PHXflier

I noticed a more than $200 difference in PHX-ATL round trips between leaving on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday vs. leaving on a Sunday or Monday and coming back after 4 days or so. This is independent of the week one flies. The requirement of Saturday night stayovers for halfway decent fares on domestic had been eliminated quite a few years ago, but it seems Delta is testing the waters to see whether they can revive this requirement and have business travelers pay through the nose. Right now I noticed it just for PHX-ATL; hope it does not spread....

Mountain Explorer

Did you try booking it as 2 one-ways? If you get the same price then it's not a Saturday stayover, it's just some days are more expensive than others.

PHXflier

Two one ways with a Sat/Sun night in between are as expensive as a round-trip without a Sat/Sun night, so the Sat/Sun night stayover gives you a discount on a RT ticket.

scooby101

After you've selected the flights but before payment, scroll to the GENERAL CONDITIONS OF PURCHASE section at the bottom of the page and click on "Fare Rules, Change & Cancellation Policies" and it'll show you any minimum stay requirements for the selected flights. You're right that a round trip ATL-PHX-ATL from Tue-Thu has different fare rules than Thu-Sun, and that it has to do with Saturday. This is also true between ATL and JFK but not, say, SFO and JFK.

sydneyracquelle

If you fly the same route frequently switch your bookings to ATL > PHX roundtrip over the weekend (i.e. a Monday to Thursday roundtrip each week becomes a Thursday to Monday roundtrip in the opposite direction). This has saved me a ton of money over the years and it doesn’t breach any CoC rules if you use them in order.

xliioper

Domestic fares with roundtrip booking and min stay requirements have become rarer over the years with the rise of LCCs like B6 and WN who don't have them (AS, although considered a legacy, also doesn't have them). But they have remained prevalent on DL out of hostage hubs like DTW and MSP with not much LCC competition (DL doesn't really even try to match ULCC fares). PHX having a large WN presense sees far fewer domestic DL fares with roundtrip booking/min stay requirements. PHX-ATL is an exception due to DL dominance on route and hub on ATL end. Domestic fare filings are symmetric.

On PHX-ATL, the cheapest roundtrip fares (XFVNH3MF) have Tue/Wed/Sat flight requirements (these are $418.20 roundtrip in Main). There's another roundtrip fare filing for slightly more (XFVNA5MF) that also allows Mon/Thu flights. There's yet another one (TFXNA0ME) that has no day of travel requirements. The AP requirements are pretty lengthy (21 days for the X fares and 45 days for the T fare). These are just the cheapest roundtrip fare filings (there are numerous other ones). The min stay requirements on these are fairly complex (it's not as simple as just a Saturday night stay and you can potentially book them for flights with a Satuday return without staying overnight on a Saturday). The min stay requirements found on delta.com (below) are only partial listings (the full section found on EF is actually much, much longer). The fifth position in fare basis code on domestic fares indicate day of travel requirements -- 3=Tue/Wed/Sat, 5= Mon/Tue/Wed/Thu/Sat, 0=no day of travel restrictions.



The cheapest one-way Main fares on PHX-ATL are UAWQA0ML fares for $319.10 one way. These have a 30 day AP. When the 2nd position in fare basis code is an A, there are no roundtrip booking requirements (you'll notice above that the fares with roundtip booking requirements all have an F in 2nd position). The 3rd position is used for the AP requirements on fare. X=45 days, W=30 days, V=21 days, U=14 days, 7=7 days, 3=3 days, 0=0 days.

PHXflier

Thanks so much for your detailed answer, xliioper! The good thing is that WN and AA do not have these limitations, and together they have about as many non-stop flights on the PHX-ATL route as DL does, so there are many alternatives to DL's "premium" fare offerings that are well above historic averages. Maybe DL is trying this out on some routes to see what the business traveler market will (or will not) support in the post-pandemic era?

pt360

That is such a good breakdown. Is there an index or something that has those broken down, xliipoer? I would love a quick reference guide to the fares and rules and builds when I'm shopping on ITA for example.

xliioper

Again, these domestic roundtrip fares aren't new at all out of hostage hubs like DTW and MSP. They had limited roundtrip fares on PHX-ATL going back at least a year. August 25th of last year was when they updated PHX-ATL fare filings so that the cheapest fares had a roundtrip booking requirement (as identified by min/max stay column and 'F' in second position of fare basis code). The roundtrip booking requirements w/Sat night stay are a classic fare discrimation tactic which target the less price sensitive business flyers who generally avoid staying over a Saturday night on their business trips.

xliioper

If you have an ExpertFlyer account, it's pretty straightfoward to study the fare basis codes and fare rules and figure out which positions in the fare basis codes correlate with particular fare rule requirements found in the fare rules.

6P&E

The average Delta agent can't decipher the fare rules. So how is the average traveler?

"If the first leg of the itinerary is less than one third of the quotient of the remaining fare minus the government imposed security fee, the entire fare becomes non-refundable unless travel commences on a Thursday before 1700 GMT in which case the fare basis XNTQPRS applies and partial refund is permitted as per Rule 401."

xliioper

There are parts that are challenging, but day/time travel requirements, advance purchase, and minimum stay are pretty straightforward (anything with a min stay section definitionally has a roundtrip booking requirement).

pt360

Yea, that's my issue. Even as I debate buying EF, their Facebook login function still was broken last time I checked so I can't even log in!

I wish there was some type of Sheet or something that would have a breakdown similar to the way you did it. Here is each section of the Fare Basis, here is the potential value, and here is what it means.