ifette

NW fares list a hierarchy, and while I've managed to piece together some information, I haven't found a comprehensive list anywhere. Does anyone know what the following translate to?

From what I understand, E is normal economy, B is business, F is first, and X is an economy excursion fare? But what then is XAP or XAX (or BAP / BXN)? E.g. what are the 2nd (and third) letters representing?

florin

The first letter is usually the fare bucket. "Bxxxxx" is a "B" fare, which is an expensive but flexible economy fare, not business. (J, C, Z fares are paid biz, P and F are paid first). The rest of the letters are some code that basically encapsulates the fare rules (whether stopovers are allowed, whether open jaws are allowed, if changes can be made, if the ticket is refundable, how far in advance it has to be purchased, travel permitted on what days of the week, Sat night requirement, etc.)

To my knowledge, the code can not be "deciphered" just by looking at it (it's not something like... if the third letter is "G" then one open jaw is allowed), rather it corresponds to a code in NW's database. There is a limited number of fare codes and these apply to many, many reservations. I don't know of a [public] place where you can find all of them; normally you can look up the fare rules for an itin before purchasing it most websites.

bobcollie

While each carrier uses its own symbols to represent the full fare basis code, IATA Resolution 728 has some guidelines that are followed by some airlines.

http://www.atpco.net/atpco/download/rbd_iata_res728.pdf

ifette

Wow, I wish all my upcoming R flights were supersonic Thanks for the reference though, as this does seem to explain most of it. So, XAB would then translate to a low level advance purchase excursion fare... my curiosity has been sufficiently satisfied