Possible to book different legs in diff specific letter classes
 

I'm trying to work within a budget for a TATL trip, DEN-LHR-DEN.

Is it possible to use .bomb to specify different letter classes for different legs on the multi-city page, more specifically than just Econ/Biz/First?

Thanks

Unfortunately, no. Once upon a time, there were two powerful web tools that allowed the user to be specific in these choices. One was easysaber and the other was united connection.

Presuming the flights are more than a few days away, book it in whatever class it gives you, select to pay using Cash to put it on hold, and then call and have them change the classes.

You can use matrix.itasoftware.com to work out what the price should be - it allows you to specify a fare class for each segment (check the help, but it's basically /f bc=X)

Or use a travel agent. That's what they're for.

Remember that this might not actually be cheaper, because of the way fares work.

Tried this today with our company travel agent and it was a no-go...kind of.

Only wanted to change one segment to H class while keeping the other as--is. Wouldn't allow it. The system made them change the return segment to N class, which upped the fare. And totally messed over what I was trying to do. Well, shoot.

A TA works for you but a Company travel agent works for the company, not you. Big difference.

That sounds like the combinability rules. Airlines intentionally don't want you combining the absolute cheapest fare with something else.

So I've learned....

Thanks, all.

Still working on it.

Good luck, I've had experience doing what you are attempting to do, and it's simply no fun with UA.

Your big friend in all this (if you want to attempt it yourself instead of a Travel Agent) is ITA.

If you can create the itinerary in ITA, then UA should be able to piece it together.

I tried booking a trip from EWR-BHX-FRA-JNB-PLZ in W (to use two SWUs [one on LH]) and because the final SA leg was not in W, but in S, the UA website would only piece the whole itin together in S, making the SWU invalid on both legs. So, I booked placed the itin on hold, called up and asked the agent to work on it. About 2 hours after starting, while being on hold the entire time, they came back and basically shook their shoulders and said - 'well, i'm not sure how to do it, I guess it can't be done'. And that was it.

So, I tried myself for a few more hours and was able to finally get it to work by trying multiple iterations of the destinations to combine some segments while forcing others...but of course, I did it myself and without any assistance from UA. If I remember correctly, I finally did it on UA's (this is after the merger, so CO's website): EWR-BHX-FRA-PLZ, which allowed me to isolate the UA segment on EWR-BHX, the BD segment on BHX-FRA and keep the fare class consistent on the LH segment (V) for FRA-JNB but also lumped in the JNB-PLZ segment in S. I also chose the specific fare classes of S, W, V in the option...and luckily it worked for me, but UA wasn't any help...and that frankly was not a surprise.

-jeremy

I do this all the time TATL, but have to call UA to get it done. They never seem to have a problem and do handle it quickly, if you tell them exactly what you want. Note that certain fare classes are not combinable with others - they will let you know.

Do you know the specific fares/booking classes for each of the segments that you plan to book? If so, try this: in Advanced Search, under "enter specific classes of service," input the fare classes in the sequence of your itinerary.

For example, I recently booked an open-jaw LAX-SFO-HKG(UA)-BKK(TG) / TPE-SFO-LAX(UA), typed in "W,H,W" (H for the TG segment), and got the fare that I wanted.

Of course, the itinerary has to meet the restrictions of the published fare in order for the "enter specific classes" option to return a result.

Thanks, I'll try this.

Thanks for this. I played around with ITA last night but I couldn't see where to input the fare classes. Am I missing something obvious?

Ooooh, routing codes.

Ok, back to ITA school for me :)