Difference between R and RD fare class
 

Hello all:

I booked a domestic award ticket in first for two persons. When I paid the $20 fee via CC, the system responded that there was an error and to try again. But I got a confirmation email and the booking shows up on my delta account.

The two outbound segments shows First (RD) and the two return segments show First (R). What is the difference between R and RD. Is this possibly related to the error? Should I be concerned with the error message and call and confirm?

I searched for an explanation of R and RD but no luck!

Thanks!

R= First class award ticket/low miles
RD= First class award ticket/medium miles
RK = First class award ticket/high miles

Others
RU = First class upgrade

RU is FC free elite upgrade

RP is FC upgrade with miles or SWUs

To remember this, think P is for peso

Stuff like this might be good for the wiki... since aren't there additional buckets for the medallion inventory based on status such as RN etc?

Oh and LOL about the P :)

P could also stand for Program.

AFAIK there still are the inventory buckets for enhanced domestic coach awards for elite levels and maybe DL AmEx cardholders. There was a post listing the codes, perhaps by mersk862 several months ago.

There are from lowest to highest:
N
ND
NK

Then there are:

NT Diamond low
NP Platinum low
NG Gold low.
NM Silver low

Is there really AmEx low as some people thought they had observed a few months ago?

Also, please remind us of the low medium high codes for FC and BE award inventory.

Never seen it and there isn't another N class out there. I'll dig around and see what I find.

First/Biz
R/O - low
RD/OD - med
RK/OK - high

Thanks. This is what I would have guessed, but it's good to see it confirmed.

Yeah there aren't any inventory classes that exist other than what I put above. I'd assume people were correlating more MQMs = higher status = higher medallion low level award being shown.

One interesting thing is that the medallion awards will show up booked as N. They do bucket above N though.

However, ND and NK or RD/OD and RK/OK do appear at least on the receipt, right? I don't think this appears during the booking process, although if you search by segments for award inventory you figure it out. Also, if one segment is low and one medium, I assume the booking looks like RD followed by O (rather than OD) for example, so that if I later find R, I'm already holding the O on my PNR/ticket and I can just replace the RD by an R segment to get some miles refunded. Is this right?

I have an NP segment at the moment that shows as just ECONOMY (N) on the main itinerary view. However, on my receipt, it shows as NP. It would be helpful if these showed up somewhere in the booking process so that when you're looking for space to use to change an existing ticket you don't need to do the search both logged in and logged out. I've found that it's much easier to get agents to find the elite inventory if you tell them that's what they're looking for.

Correct.

Also correct. Works just like a revenue ticket where the cheapest fare for the two segments is a one way in each or if you booked two RT tickets. So if you booked Q on one leg and T on another, only the one you switch, changes. Same applies for O/R/N.

However I'm not sure how mileage refunds work so I can't speak to the specifics on that part.

I have an odd situation. I had an int'l business mileage flight that had a JFK-FLL leg in Coach because there was no availability.

JFK-MIA opened up in first and I called the agent to change the segment to that. She made a mistake an re-isused the ticket in first on the JFK-FLL (which was not available at the low level).

Shows up on the receipt as RD (which makes sense because it is a "medium" availability), but the mileage is still 120K - low.

Fare codes also show 60K each segment. Agent insists it is fine

do any of these fares below earn MQM's using the new rules of paying for a first class ticket and getting MQM's. Or is it technically not paying with miles so you don't earn mqms?

R= First class award ticket/low miles
RD= First class award ticket/medium miles
RK = First class award ticket/high miles

These are award tickets so they don't earn any miles.

I believe you're thinking of using pay with miles, which means purchasing a normal FC ticket, for instance, and then using some miles to reduce the price at a rate of approximately one cent per mile with some rounding. To do this you must have DL AmEx caredit card IIRC.

I think this may have changed.

I was looking at EF and am finding lots of flights with R/N/O availability via the EF search tool but they are only showing as standard when booking on DL.com. Could EF be lumping them all together (R, RN, RD) rather than showing just R availability?

AFAIK EF doesn't show award inventory for DL. Has this been changed recently?

I was surprised when I saw it this evening but EF seems to think it can show DL award space.

http://i.imgur.com/SWSfKdz.png
http://i.imgur.com/lVN9gUc.png

Of course, when you try to book that SLC-CDG flight on DL.com it comes up as "standard" and not "low".

I wonder if this is our back door into seeing SWU/miles upgrade inventory. Recall on the SWUs, instructions for travel agents were to book O class.

On some SkyTeam partners, low award and upgrade inventory are both class O.

That could be. The numbers I am seeing for "O" availability are higher than what people usually report of J award space.

Another thought might be that EF can't determine the sub-fare classes allocation and just lumps all O availability together. So in the example above, there may be a total of 7 in O but those are allocated like this:

O=0
OD=2
OK=3
OP=2

Well I found some flights that said upgrade available, but no O inventory on EF. So it doesn't seem to be for comp upgrades.