Quick question here, I had a nonstop IAD-ATL ticket 2 weeks ago in economy. I same day confirmed as a Gold from IAD-MSP-SFO-ATL, all in economy, and I was upgraded to Comfort+ at the gate on all three flights.

I'm trying to do the same thing for tomorrow's flight, but this ticket is a First Class (P) fare. They are saying it's not allowed and they're giving me a lot of grief over it.

Is there something I'm missing about the same day confirmed? I understand I can't take a connecting flight to turn it into a nonstop, but I wasn't aware of there being any rules for making a nonstop into a connecting flight.

Any suggestions or experiences with this?

Thanks so much!!!!

The answer is simple, actually . . . .

You got very lucky the first time.

Same day confirms, are supposed to be onto valid routings for the fare that you purchased, but, agents sometimes don't seem to care, and may simply give you the flights you feed them. SURELY, IAD to ATL fares wouldn't allow a routing via MSP and SFO.

Nice MQM run, though!

SDC typically requires a valid routing between origin and destination, and I don’t know of any fare rules for IAD<—>ATL that allow SFO as a valid connecting point

Everybody would be a Diamond if they let you turn a 534 mile journey into a 4,636 mile journey at a whim.

This is specifically covered in the Contract of Carriage in the Same Day Confirm section --

"D. The new flight(s) must be for the same origin/destination; a change from nonstop to connecting flights is allowed only if the connecting point is permitted based on the fare rules;"

Agents have every right to deny such requests.

since all posters seem only interested in calling you out for adding connections to your flight I will address the question asked about SDC with a first class fare.

You can SDC to any new flight that is a valid routing as long as there is at least 1 seat available in the First cabin. Same fare class is not needed like it is in economy.

If you get push back on this from delta agent hang up and call again. I don't have time to find the link but there is clear language on delta .com explaining this SDC rule for first class pax.
Quick search I'm sure you can find it easily.

Good luck

However the routing was the issue. Why shouldn't that be the point of the answers. There was no confusion on the other part.

Thanks for the replies everyone! This is still rather new to me. I'm a corporate pilot, and my company buys my tickets to and from work. I was with the airlines for 8 years, so I've always been able to jumpseat and non-rev anywhere I wanted to go. I've only had to worry about this stuff for the past two years.

The routing does seem to be the issue. I had two agents tell me since it was a nonstop IAD-ATL ticket, the SDC flight ALSO had to be a nonstop. I said that wasn't true, and I can most certainly add a connection (I don't think you can turn a connection into a nonstop though), and I asked her to send me through MSP or JFK just to get the point across to her. She wanted to charge me a $200 change fee and a difference in fare! They tell me what I want to do is against the rules, however when I ask them specifically which rule is broken, I'm just told what I want to do isn't allowed. I call BS considering it was just done two weeks ago.

If they want to have all these convoluted rules and fares, I expect the agents to know them, particularly if they expect me to know them.

So I suppose the proper question seems to be what constitutes a "valid" routing? And what is the easiest way for us to determine that?

Your fare rules contain the valid routings. Sadly after purchase there's no easy way to see the rules.

Thanks for the replies and the friendly questions.

The valid routing is determined by the specific fare you purchase. It usually has a code of letters and numbers. Part of the fare is the fare rules - and it is within these rules that valid connecting points with the fare would be listed.

To see these before purchase, on the trip summary page on DL.com, the small text at the bottom of the page has a link to the fare rules. You can also view them on sites like ITA Matrix. After purchase, unless you have an EF subscription or other service that allows you access to historical fares - you will have to take the agent's word.

If you don't want to do read all that - or its after purchase - just search DL.com for the route and look at connecting options. If it isn't a broken fare, the routings on that page would generally be valid for that route and will give you an idea of what agents would find acceptable.

You can tell if its broken if there are different fare buckets used for different segments, or on the trip summary page, the aforementioned fare rules link would list more than one fare code for each direction of your trip.

In practice - many agents would be ok with IAD-XXX-ATL, with XXX being a hub on the eastern half of the US. They probably wouldn't even check the fare rules.

But criss crossing the US twice to go IAD to ATL would likely make many verify the valid routings - and that's where you got stuck (DL doesn't even use SFO for connections - I've only ever seen BOS-SFO-SEA once and nothing else).

OP - Here are the routing rules for a random F fare I pulled for next weej IAD-ATL (LA7NX0FB)

JFK may be an issue since they only run CRJ 50 seaters between IAD-JFK.

Easiest way to find a valid routing is to buy a dummy ticket. A quick look shows both JFK and DTW as an option to buy. You may have issues with JFK for reasons I posted earlier.

Being able to buy a ticket doesn't mean anything. It can be a broken fare.

Valid routings for a fare can be found on Experflyer. FYI, all currently published fares for IAD-ATL require non-stop routings, so adding a connection is in fact prohibited by these fares. As others have already indicated, you just got very lucky on your first trip and the agent simply ignored the routing rules on your fare.

PUBLISHED RTG WAS-ATL/DL501 /TAR-DRG1 EF-27OCT17 DIS-INDEF
TRAVEL MUST BE NONSTOP OR DIRECT

You can mostly divine valid routings by simply doing a fare search on delta.com and see which routings are offered as a single fare. The fact that a fare search on IAD-ATL shows only single fares for the non-stop routings (all options that involve a connection show broken fare combinations that consist of multiple fares) is a pretty strong indication that the published fares on this route do not permit connections. In some cases, the cheapest fares will require non-stop routings, while the more expensive fares permit connections. Below is an example of a search for DTW-MIA. You can see that the cheapest fares are only offered on the non-stop routing (V fares), while the options that have connections are still a single fare, they are a higher fare class (U fares). A search on ExpertFlyer verifies that V/X/T fares require non-stop routing for the route and only U or higher fares permit connections.

All of this information is incredibly useful!!! Thank you all so much for the help with this! It's still like a foreign language to me, but I hope I'll be able to learn it over time!