Fare Bucket for Military/Government ticket
 

I will be flying to South America later this month. The ticket is being purchased for me through SATO and will be a government rate/fare in economy, most likely using United and Avianca or COPA. Does anyone know what fare bucket it falls under ? Trying to calculate qualifying miles. Thanks in advnace

And the inventory on the specific flights being taken, as well, since if there is a discount fare published, that'll indicate whether or not it'd be available on that set of flights.

If the flights are operated by UA on a published government fare, it would be a minimum of 100% PQM.

When you book on DTS (assuming military) you can view the full fare rules associated with the ticket when you select it. The first letter will be your fare class. If you've already booked just call your local SATO office and ask.
In my experience, if you're flying a United ticketed long haul international (i.e. would require GPU), you get S class; if you're flying short haul international (i.e. only requires RPU), you get U class; if not a city pair contract route, you get Y.

My experience for international is there's a YCA fare that books into Y (i.e., full fare, 1.5 PQS 1.5xPQM) and an xCA fare that almost always books into S (so no GPU). If it's non-contract then it could be anything, although typically at least S, but often higher. Obviously you need a justification for the non-contract flight.

If I can explain why a flight "does not meet mission requirements," my AO has yet to turn me down if I need to take a flight that isn't the cheapest or contracted. YMMV.

A few more details
 

My routing will most likely be YYZ-IAH-UIO-MEC Last leg would most likely be Avianca
No pairing other than the YYZ-IAH leg

Thoughts on the fare buckets?

Go into DTS if you have it and in an authorization do a dummy search for your city pair. Once the listings of fares comes up, in that tab you can select that flight and there is a link to the specific fare rules. For UA (unlikely, UA doesn't have many GSA contract fares, but still possible I suppose) it will be Y, the -CA part doesn't matter to your question. 1.5 segments and 150% PQM is what you'd earn, award miles are based on fare basis and your status level multiplier.

For DL and UA full fare Y still earns the 150% MQM and PQM, AA recently knocked their full fare Y down to 100% EQM.

Sadly, no DTS access. I can only speculate until I get the ticket.

Do a dummy booking on UA website
 

That is not representative of what the Defense Travel System website would show you when you search their booking system for the same flight. I can pull up a dummy search if you tell me your departure date.

When booking through DTS, is the reservation ticketed immediately? I've heard that they don't actually ticket until about 3 days prior to travel. I would like to be able to go into United.com right after and move to an E+ seat.

Once reservation is made, you can move to E+, even though it's not ticketed. You can't apply upgrade, however, until ticketed.

Can confirm this as well. The UA gov't booking system, while useful, tends to combine or piece together segments especially if its in connecting markets. So using MCIDCA as an example, it may piece it together fares for MCIORD and ORDDCA where UA would be the contract carrier and has -CA fares published whereas DTS may only show MCIDCA and UA's respective -DG on that city pair.

As mentioned before, you can select seats but cannot apply upgrade instruments. I usually request early ticketing to ensure I am at least within my upgrade window and typically if its not ticketed until 3 days out I will have missed out on the upgrade sweep.