aindfan

I'm looking at ways to fly from AMS to BOS, and one of the options is:

BA AMS-LHR leave 4:10PM arrive 4:30PM
UA LHR-BOS leave 6:00PM arrive 8:40PM

When I search in Concur, this comes up as a D fare on BA and a J fare on UA, each with its own ticket (on the respective carrier), but booked on a single reservation by a corporate travel agency.

When multiple tickets are combined on a single reservation like this, does anything change about misconnect risk? If BA is late to LHR and I miss the UA flight, is BA still obligated to get me to BOS, or will it be up to the travel agency to make any changes? I would have guessed that this works normally (the carrier causing the misconnect is responsible for rebooking), but I'm not sure if BA would claim that they completed the obligation under their ticket and have no responsibility for travel onward past LHR.

I don't think I would have had this question if it were a 016 ticket for the whole itinerary, but at first glance (based on Google Flights and ITA Matrix searches) it doesn't seem possible to combine BA business and UA business on a single fare, though it is possible in economy (UA fare YFF77WW) and premium economy (UA fare OFF77WW). Looking at fare rules and MPM in ExpertFlyer, I don't see why this wouldn't work with UA fare JFF77WW. (If anyone has ideas for this, let me know! Both the BA and UA flights appear to have availability in all business class booking codes, and I can't tell what's preventing them from being combined.)

Thanks!

jsloan

Are you sure it's offering you separate tickets? How do you know? I don't remember seeing that in Concur, but I haven't' tried a booking like what you're describing.

If you have separate tickets, the fact that they're booked inside the same PNR in the corporate travel system doesn't make any difference -- you will not be protected against a misconnect. BA's only obligation would be to get you to LHR.

1h30m is exactly the minimum connection time for this flight, as it involves a change of terminal. This is not something I'd even consider on separate tickets. On a single ticket, the only reason to take this flight is if you're hoping for EC.261 credit when you miss your connection.

There have got to be a hundred better flights to take than the itinerary you've picked, if you're actually trying to make it on time.

mduell

Are you doing this for cost reasons rather than taking the late KLM nonstop?

Kmxu

Or AMS-FRA/MUC/ZRH-BOS in a single ticket on *A flights.

Lux Flyer

As others have alluded, the ticket dictates the contract you have with the carrier, not the reservation. If you have a BA ticket for AMS-LHR, BA's obligation is to get you to LHR, not your final destination in BOS. That being said, how do you know it is putting this on two separate tickets? Ticketing agreements exist between BA and UA, so they can generally be issued all on one carrier's ticket stock as a single ticket, if the agency wants to do so.

At least for UA, they protect across separate tickets only when it involves their own flights. When it is separate tickets with one set of flights on a non-UA carrier, the best they generally do is apply the flat tire rule, but that can be less than ideal depending on how full/when the later flight options are.

aindfan

That's my guess, because:

• A previous BOS-LHR-AMS ticket (UA BOS-LHR, BA LHR-AMS) booked as two separate tickets on a single record (though those flights had a much longer connection, closer to 8 hours)
• When I price the itinerary after searching, fare rules show two different fare basis codes: AMS-LHR is covered by BA DV3HO, and LHR-BOS is covered by UA JFFBOWW

I'll probably call the travel agency to ask, though.

Ouch, thanks, that's what I was afraid of. With that other BOS-LHR-AMS itinerary that I mentioned, the UA flight appeared on the BA record, and the BA flight appeared on the UA record, but they were on separate tickets.

Okay, so it's as bad of an idea as I thought. :-)

I'm currently booked on the next morning's AMS-EWR-BOS, but I'm trying to figure out if I can get home the previous evening. One of the reasons I'd like to take an itinerary involving the LHR-BOS flight is to send a message to UA that I want the flight to keep operating... I know that's probably completely insignificant, but I figure every penny of revenue allocated to that flight counts!

Unfortunately, the 5ish PM KLM nonstop AMS-BOS doesn't operate on the day that I'd like to travel; the latest nonstop is DL at 2:40PM.

Yes, the 2:55PM LX flight via ZRH is the latest *A departure. There's also a 4:30PM departure on KL connecting to AF in CDG, but the 1:00 connection falls into the "when you misconnect" category mentioned above.

lhrsfo

These could well be on the same ticket as AF and KL are under the same ownership, both in SkyTeam and both part of a joint marketing arrangement TATL.

On to the original idea, all 7 of my BA flights since June have been over an hour late, and with AMS a disaster-zone currently (still), I think you would need to be very brave indeed to book that!

mahasamatman

I think there are more appropriate adjectives.

aindfan

Yes, that would be a single ticket. I've never connected in CDG, but everything that I've heard suggests that a 1 hour connection is foolish at best and a some-expenses-paid trip to Paris at worst.

Yep, sounds like it. Thanks for talking some sense into me, everyone, I'll probably stick with my AMS-EWR-BOS flight (with a 2 hour connection in EWR) as booked. The other afternoon *A departures from AMS (2:55PM on LX via ZRH, 2:40PM on LH/UA via FRA and IAD) likely leave too early in the afternoon for my schedule that day. Even the 4:10PM BA flight was pushing it.

jsloan

On its own, that doesn't mean that they will be separate tickets, unless one or the other of those fares has a plating restriction that prohibits it from being issued on the other carrier's stock.

That would be the only way to know for sure, absent the plating restriction being present.

That doesn't mean you were protected contractually -- it just means that the airlines knew where you were coming from and could have offered protection as a courtesy.

aindfan

I think I figured this out, at least for the JA1 UA BOS-AMS fare. The Y1 and O1 fares include a note that travel within area 2 may be on "any BA flight operated by BA." However, the J fare says "If the fare component includes travel within area 2, then that travel must be on any LH flight operated by WK."

aindfan

A final follow-up after my trip: for the outbound, I ended up flying BOS-LHR on UA and LHR-AMS on BA, booked on a single reservation by my corporate travel agency but two different tickets (016 and 125). Complaining about LHR T5 is out of scope for this thread (the lounge was crowded, and waiting for a gate number to be posted reminded me of crowding around the NJTransit departures board at Penn Station...), but otherwise the trip went fine given my 9 hour stop in London. Though I didn't get to explore the IRROPS implications of this type of booking, I did experience some surprises from UA:

• I wasn't able to check in online. Though I feared an issue with the eTicket (the travel agency barely issued it in time), agents that I spoke with assured me that I just needed to scan my passport at the airport, and everything was fine. They said things like "It says that you're travel ready, so there shouldn't be any issues."
• When I got to BOS, I checked in with an agent. They needed to add my trusted traveler number manually (even though it was on the reservation). Once they did, and they checked me in, I got my boarding pass with pre-check. I also got a BA boarding pass. The UA boarding pass never showed up in the app.

So, in conclusion: booking BA and UA on a single reservation might make check in go a little bit sideways, but I didn't have any issues with the actual flight.