You must be avoiding the queen's fee. And since I already have the "base" base fare available on select dates, must it be a routing trick?

May be not the same restaurant!

Yes, you must be correct. I should have been more specific.

I’m new to this but I found my first ‘trick’ fare and accompanying FD. Doesn’t save much but more of a proof of concept for me.

I like to fly in J for long flights. Are these fares easier or harder to dump than Y fares? Any different strategies to use when searching?

J is no harder to dump but the potential savings are generally much smaller. For example JFK-MAD might have a $1.50 base fare in Y but a $1500 base fare in J. They are likely to have the same amount of fat that can be dumped.

Price is US$243.37 All-in R/T C1 - C3
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I am flying the X factor this afternoon, so no waste

Not sure if this is allowed to be asked here, but can you reduce YQ on BA by more than 40% (which is the best I’ve found)? Not expecting to be handed anything on a silver platter, would just be nice to know if it’s worth it to keep looking.

Not sure which C1-C3 you are referring to but price of the one I posted about awhile ago is down to $181.72 on special OTA with the original construction
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Definitely dumpable, too. Same logic as with Y fares. The discount fares are usually a bit more restrictive in terms of combinability or routing - so just like the discount Y fares.
Great savings can well be achieved, which may even be proportionally higher than for a Y fare, because several carriers charge significantly higher YQ for J than for Y fares. The absolute total, however, may still be more than an ordinary Y ticket.
Logic is still the same: look for low base fares and high fat. There is occasionally extremely low bf for J tickets out there. Last year I bought a LH J ticket whose base fare was a mindblowing 0 EUR - not sure if an EF though or legit.

So, in brief: low J fares exist, YQ can be very high, trimmings are possible.

I myself would be interested in a risk assessment though. If you actually manage to dump a +1000 YQ on a low-bf J ticket and the total is soooo clearly off the charts, how high are the odds that that might be spotted?

The answer is yes. But afaik only fare-specific and route-specific.

IIRC, waaaay back when this thread was much busier, there were a few posts about just that :idea:

With perhaps exception of WWE, we are all at risk of something going sidewyas, so the reasoning was, that as low as the dumped fares were, it was no biggie if airline would CX the ticket and NOT give money back (this was noted several times).

Now even dumped J fares can run pretty high, so getting that ticket CXed could involve a lot more $$$. Of course the reward of flying Biz is much higher ..... of course everyone has their own risk / reward tolerance :)

Back when I was still flying (and hope to with pandemic hopefully turning into endemic), I was able to find some good deals to Europe and Asia that I was able to upgrade to Biz with Miles and Ca$h, and was not willing to try to dump, because I felt the risk was too great. Again we all have different risk tolerances ......

Thanks

BOS/JFK LHR CPT/JNB can be dumped 100 % with earthly mode of transportation.
or 3X flight.

I've flown solely J dumps for about 5 years now. I have a high risk tolerance but am very methodical and know what I'm doing. Haven't had anything go wrong... Yet...

Forgive my stupidity or naivety. If these are round trip tickets, I understand how you can not take the last leg on the outbound flight (origin A->intended destination B->ticketed destination C). But how, for the return trip, are you able to board at airport B if you missed the start of your return itinerary at airport C?