booking class explained
 

hi
can somebody explain the booking class codes to me?

i know F is for first, C for business and Y for coach, but I have also seen other letters, as Z, T, K, X etc

thanks

I'm used to seeing J for business.

F, J, Y are what are normally called "full-fare" first, business, and coach, respectively. They are unrestricted refundable tickets, and they cost the most. Full-fare Y often has other perks, like business check-in, complimentary upgrade to J, or other such, depending on airline.

Other booking codes, like Z, X, etc. are for various classes within first, business, and coach. These represent restrictions on the ticket, such as change fee applicability, date restrictions, or even mileage earning applicability at the lower economy fares. Naturally, these tickets are cheaper than full fare in the respective class. They are also limited in capacity; the airlines like holding back seats to sell at full Y, since they get more money that way. But not everybody pays for full fare, after all.

That's about the gist of it.

Also see https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=608371.

Welcome aboard, andrewskhg

The letters used to define a specific booking class is different on each (well ok, almost) airline.

e.g. for AZ (Alitalia), the booking codes are the following:

A is the class code, AZ the airline code


Class Code ¦ Airline Code ¦ Description
A AZ FIRST CLASS
AN AZ FIRST CLASS
B AZ ECONOMY
BN AZ ECONOMY
C AZ BUSINESS
CN AZ BUSINESS
D AZ BUSINESS
DN AZ DELUXE NIGHT
E AZ SHUTTLE SERVICE
F AZ FIRST CLASS
FN AZ DELUXE NIGHT
H AZ ECONOMY
HN AZ ECONOMY
I AZ BUSINESS CLASS
J AZ BUSINESS
K AZ ECONOMY
KN AZ ECONOMY
L AZ ECONOMY
M AZ ECONOMY
N AZ ECONOMY
O AZ ECONOMY
P AZ FIRST CLASS
Q AZ ECONOMY
R AZ ECONOMY
S AZ STANDARD
T AZ ECONOMY
U AZ COACH
V AZ ECONOMY
W AZ ECONOMY
X AZ ECONOMY
Y AZ ECONOMY
YN AZ ECONOMY
Z AZ DISCOUNT BUSINESS

F booking class is back again....

It never went away, and I don't see the point of resurrecting an eight-year-old thread to say so.

Beyond F, J, and C, each airline has its own definitions for booking classes, making a global guide impossible anyway.

Often but not always the definitions of booking classes and fare classes are coordinated among JV or alliance partners.

Nice bump. Thanks for reminding us that F still exists. (Seriously...aren't F and Y relatively close to universal across the major alliances?)

Also watch for airlines repurposing fare buckets. Apparently United repurposed "N" to a regular discount coach fare but forgot to send the memo to the rest of the alliance. Cost me a few thousand Aegean miles. (No fault of Aegean's: when I phoned them, they said "According to us, that's a United award bucket.")

After 2-3 months of emails with United about it, they agreed to simply post Mileage Plus miles. <Sigh...>

Booking codes are basically a price code for fares, but it sometimes gets confused with using letters to generically describe what class of service or cabin you'll be seated in. IE- F J Y describe US first, business and economy class cabins (F,C,Y ex-US). But the booking codes for your fare are much more numerous. You could have a biz class ticket but it could be booked for instance on AA in J or D or I or U.

I remember a few years back someone caused a bit of a kerfuffle on a United board by referring to business class as J. One or two posters insisted that it always be referred to as C on the United board.

That's probably the biggest difference in fare buckets I've noticed in my years of flying as an AA Plat in some years and a UA 1K in others (J vs. C). The rest of them were fairly consistent across (most) airlines, with slight variations on the sequencing of discounted-coach fares as you got close to the rock-bottom fares. My cheapie AA fares back in the day were usually L. My cheapie United fares were often S.

Q was an oddball that got used for lots of things on UA. I've had cheap restricted Q's, fully-refundable Q's, and Q-UP's. It seemed to me that it was purposely vague so they could use it for special purposes...for example, the Q-UP's were used to compete against Midwest Express: otherwise, the -UP's were usually up in the H, B, or Y range.

It would be fun to really hear from an insider how they came up with the codes and what exactly each one meant originally and how that's evolved. Total airline nerdery of course... :o

I realize this is an old thread, but my biggest gripe about booking classes, is well, how to book them. I would like to have an easy way to book a flight online into the booking class I want for mileage earning purposes. So far, I have not found any easy way of doing that.

Agreed... Some airlines do a little bit better job than others, but I have often found it a clunky process, if not one that requires a web support phone call.

If you are looking for a specific fare bucket plus upgrade availability in the next cabin of service, that's often two browser windows if you can even search for it at all.