EverywhereHome

I've been reading these forums (fora?) for months, now, and I've gotten a ton of good information out of them. By way of introduction, I'm a pidly little CO Silver, but it's all personal travel, so I'm still proud.

What I've been trying to do tonight is understand the routings on fare rules. I've looked at the primer pages and searched the archives and the web, and I haven't found a good explanation. As an example that I pulled up tonight, could anyone lend an idea of how to interpret the one below (for the record, I know what CO and the airport codes are)?

Thanks, and keep up the good work.


[This message has been edited by EverywhereHome (edited 04-25-2002).]

the-ca-goat

Well, I can't help too much with the routing, but I can tell you what cities the airport codes are for and more importantly that fora is the nominative plural form of the neuter Latin noun, forum.

anthonyanthony

It means you can depart "FROM" SJC, and optionally connect through one of LAS/PHX/SLC (but not more than one); and then next you can optionally connect through your choice of one of the 2 "VIA" routes (but not more than one), and then after that you must choose one of the 5 "TO" routes (but not more than one) to get you to your destination, DTT.

Within each of the "VIA" and "TO" routes, you of course have to follow the usual rules of only traversing the cities (separated by dashes) in order; you cannot connect through any cities not listed, and you cannot connect through a city twice unless you see it twice. You can skip cities, but remember you can't backtrack to it and use it later in the routing. And for those cities separated by slashes, you can only connect through your choice of one of those cities, or skip it altogether.

Since all cities are separated with -CO-, that means you can only fly on Continental flight numbers. But that does not rule out partner airlines (such as Northwest Airlines) with CO flight numbers (code-share).

Confusing, eh?

[This message has been edited by anthonyanthony (edited 04-26-2002).]

fly co to see the yanks

anthonyanthony: yes, but spectacular explanation. thx.

rgoel

anthonyanthony: that was fantastic! thanks a lot.

now if i may be permitted to ask a tangential question: let's say you are interested in making a reservation for your mileage run. Something like SJC-LAS-HOU-CLE-EWR-DTT. How do you go about making the actual reservation?

Do you:
1. Use an online booking engine? If so, which one? Also, wouldn't 6 segements prevent you from using Expedia, Travelocity, etc.?
2. Use a CO representative on the phone?
3. Use a travel agent?
4. Any other options?

Thanks.

fly co to see the yanks

i would think a good travel agent could definitely help you with something like this, not sure about the other options. sorry.

EverywhereHome

anthonyanthony -- excellent. Now my girlfriend will really be frustrated with how I book airline tickets. Thank you.

EverywhereHome

Hey, a related question -- is there any relationship between the fares listed in the fare rules (fare basis) and the fare charged? Right now I'm looking at QE7VIP (incidentally, the same one I listed the routing for, above), and it lists $240.00 plus $18.00 tax. When I pull it up on beta.itasoftware.com, I get $135.81 each way plus a bevy of taxes. Taxes aside, what's the relationship? Is the basis a minmum? I know it's what the airline gets, but how does that translate into an actual fare?

Broader question: is there a guide to fare rules? A book? I found the suggestion of a book on rec.travel.air, but record of it being published.

Thanks again.

[This message has been edited by EverywhereHome (edited 04-26-2002).]

EverywhereHome

Oh, I'm full of questions today. Why would an airline (CO) list a city in their routing to which they don't have direct service? CO can't get to SLC from SJC without going through HOU. But the routing says otherwise. I'm missing something.

keithguy

With the 6 segment thing, you can try and do this online by skipping the hubs, such as typing in SJC-IAH, IAH-EWR, EWR-DTW. If you get the times right, the website might return flights that have the connection you want built in.

As for the cities listed in the routing that CO doesn't serve direct... I've been told that part of it is for historical reasons (i.e. CO used to serve the route) or for the future (i.e. CO may serve the route in the future).

Otherwise, it's just a matter of being flexible and allow alternate routings so the fare is applicable on various connections even if the direct flight is sold out in that class of service.

paradocs

If I recall correctly there is a chapter in The Travel Detective that breaks down fare codes and such.

And ANTHONYANTHONY: thanks so much for that detailed explanation.

anthonyanthony

It sounds like the different prices you are getting is because the two travel sites you are checking simply have different prices for the same route/fare class. It's the same thing as when you find that Expedia might have a better price than Travelocity, or United has a better price than Orbitz, etc.

Another thing that might make the price different is that one site may have seats available in the Q class for that flight, but the other doesn't, which makes one site price out that specific flight at a higher rate than the other.

I don't know of a book. I learned everything I know from spending time here in Flyertalk.

anthonyanthony

As someone else pointed out, it's historical baggage. The airline served all those cities at one point, or planned to serve some of those cities at one point, but when flights got cancelled or the time changed in a way that made connections impossible, the routing tables didn't get updated. And of course CO may be thinking that they will re-establish the service in the future so leave the route table unaltered.

I personally think the airlines have a routing template that they "cut and paste" into many different routes. They don't actually check or care if the routes are possible, they simply slap in a template.

I'm guessing that, in your specific example, America West might have once had (or does have) a SJC-SLC flight, and CO had a code-share on it.

Also, the listing of cities like LAS/PHX in the above routing is for the benefit of allowing CO code-shares on America West (HP). But CO is about to sever their relationship with HP. I'll bet that they won't remove LAS/PHX from the routing immediately.

[This message has been edited by anthonyanthony (edited 04-26-2002).]

anthonyanthony

You can use a travel agent or airline phone agent, but I personally do not. They might regard you as a nuisance, since they get no higher commission for a complicated flight as they do a simple flight. However, some agents may be grateful for the business...but I wouldn't assume that.

I have on occasion used an airline agent to get a routing that I couldn't build on the Internet, especially when the next available flight was outside of the four hour connection rule.

If you want to use a travel agent or airline phone agent, I recommend that you do your homework first and find a valid flight routing before you call the agent. You want to spare the agent from having to spend alot of time ferreting out routes and availabilities for you.

Remember, in many cases there are cities in routings that are impossible to use because in many cases the flights were discontinued or the times were changed in such a way that you cannot make the connection within four hours.

So before you call a travel agent, make sure a flights exist that follow the rules:

1. Flights must connect within four hours.
2. The availability class you are booking must be available in all the flight segments you want for the day/times you want.

For most of my complex routings, I am able to successfully use the "Multiple Destinations" features of the many online travel sites. As has been pointed out, you don't have to enter every city into the routing...just leave out the hubs and other strategic cities, and let the site fill in the rest. It takes much tweaking to get it just right.

rgoel

anthonyanthony and keithguy - just wanted to say you guys are great. thanks for all the information. same to the others too. this stuff is really helpful for rookies like me.