dealOCD

WHY the excessive price? Am I missing something I could be doing other than trying another airline stripped of any metal.

Initially looked at the price and it was around 480 then the next day it jumped to over 1k for this routing: depart ATL PVR 4/21 return PVR LAX 4/25

Meanwhile, booking friend RT ATL PVR was seeing 480 earlier but now still 530 main cabin nonstop or with a connection. So I could actually fly via LAX for that price but terminating at LAX is double the amount.

I can even do two one way tix it appears for less ATL PVR 476 PVR LAX 129!

So why is the multicity with LAX over double more when it’s the PVR LAX leg that seems priced low? FRUSTRATING and wondering if this is a sign I shouldn't be going to Puerto Vallarta

3Cforme

Some fare combinations require a round-trip or open jaw. (You don't have an open jaw.) That's very commonly the way it works with legacy airline pricing.

Buy the separate one-way tickets, or fly another airline.

xliioper

It's an open jaw, but the cheaper fare classes have the following restriction on combinability --

MILEAGE OF THE OPEN SEGMENT MUST BE EQUAL/LESS THAN MILEAGE OF THE SHORTEST FLOWN FARE COMPONENT

The open segment (ATL-LAX) is longer than the shortest fare component (PVR-LAX).

dilbertsdaddy

Because DL.dumb booking engine does not work for anything remotely out of the ordinary

Last May I flew ATL-AMS, AMS-CLT for $5K in J

If I added CLT-ATL (four day stopover in CLT) it went to $12K

So $7K to fly from CLT-ATL!!!!

MSPeconomist

This is a common requirement; in fact, I think of it as part of the definition of open jaw.

xliioper

It was almost certainly due to combinability restrictions on the J fare and had nothing to do with the booking engine. Same situation with OP.

dealOCD

7k beats my situation that is rediculous.

dealOCD

i guess in all my flying I’ve not come across this. I’ve recently done LAX to ATL and ATL to MCO and it was cheaper than RT LaX ATL. Well I knew I could learn something here.

xliioper

It's a common requirement of lower fare classes. In this case, everything B or lower has the language above in the combinability section while the Y fare does not. So OP needs to upfare to Y on outbound in order to combine fares.

dealOCD

Thanks. thought I would look into that. comes up as 2k.

xliioper

You are misunderstanding. It automatically upfares to a Y fare on the ATL-PVR segment in order to combine the two fares on a single ticket due to the fare rule combination requirements on open jaws. The only way to avoid the high-priced Y fare is to book the flights on separate tickets instead of trying to combine on a single ticket. If you use Google Flights to search for pricing on these multi-city itins, it will automatically tell you to book as separate tickets in these cases in order to get the cheaper price.

dealOCD

Thanks for the clarification. I actually did just happen upon that on google flights. ITA has been my go to but I like how google breaks this down. thanks!