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Married Segment Logic - DL vs Priceline

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Married Segment Logic - DL vs Priceline

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Old Sep 13, 2017, 8:13 pm
  #16  
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Originally Posted by LBJ
Well gee, now that you've ticketed it you can tell us what you were looking at.
MOB-BRU Dec 26th (DL U)
BRU-OSL Dec 28th (KL T)
OSL-AMS Jan 1st (KL T)
AMS-PIT Jan 2nd (DL U)

Multiple itineraries pop up for $1276 on ITA, Priceline, Delta, etc.

1) It will not book on DL.com (it took 1.5 hours for them to magically make it happen for me today)
2) There is clearly not a lack of inventory or change in pricing as this has been available for days.
3) It is not a consolidator fare as it is available everywhere.

Echoing others above, how is something bookable on other OTA's and not with Delta? Even if it was ticketed on cached data last night by Priceline (if that is indeed something that happens)...wouldn't that have been updated by now?
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Old Sep 13, 2017, 10:05 pm
  #17  
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Doesn't delta.dumb guarantee the lowest fare if the exact flights and fare classes are the same? The loophole seems to be that DL won't give you the same fare class inventory that other channels sometimes can.
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Old Sep 14, 2017, 9:04 am
  #18  
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Originally Posted by pgh234
MOB-BRU Dec 26th (DL U)
BRU-OSL Dec 28th (KL T)
OSL-AMS Jan 1st (KL T)
AMS-PIT Jan 2nd (DL U)

Multiple itineraries pop up for $1276 on ITA, Priceline, Delta, etc.

1) It will not book on DL.com (it took 1.5 hours for them to magically make it happen for me today)
2) There is clearly not a lack of inventory or change in pricing as this has been available for days.
3) It is not a consolidator fare as it is available everywhere.

Echoing others above, how is something bookable on other OTA's and not with Delta? Even if it was ticketed on cached data last night by Priceline (if that is indeed something that happens)...wouldn't that have been updated by now?

Definitely looks to be a married segment issue on the return flights. While KL flights OSL-AMS on 1/1 have T bucket standalone, and DL 47/4075 have U bucket standalone, however when married, there is no availability. It looks like ITA currently sees this and is now pricing correctly. DL fare search is still confused and appears to be using individual bucket inventory to price. It's when you go to purchase the fares that delta.com validates inventory on married segments and discovers it does not actually exist.
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Last edited by xliioper; Sep 14, 2017 at 9:11 am
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Old Sep 14, 2017, 9:28 am
  #19  
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Originally Posted by LBJ
Definitely looks to be a married segment issue on the return flights. While KL flights OSL-AMS on 1/1 have T bucket standalone, and DL 47/4075 have U bucket standalone, however when married, there is no availability. It looks like ITA currently sees this and is now pricing correctly. DL fare search is still confused and appears to be using individual bucket inventory to price. It's when you go to purchase the fares that delta.com validates inventory on married segments and discovers it does not actually exist.
Interesting - when I built this in ITA it came up with the $1276 price mentioned in the OP. The underlying fares are:
Fare 1: Carrier DL ULXB75US MOB to OSL (rules)
Passenger type ADT, round trip fare, booking code U, T
Covers MOB-ATL (Economy), ATL-BRU (Economy), BRU-AMS (Economy), AMS-OSL (Economy)
$524.00
Fare 2: Carrier DL UKXB75US OSL to PIT (rules)
Passenger type ADT, round trip fare, booking code T, U
Covers OSL-AMS (Economy), AMS-JFK (Economy), JFK-PIT (Economy)
$345.00
Priceline can book it for a bit more $1282 (includes $7 Priceline ticketing fee). I didn't go through the ticketing process on Priceline so can't seem to see the fare basis but I got ever indication that it would ticket.
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Old Sep 14, 2017, 9:55 am
  #20  
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When I tried I Priceline, I could only get that price with all KL coded flights and KL fares. I could not get the price with DL fares. Does your ITA DL fares have the exact same flights and marketing carriers as the flights I listed? Using different marketing carriers can change availability.
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Old Sep 14, 2017, 10:11 am
  #21  
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Originally Posted by LBJ
When I tried I Priceline, I could only get that price with all KL coded flights and KL fares. I could not get the price with DL fares. Does your ITA DL fares have the exact same flights and marketing carriers as the flights I listed? Using different marketing carriers can change availability.
Same flight numbers (I specified them in the ITA search).

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Old Sep 14, 2017, 10:31 am
  #22  
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That's Priceline's listing. What did you see on ITA and how did you specify the search. I did MOB-BRU + BRU-OSL + OSL-AMS + AMS-PIT. Also, were you able to get those directly on Priceline (without first starting on ITA). When I start at Priceline, I cannot get the above fares.
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Old Sep 14, 2017, 11:10 am
  #23  
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Originally Posted by LBJ
That's Priceline's listing. What did you see on ITA and how did you specify the search. I did MOB-BRU + BRU-OSL + OSL-AMS + AMS-PIT. Also, were you able to get those directly on Priceline (without first starting on ITA). When I start at Priceline, I cannot get the above fares.
Here is what I did in ITA:

And the results:


I used BookWithMatrix to pull into Priceline.

Last edited by TTT; Sep 14, 2017 at 7:55 pm
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Old Sep 14, 2017, 7:31 pm
  #24  
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Thanks LBJ and TTT for the discussion. I am still getting the $1276 fare on ITA. I just put in "/ alliance skyteam" in the advanced box to get all of the options in multi-city. Still bookable on Priceline too (though, from BookWithMatrix)
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Old Sep 14, 2017, 7:53 pm
  #25  
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Originally Posted by pgh234
Thanks LBJ and TTT for the discussion. I am still getting the $1276 fare on ITA. I just put in "/ alliance skyteam" in the advanced box to get all of the options in multi-city. Still bookable on Priceline too (though, from BookWithMatrix)
I too used BookWithMatrix.

Thanks for the tip on / alliance skyteam. I didn't know that was a function in ITA.^
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Old Sep 15, 2017, 4:42 am
  #26  
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I used DL+ and KL+ in the advanced search codes to specify between the flights rather than the actual flight numbers. Very odd that ITA came up with different bucket availability simply based on specifying the actual flight numbers even though it came up with the exact same flights. You said you were able to book it on Priceline? So did you book and cancel it? It seems odd that Priceline doesn't seem to come up with these fares when you search directly there -- it only came up with KL fares and flight codings for me.

Last edited by xliioper; Sep 15, 2017 at 5:24 am
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Old Sep 15, 2017, 5:22 am
  #27  
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Well, I retried using flight numbers and still get L fare on the return. Expert Flyer also verified there is only L bucket available on DL4075 when married with DL 47.
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Old Sep 15, 2017, 8:24 am
  #28  
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Originally Posted by LBJ
Well, I retried using flight numbers and still get L fare on the return. Expert Flyer also verified there is only L bucket available on DL4075 when married with DL 47.
It's possible whatever caching was going on has been resolved. I too am now only getting the higher fare on the return (L) when searching in ITA.

I never did ticket via Priceline but I got to the last step without any indication that it wouldn't ticket (in the past, Priceline has thrown an exception earlier in the process if it wasn't able to ticket a reservation).
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