Connecting Mint Flight / Mixed Fare Booking
 

Is there a way to book a connecting flight where the first flight only has coach but the second flight is in Mint? It seems like jetblue One-Way and Multi-City options both only let you book both flights in coach even if the mint flight is available on the long-haul (the short-hop is coach only).

To my knowledge, no. Called in and tried to book over the phone and the agent said it wasn’t possible.

Yes, it is possible. Just not on jetblue.com. See here. ;)

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...10d6da90af.png

Wow, seems like an epic fail on B6 IT department. Why would they not want to upsell the transcon segment ?

It's not that they don't want to, it's that this stuff is complicated. JetBlue only started offering more than one class of service in the last few years, and in the past, most of their flights were point-to-point. Offering mixed classes of service is more complex. For a big OTA like Priceline, they have had to support this sort of thing for many years with the big carriers (both domestic and international) to stay competitive. For JetBlue, mixed classes of service is probably an infinitesimal percentage of the requests they receive, hence it has either not hit their radar screens or it's down in the priority list. I can honestly think of at least 5 things off the top of my head that are broken on jetblue.com or blueinc.jetblue.com, so there is no lack of things on their to-do list.

It is possible if you call them, I've done it quite a few times for BOS->SFO->LAS. They generally have to recode the fare by hand, and charge any difference. Takes a good 10-30 minutes depending on the skill of the agent. Some will insist it isn't possible, just push back, it is.
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They usually always express suprise when the upfare vs all coach is $100 or so. Nice to watch the fares!

Not sure what you mean by this? Are you saying that if BOS-SFO-LAS in coach was $250, then you got BOS-SFO-LAS in Mint/coach for only $350? That would be quite a deal, and is probably not typical. Mint fares may have been abnormally low for your routing. If you can duplicate this today, I'm a buyer. :D

That would be interesting indeed. I would have guessed that the Priceline cost would have been the combined price of the two legs.

I might have called about a mixed cabin award ticket. Does anybody know if that's possible? Considering redemption prices are linked to revenue prices I would guess it is.

Ah sorry, alas I wasn't that lucky. The coach fare was closer to $450, with $100 ish or so for the upfare on a cheaper mint flight.

However checking some routing, it appears that some flights are now bookable in mixed classes, for instance PHL to BOS to LAS, shows a priced mint fare now!

Not sure the amount of development work involved, but seems like Jetblue is throwing money away by not pricing J class flights where the shorter leg is in Y.

Just trying some combo's now on google flights. PIT to SAN
https://www.google.com/flights/#sear...;sc=b;a=B6;s=1
a couple of flights show up when looking from J pricing, but it doesn't let you book that on JetBlue website.
same with PIT to LAX and PIT to SFO.
https://www.google.com/flights/#sear...;a=B6;s=1;eo=e

PHL/DCA to SFO/LAX looks to have pricing on Jetblue website, but it's actually so much more than buying legs individually.

If they plan to fly to Europe at some point, they really should get this ready for mixed class pricing ready for combos like DTW/DCA/ORD/PIT to London via BOS.

FWIW, the issue is that combinability doesn't always work.

BlueInc will sell it just fine (that 9 Jan PIT-BOS-LAX trip prices at $680) but the combination thing on the main shopping view is challenged at the very least. My understanding is that they're working on it.

The problem is that there may not be a connecting Mint fare filed for those two city pairs, and the system won't sell you a mixed cabin broken fare. Revenue management needs to manually file a fare in order to make it bookable on one ticket on JetBlue's system. OTAs may be able to plate the broken fare, but you lose out on the points bonus for booking direct.

I see no Mint fares for most of the connecting city pairs I looked at. E.g. DCA-SEA has no Mint fare filed, though there are obvious B6 routings via JFK and BOS. Odd! What do you make of that?

Even where mint fares are filed, they are sometimes totally uncompetitive. Example: PHL-LAS, an example mentioned upthread, has an I fare at $1154 one-way. Obviously PHL-BOS coach plus BOS-LAS Mint would cost much less.

What is JetBlue thinking here?

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SBM12 attributed the problem to combinability. One might imagine the Jetblue.com site failing to combine dffering fare types, and OTAs able to do so. When that happens, what is the consequence? That Jetblue.com can't sell the mixed-cabin ticket at all? Or that it quotes a needlessly-high price?

That means that there's an Economy fare published, but not a Mint fare. As odd as that sounds, it's not at all unusual even on other airlines.

They're thinking that maybe they can get someone with deep pockets who doesn't know or care that booking separately would cost less. In addition to this, back when that example was posted, BOS-LAS was often priced at $1099 one way in Mint, so $1154, although normally an unreasonable fare, makes sense.

JetBlue.com can't sell the mixed cabin ticket without a through-fare. I think it might have to do with their implementation of Sabre or their implementation of Mint, because if you call in, their agents can't plate the ticket either. The consequence of this is that you'd have to go through an OTA who would plate the broken fares, possibly on another carrier's ticket stock, and you'd only earn the 3 base points per $ spent, with no bonus. If it were bookable on JetBlue.com, you'd receive at least another 3 points per $ for booking directly through JetBlue.

JetBlue often publishes "needlessly high prices" because they think someone will pay it. When that doesn't work out, they will lower the price.

I'm sure they're working on the combinability issues, because they know they're leaving money on the table if they don't.

There are two "combinability" issues in play. One is related to mixing coach and Mint inventory where a fare is published. The other is the problem of not having a through-fare published. The former is slightly addressed via the BlueInc portal as it is a different search engine in play. The latter is not currently being solved on any systems AFAIK.

And not that it really matters, but the DCA-SEA example provided above can only connect over BOS; there is no DCA-JFK service on JetBlue.