pewpew

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I'm not sure this belongs here, but it's not necessarily a carrier-specific question.

I'm looking at booking a set of flights on a single reservation with fare breaks (through a TA) and was wondering: in case of a misconnect on one of the segments that isn't on the same ticket as the previous, will the operating carrier for the flight causing the misconnect still accommodate me?

Eg: YYC-EWR(break)
EWR-LON-FRA

Will the carrier operating YYC-EWR (UA obviously) provide onwards travel if there's a delay causing me to miss EWR-LON? Or is this treated as though I had booked the two tickets separately?

emma69

Can't your TA book you on a single ticket? If they are spearate tickets then no, the airline are not obligated to accommodate you.

kkjay77

AA does IIRC, but UA doesn't.

cbn42

If it is all on one reservation then the ticketing carrier is responsible for accommodating you. You can determine the ticketing carrier from the first three digits of the ticket number, or by asking the TA. It doesn't matter who caused the misconnect; the carrier that issued the ticket is responsible.

red star

As reservation, ticket(s) and PNR are different animals you are confusing a few issues.
To OP: you (or your TA) seem to think about 2 tickets in one PNR. You wont be protected in case of irrops. You might get lucky, depending on the airlines involved, but you can not count on it.

pewpew

I ultimately ended up booking the planned itinerary. I left a day of padding between the two tickets.

My TA could, but the price was substantially lower. I was interested in PHL-DUS-YYC. PHL-DUS-YYC priced ~$200 higher than PHL-LON-YYC with a stopover in DUS on LON-YYC. It turns out (as I explain below) there was no reason to worry about the whole ticketing thing.

Looking at my confirmation email raised another question: I was only given one ticket number for that itinerary, as has been the case for all of my TATL flights so far. I'm guessing this is standard practice even though there are two (round-trip) fares (PHL-LON, LON-YYC) involved in the itinerary? Would I only be given separate tickets when "combining" one-way fares?

Steve M

You could get a single ticket even with multiple fares. One example would be the two one-ways you mention above. Another might be nested round-trips: for example, you need to go from ORD to LHR, and there's some really cheap JFK-LHR in Business. So, you get a regular ORD-JFK roundtrip in economy, combined with the JFK-LHR roundtrip in business on another carrier. As long as both fares allow "end-on-end ticketing with any carrier" and the carriers have e-ticketing agreements with each other, then you can get such an itinerary issued on a single ticket, even though the carriers might not otherwise be partners or in the same alliance, there's no codeshares involved, and the fares were not specifically designed to work with each other. As long as you get it on a single ticket, then you have automatic protection in the event of a misconnect or other irregularity.

Steve M

I'm not sure that's true. Consider a multi-carrier ticket where there's a connection in a city where neither carrier is the issuing carrier. In the event of a mis-connect, why would the issuing carrier be responsible, since they were operating neither of the flights? Also, it's quite likely in that situation that the issuing carrier isn't operating either of those particular flights because they have no operations in that city and possibly country. If that's the case, how are they supposed to make arrangements for an affected passenger when they have no flights or even presence at that city or even country?

I think there are well-defined IATA rules for how this is handled so as to avoid buck-passing, but that they're not as simple as "always issuing carrier."

cbn42

Even if the issuing carrier has no operations in that city on their own planes, they obviously booked a ticket both to and from that city. Therefore, they have the capability of booking on airlines that service that city, and they should be able to sort out any problems by rebooking on their partner carriers.

I am not completely familiar with IATA rules, but I know that it is generally the issuing carrier that is responsible. There might be exceptions, but I don't think they are relevant here.

Often1

One ticket and you will be "protected" in that the carrier causing the delay will rebook. Two tickets -- and I stress tickets -- and there is no obligation to rebook, other than on AA which voluntarily takes on this obligation.

Nonetheless, US carriers seem to rebook even on multiple tickets. But, you should expect to be at the back of the line and be acommodated after all other connecting pax are acommodated. And, no carrier, including AA, will pick up the tab for your hotel + food if that becomes an issue.