Thanks - that's helpful.

Booked flights are as follows:

August 13 - TLV-YYZ-YOW (AC81/AC462), Z class (discount business) - this was flown as booked.
April 1 - IAD-LHR (UA122), K class (discount economy)

Fare was sold as follows:

Airfare: 2091.40
Various taxes/fees: 58.91
Total: USD 2150.31

Relevant rules are:

TLV-YOW ZRC1LW (details no longer visible online)
IAD-LHR KKX87NCT (details on changes copied below)



From the Mileage Plus earnings on the original ticket, I can see that 1983 PQDs were assigned to the TLV-YOW flights, while 109 were assigned to IAD-LHR. This tells me that the base fare on the IAD is about USD 109.



When I try to change the ticket on united.com, it brings up an error: "Ticket reconstruction failed for passenger 0. No close matches found for fare AC TLV YOW ZRC1LW NUC 1694.50"


Its been my experience with most network carriers that changes to return flights when the first coupon has already been flown generally results in the change fee being charged, plus the difference in fare on the return segment, with any additional taxes/fees added on. As the return flights I'd like to book have a base fare of USD 900, I expected the change to be USD 791 (USD 900 new base less USD 109 base paid), plus USD 300 change fee, plus any tax changes - so somewhere around USD 1100.


Seems to me that a few things could be going on: 1) the agent was mistaken; 2) the fact that United sold me an Air Canada fare on the outbound that they no longer have a record of is complicating repricing, or 3) only a D fare was available at the initial time of sale (making it the historical fare in effect).


As mentioned above, I don't expect its a reprice on the total ticket including the TLV-YOW outbound - that's not my understanding of how fares work.


KKX87NCT Fare Rules

Did you type your fare codes or did you copy them from a screen? I'm assuming the latter which exposes a very strange situation... I am having trouble finding your fare. There is no (AC or UA) fare that I can find "ZRC1LW" however there is a "ZRCILW" (letter I not digit 1). However, it is also exactly 100.00 higher and should price as NUC 1794.50. I'm guessing some part of this is causing the computer to give up, and agents will say pretty much anything when the computer is confused. It's possible something moved around as the WAS-LON K fare has changed price quite a bit. What was your ticketing date?

Closest I can get in fare construction is something like

TLV AC X/YTO AC YOW 1794.50ZRCILW /-WAS UA LON 110.50KKX87NCT NUC 1905.00 END

Which is 100 higher on the Z fare but otherwise close-ish and uses 24-Jul-19 as a ticketing date.

You'll get a reprice when you go outside the original fare rules by, for example, changing destination. That's this part of the rules:

I would expect it to be fine in this case though; ZRCILW combines happily with pretty much anything to Europe.

Perhaps so, but the fact remains the ticket is repricing and that's the root issue here. Once you're in that territory, you're likely to find yourself at the rate desk's mercy. Especially when you started with an unusual fare combination.

I need to purchase a one-way ticket to CPH. Not surprisingly, a roundtrip fare is cheaper than a one-way ticket. If I buy the cheaper roundtrip ticket, after I have flown the outbound portion, can I cancel the return and then use its value for a completely different flight in the future (minus the change fee)? Thanks in advance.

No. You can cancel the return and pay the change fee to use the return for a fare component that would be a valid combination with your original half-round-trip outbound, such as any Europe to USA. If the new return is not valid with the original outbound, you run the risk of a retroactive reprice.

Often cheaper and certainly easier just to no-show.

I am contemplating a ticket change due to the virus and want to know my options before calling. The situation is bit complicated:
Bought EU-USA-EU roundtrip P fare deal in May 2019. Already flown the outbound and return (USA-EU) is in two weeks. Complicating factor is that the ticket was reissued in August, 2019 because of a schedule change that resulted in an impossible connection. Questions:
1) I would like to change the return leg to June 2020. That's past the 1-year mark for the original ticket, but that should be ok given the reissue date of Aug 2020.
2) Ticket rules say fare should be calculated based on historical fare when ticket was originally issued. Is that the original-original or when it was reissued? Since it was involuntary, I think I have a good argument for the original when there was a deal.
3) Can I just get a refund for the return leg given that it was involuntarily changed, even though I accepted it at the time?

1) reissue date shouldn’t matter in terms of expiry. Your ticket needs to be used within 1 year of original issue date. Re-issue date doesn’t change that.

if your destination has a waiver (ie, for Coronavirus), there may be some sort of exception they can make, but I think most of those are only going into March and April, at least at the moment, so you may have to wait and see

2) deal or no deal at purchase time on dates available, there was no fare available for sale in May 2019 for travel in June 2020 - typically, I believe they only sell tickets 330 days in advance. Even if they could extend the validity of the ticket, it’s probably pretty difficult to validate a fare for date of travel that wasn’t available on the original date of purchase

3) doubtful for something accepted months ago. If it was later that same day, or maybe a few days later, there might be a chance. Accepted in August 2019, and want to change that in March 2020 is not really worth trying, IMO, If you truly want to cancel based on Coronavirus fears, that may be a better ane than on something you accepted months and months ago.

Actually, airlines routinely issue fares that are valid much further into the future than can actually be ticketed. However, sale fares are often more limited.

OP: for a return flight, if the original ticketing conditions still apply (e.g., maximum stay, day-of-week, and season restrictions), in most cases there will be no fare difference if the same booking class is available on your desired flight.