ExExpat

I am headed BOS > LHR next week and home BRU > BOS. I have to travel AA there because I will be with colleagues, but I am hoping to come home on UA for the miles (and better traveling experience, since I have no status on AA).

The BRU > EWR flight is showing YBMH 9 and even a few W and V fares when I look at "fare class", but only Y shows up available for purchase. Is there a reason it won't allow those other fares to be purchased? Is it because the ticket is 1-way? Not really sure whats going on, but I'd like to avoid American if I can, and the $3k 1-way Y fare won't pass muster with accounting.

Any insight is appreciated!

aindfan

A ticket requires not just inventory, but also a valid fare. If no valid fare exists at lower buckets (considering advance purchase requirements, one way/round trip/circle trip/open jaw), then you may only be able to purchase Y, the completely unrestricted full fare ticket.

Michael D

Naively, I would think that buckets other than Y showing up in the flights "fare class" would be indicative that a fare exists???

OP might try a search for those fare classes and see what shows up. One explanation which doesn't seem likely is that Y is the cheapest ( or maybe priced the same as the other fares) and the search is for the lowest priced fare. (??)

robbert

Or it could be that the lower fare classes are only available more than 7 days out as another possible fare restriction.

Antipode

Nope, it just means the inventory exists. There are several reasons why they might do this: 1) lower fares are not filed for that market, but perhaps they want to sell those lower fares on a different market, e.g. BRU-LAX by flying BRU-EWR-LAX, 2) fares for lower classes are filed but they do not satisfy purchase requirements such as advance purchase requirements or round-trip travel or any number of other things.

grizzly

In this case, this is the answer. Y is the lowest one-way fare on BRU-(EWR)-BOS next week

ExExpat

Thanks for the insight. For what it's worth, I am 7 days out from the return, but of course it's not round trip. The tool will let me purchase H fares one way from LHR, but not one way from BRU. The H fare is available when I price out a round trip (BOS > BRU) but not one way, so looks like that answers my question.

Still frustrating, though! Looks like it's the dAArk side.

QBK

This may or may not help (sorry, IANATA ), but:

(1) Playing with ITA suggests that lower fare classes (and moderately cheaper fares) are available if you book a round trip (open jaw, technically) -- even with the outbound on AA. Obviously you can't do this on united.com, but a TA should be able to do it. I'm seeing r/t fares between $2.5K and $3.2K (ai) with BOS-LHR on AA and BRU-BOS on UA. There's an H fare connecting through LHR, or a B fare on BRU-EWR-BOS.

(2) Round trip or open jaw tickets (BRU-BOS-xxx) with the return in low season are much cheaper than BRU-BOS one-way. I'm seeing $1612 for random dates (BOS-BRU next week, BRU-BOS in November, H fare), and as low as $1476 if you make it a double open jaw BRU-BOS / EWR-IST). There are so many reasons to miss your return flight... Dunno if your accounting dept. would go for that, but it might be worth a shot (although if they demand lowest fare, you're gonna have trouble beating the AA r/t fares).