SiestaMan

Forgive me if this has been covered before.
So I fly pretty much only First and my base is SRQ. This year, I started noticing that First was showing "sold out" on MANY dates and destinations. For example, on a trip from LAX to SRQ on April 13, 11 out of 14 flights indicated "sold out" in First. But when I looked at the individual segments, ALL of the flights were available in First. Revenue Management is of course the culprit, but I don't see that booking the individual segments is really more expensive. So why are they doing this? (Revenue, obviously, duh) My risk booking individual segments is, of course, if the first flight is delayed, I'm screwed on missing the second flight. Conversations with DL were not satisfactory. In fact, they were infuriating. Everyone you talk to says the "revenue management" folks are Gods, to hell with customer experience.
Any suggestions?

BravoZulu

If you found that the individual legs are comparable to the point to point fare, have you tried booking it as a multi-city (rather than a round trip) and select each leg that you want? If that's possible, then it would still be a single PNR.

mfFrom35K

mfFrom35K

Haven't tried multicity on these. Will try next time but price will likely be much higher than other routings which is likely the whole point as Delta is protecting O&D between SNA and ATL.

GagaPilot

I’m seeing the same thing trying to book ANC-ECP many months out in F. I have an upcoming trip in May in F on the same route that I booked last summer. It even shows “Sold Out” as well. Glad I booked it when I did!

3Cforme

Delta thinks they'll make more money selling F SRQ-ATL-XXX or YYY-ATL-LAX vs. SRQ-ATL-LAX. You're not going to change their thinking on this. They've got two decades of playing with married segments. You're right, separate tickets are a poor idea. Multi-city might work, at a premium.

Look at flying out of TPA. Look at another airline.

SiestaMan

Nope, the multi-city approach didn't work. And the fares quoted were astronomical, and didn't even include the flights I wanted.
For the time being, I'm booking separate segments and hoping for successful connections. If one fails, I'll try and escalate - I'm sure to no luck.

ATOBTTR

CPMaverick

It's pretty nuts that they will just not sell F. You'd think it would make sense to just price it accordingly. They might get people to bite.

Pianoman109876

Any luck trying to book this with Google flights or something like Expedia? Sometimes they have access to routings that Delta . com doesn’t have.

ethernal

Agreed. To me this looks like an outright failure by RM with broken fares. Price above what you think you can get from other products (routes) and, worst case, no one buys them, best case, you end up making more than expected from alternative routes. I'm very disappointed by the response of Delta reservation agents to this problem. This should be escalated and fixed.

Agree that two separate tickets is probably the way to go. Since they are both on Delta, they will likely cover you in IRROPS anyways, especially with a paid F ticket.

pvn

I saw this last week with flights between MEM-SFO and v/v. I was still able to SDC to a routing that was showing "sold out".

rylan

I've seen this on several routes as well. Pretty frustrating when you actually want to buy a first class ticket but can't. Oh and then it shows up available for miles also but not for cash. And you can buy the coach ticket and check your itin later and you'll probably see the 'buy up' offer for each segment to F.

MSPeconomist

If multicity doesn't work, a good real live human travel agent might be able to put the segments you want together on a ticket with broken fares, assuming that the fare rules don't forbid this.

Otherwise, multicity now seems to refuse to show itineraries where the time for connections (four dhours domestic, twenty-four hours international) isn't exceeded. Every airport you list separately needs to be a genuine stopover and not just a "connection" in order to use separate fare components.

Mr. Tickets

The TA will likely have the same issues, but if they are successful selling something Delta does not want done, the TA is subject to a debit memo for the fare difference and a "fine" for doing it. I doubt they would risk it.
They are bound by the rules of married segment logic and Delta audits each and every ticket they issue.