the power to grant MQM felt uncomfortable doing it until they investigate. Is it common that you can book a U class and have all your itinerary say A because I did not know what class I booked into?

It has been about 5 days so I will contact them tomorrow to get an update on the status. My account history still does not reflect 150% MQM.

Please advise.

Look at the fare code on your ticket and then check the fare rules. While a U-UP fare is a theoretical possibility, if you had a cheap U fare, the upgrade and booking as A class might have been a mistake. In that case, you would not deserve/get the extra MQMs because you did not purchase an A fare or any other fare class that is eligible for the 150% MQMs.

An A class fare is likely to have the letters UP in the fare code and have a statement in the beginning of the fare rules that this is a FC fare but is valid for coach if FC inventory isn't available on the flight.

I think I was confused when booking the tickets since I did not look up the anything and just searched on delta.com for first/business instead of economy and booked the flights. Everything looked fine until I finished the flights and looked at the account history and it showed "U/A". If I had known there was not 150% MQM then I would have probably just flown economy that cost much less when I checked at time of booking. I was surprised it said U/A because I thought a U-class was Coach only. The two other passengers on my itinerary have no medallion status but I guess they are considered companion medallion since I am gold. The flight was YYZ-ATL-HNL-ATL-YYZ all A seating.

Do you think this is worth pursuing with Delta?

Thanks.

When you purchase a FC ticket in A or P class, usually the underlying fare is something like H K K, perhaps B for a refundable P ticket, but miles post with class paid/class flown showing as A/A or P/P IME, not H/A or B/P unless an agent has to force the booking into A or P to issue a boarding pass.

You cannot upgrade two companions, only one (for any elite level), and A or P fares give FC seating even if the passenger isn't elite. So the status of you and others has nothing to do with this.

Double Post

So if I understand you, I booked under a fare type U-UP which I did not know was technically possible. I found my tickets and they list the fare to be UA14UWNQ and I did a google search which resulted in this flyertalk posting:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/archive/t-1351123.html

Coincidentally, I booked near the same timing as the posting in the link.

Thanks.

I have this issue on a weekly basis- sometimes on A fares that are first class fares booked in A to begin with, other times and more often this happens when I initially book amd economy class ticket and chamge my mind within 24 hours of booking and pay the fare difference to buy up to first.

Most often agents will try to tell me that my tickets were upgraded even though they are paid first fares.

I spend half an hour a week on the phone trying to resolve these type of issues. But it comes out to be 3-4K MQMs/ month so its worth it.

This link--don't know why it's an archived post rather than just a thread in this forum--seems to be about a broken fare with a coach segment in U and a FC segment in A, nnot a U-UP fare. Moreover, your fare code doesn't look like an -UP fare, although not all -UP fares have UP in the fare code and some fare codes containing the letters UP might not be -UP fares; it looks like a special deep discount fare that is a response to a WN fare.

If the receipt and boarding passes show A and the OP flew in first class, does it matter if it was a mistake? I think the OP definitely deserves the extra MQMs, regardless of what the fare rules state. I would write a letter or call and not give up until the MQMs are posted. Please keep us updated OP.

It depends. If the OP purchased a U fare that was not a U-UP, then miles should be based on the fare class U that was purchased, thus 100%. If the OP really purchased an A fare (something-UP), then the 150% MQM should be credited. The U/A on the account makes it ambiguous IMO, not having seen the OP's receipt or and screenshots from the booking session.

All of my A fares show up in my account as:
Class Paid/Flown : Q/A (or whatever the fare basis is, maybe K/A or H/A etc)

I also have a line showing:
Delta 50% Class of Service Bonus for UP fares

If you selected first on the website, then you should get the bonus miles and MQM for the A fare. There is no such thing as an actual 'A' fare basis... they are all comprised of some sort of UP basis. Same with P, except those are usually the fare basis with a WNUP designator attached on, which occurs when there is either no inventory left in the A bucket and/or no -UP fares that would book into A. Note that I've seen a fare on one or two occasions where it doesn't explicitly have UP in the fare since they run out of room for characters and just has a U in the middle instead.

Was one of your legs on an RJ with no first class? That could help confuse the system. Other thing is that U fare basis could be some special that was being run that the awesome IT system couldn't handle correctly.

The devil is always in the details. OP's post specifically says he purchased a ticket "to fly in First Class," not, "I purchased an F ticket." His entitlement is based on the rules of the fare basis he chose to purchase, not the class of service where his seat was located.

This is easily resolved with a call to DL with the 5-character fare basis in hand. DL is good about unraveling this stuff, but will stand tough if it wrong.
(Not because DL CS is great, but because DL doesn't really care about handing out this stuff since they just increase the redemption requirements every time there's too many on its books).

Are there U-UP fares? I thought UP fares typically were only Q, no?

Lowest I've ever seen filed was a L-UP, although I could never get the booking system to give it to me. I've had a couple K-UPs before.

I've seen H Q K and some M as A fares and H M and B for P fares, with B generally becoming refundable P, almost as expensive (within about 20%) as full F.