Seat Inventory and Pricing
 

I am having problems purchasing tickets for a fare I found on ITA. I get the following American Airlines itinerary after doing a multi-city search:

7/27 AAA-BBB (connection)
7/27 BBB-CCC (redeye, connection)
7/28 CCC-DDD

7/30 DDD-EEE (connection)
7/30 EEE-FFF (connection)
7/30 FFF-AAA

All connections are under 4 hours, my routing appears to be valid. I am being vague on the exact cities because there seems to be limited availability for the fare I want and I don't want someone to play around with the specific itinerary and take away the seat.

ITA prices this out with a W fare code from AAA-DDD and S fare code from DDD-AAA. Same with AA.com. However, when I try to book, AA.com complains the fare goes up (or back down) and I get stuck in some sort of endless loop where the fare keeps changing and I'm unable to book.

If I search on ITA using the roundtrip form instead of multicity, and select the exact same flights, it prices out at the L fare outbound and W fare return. When I speak to an AA.com representative, the lowest price they could book involved a W fare on the outbound and V fare on the return, which is $75 more than the lowest price on ITA. I suspect that at AA, they are checking inventory is based on the whole outbound and similarly, return trips at one time (AAA-BBB-CCC-DDD), instead of checking availability for segments individually (AAA-BBB BBB-CCC CCC-DDD).

Will a savvy agent (any agent, not limited to AA) be able to construct this routing for me and obtain it at the lower price? Or is selecting inventory by segment somehow prohibited by the booking tools? I've already tried Orbitz, Expedia, Travelocity, CheapTickets, but have not had any luck.

Segment availability won't price, unless you want to pay a sum of all the local fares. Any "savvy" agent that has the ability to force this risks getting debit memos (charged for it) audits, and potential loss of ability to ticket AA.

Thanks for the quick response, and the information -- exactly what I was looking for. I guess I'll end up booking it at the fare that AA quoted me.

You can search here for "married segments" or "journey control" for more information on this phenomenon. However, I am surprised that you could not use Orbitz to book a fare seen on ITA. Usually, Orbitz can book most things that can be found on ITA.

Okay. I was able to get Orbitz to pull up that fare. I had to enter in the multi-city query exactly as I did on ITA.

Resolution: I called AA.com Web Services again to point out their system was not letting me make a reservation. I mentioned that I was able to pull the fare up on Orbitz for the lower price, gave them the fare basis, and the kind lady was able to get that fare as well, fare basis and all. :)