Fare Class has Inventory - Not Able to Book into? {Archive]
 

Has anyone ever seen something like this before, where a less expensive fare inventory is available, yet a higher fare class is the only one bookable? In this instance, I'm looking at a R/T LAX-SYD flight departing 8/15 on UA 839 returning 8/20 on UA 840, which is showing "K9" inventory for both flights on both United's website and ExpertFlyer, however only "L" comes up in the results when searching for lowest fare. I attempted to do a search for only "K" where you can select "Enter specific classes of service" in the advanced reservations search, but get a result of "We were not able to find any available seats meeting your requirements." I tried the same search on Orbitz and Kayak, but I get the same price that United quotes for "L" class. When I searched for this last week on United.com, the ticket was significantly less expensive because the "K" fare class was properly coming up in the results.

Attached is a screenshot illustrating the issue that I'm referring to. Does this make sense to anyone? Thanks for any help!

http://i1249.photobucket.com/albums/...29-11-28AM.png

You need two things to book a ticket: 1) published fare in a particular class, 2) availability in that class on a specific flight.

Seems like the problem here is that you have #2 but not #1 (i.e., no published K fare to book).

I only glanced quickly at the fares, so could be wrong, but if there is no K fare that would explain it (and they change rapidly enough that its having existed before doesn't mean much).

Open inventory does not imply that any fares exist for that bucket. Even if fares do exist, the rules might preclude purchase (e.g. min. stay).

Edit: For example, take a look at flights departing in, say, 2 hours. Almost all buckets may be open, but you almost certainly cannot buy a T fare.

FortFun beat me to it by < 60 seconds....

K Inventory Available But Not Bookable ??
 

I see this more often than not, the first two responses are correct.

I book a lot of travel into YYZ, and at least from my city, it's quite common to only be able to book into W as the lowest, though occasionally S and T, even though all buckets show availability.

Try again, it's working fine for me. See the screenshot below:

http://i.imgur.com/uwmBN.png?1

As a side note, I found some issues with UA bookings in that you can find a low fare, and it shows in the calender when doing +/- 3 days, but you cannot seem to book that fare. You can get around this by using matrix.itasoftware.com to find the exact flights, then enter the flights as a multi-destination itinerary. This may do the trick for you, even if in this case they are non-stops.

Like brp1264, I just pulled up K/K @ US$1356 with no problem.

Not signed in, just chose "Lowest available fare"

I noticed the other week when trying to book in advance my bi-monthly LHR-SFO travel plans that K fares have now gone from the results (even when you specifically search for them) even though it shows them available in the Fare Class list. Extremely frustrating since its hiked the price up by 17% on average making them very uncompetitive. As a result its pushing me back to AA and a status match. With the oil price loosing ground United have pushed the prices up.


http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/united-mileageplus-consolidated/1368094-where-have-all-k-fares-gone-uk-us.html

Maybe unrelated, but I hit this last week with Z fares - even stumped the 1K desk for about an hour.... In my case, the Z fare needed 50 days advance purchase and I had crossed to 49 days. So I saw Z on date X and X+1, could only book X+1. My bad for not checking the fare rules/knowing that I needed 50 days advance purchase, but in my defense the agent didn't notice either.

YMMV of course.

Richard

Hi,

I might be a bit late to post the same....

The first screen shot shows ==Lowest REFUNDABLE FARE and the 2nd shows ====Lowest Non Refundable ; that may be the difference.....

Thanks and Regards
taran_2005

No, L is not refundable neither, only Y and B are for economy. If you want refundable fare for a route like LAX-SYD, it would more than double the lowest fare in a range of $2000+

Not true (unless you mean w/o penalty). There are plenty of exceptions. There's a V fare for LAX-SYD that's refundable (with penalty). Taking a random route (NYC-SEL) o/w on a random day next month I see a <$1200 Q fare that's refundable (with penalty).

Heck, there's a refundable SEA-SEL S fare ($821, penalty).

All of these have a $300 charge for refund.

Can't seem to force a lower fare class on a codeshare
 

I'm trying to book codeshares operated by US for PHL-PHX-ANC and ANC-PHX-PHL since they are cheaper than the UA alternatives and also cheapear than purchasing through US but the lowest fare displayed is K even though all 4 flights have availability in the lowest fare class - G. I've tried the multi city search, at which point, the codeshares don't show up at all and I only see UA flights. The fare doesn't change if I book it as one-way or round trip, so I can't figure out why I can't get a single class all G itinerary instead of being forced to book K. Can anyone shed some light on this? Have you had this happen to you? Thanks in advance for any feedback.

P. S. I'm trying to book both in April, so any 14 or 21 days advance purchase requirement will definitely be met.

Does UA publish anything lower than a K fare phl-anc-phl that allows US-operated segments?

In order to buy a ticket with booking class G, you need two things:

• G availability on all segments
• A valid G fare published in the market

Unless you know that there is a G fare filed in the market and that you meet the advance-purchase / minimum-stay / other requirements, the most likely explanation for "why does the little box say G9 but I'm not being offered a G fare?" is "there is no valid G fare for sale".

The ExpertFlyer "fare information" tool doesn't show any G fares published by UA in this market:

http://i.imgur.com/WeBDEYd.png
http://i.imgur.com/VgITWgX.png
http://i.imgur.com/4vrHdqi.png

I really gotta get my own GDS access…

We've seen a steady flow of these kinds of questions and I have to wonder whether UA wasn't telling the truth when they said "the reason we turned off Expert Mode fare class display by default was that it was wasting a lot of phone representatives' time to have to explain that just because there's G availability, that doesn't necessarily mean we'll sell you a G fare", and I have to wonder whether UA wasn't kidding when they added that scary multiparagraph disclaimer to "Expert Mode" in your united.com profile where you have to promise not to ask for G fares that don't exist, have to promise one fresh lamb to MileagePlus every week, etc.

Thanks for the responses. Yes, I checked EF and indeed, there is no G fare offered on that route. Which begs the question - why show availability in that fare class if it's not offered. But I guess that's something to be answered some other time. Thanks again for the detailed response.

Maybe it is used for PHL-PHX-Somewhere else. Or Somewhere-PHL-PHX.

Exactly. People are not only travelling on one-segment juants.

OP, it takes a bit of reading up on how faring works to understand the genius in it. One of the purposes is to permit inventory and revenue to be managed by changing fares or changing availability, as appropriate to a given. Almost every airline uses this method to generate fares, and they do so because of the built-in flexibility. Leaving fare buckets open in some fare classes that do not have a point-to-point fare published is an important part of that system.

To take a quick example, United might have two flights from XXX-YYY on a given day, and might generally keep only a B fare published for that route, as there is a lot of demand and a near-monopoly on United's part. (United probably permits XXX-YYY-ZZZ as a routing on some liesure routes in G, as well, to get some of that traffic.) Now, let's say that United notices that it's underselling a few of the XXX-YYY planes a week, but that most are still filling up. Further, given the nature of the local traffic, the flights that are filled up get relatively full early on, so that there's G availability only on those flights that are ultimately going to go out less-than-full. What does United do to grab some more revenue from the less-than-full flights? Simply publish a new fare for XXX-YYY in G class, perhaps with certain restrictions (e.g., a minimum stay) to keep the folks who normally buy the B fares from mooching.

I think OP's complaint is that united.com is not smart enough to display "only relevant fare buckets", i.e. only to show availability in buckets for which it is currently possible to ticket an itinerary in the current search results.

This would avoid the OP's confusion ("why can't I buy a G fare? it says there's G") but would be really, really bad for other people because it would make it quite difficult for them to see whether there is G inventory on a segment where it is important to them (for the kinds of reasons you outline above).

I do think it's a bit silly that UA publishes and displays PN inventory on routes which are not B-up eligible … but it's also really handy to get an unfiltered list of buckets for lots of reasons, so I hope UA does not do any work to improve the display logic.

Ah, I think you're right. And, as you point out, the entire point of expert mode is to give far more information than is relevant to the specific itinerary being ticketed.

This question pops up at least once a month, and is one reason that there is now a warning if you go to enable Expert Mode in your profile. There are many reasons those of us who know what we're doing want the website to display all booking classes regardless of whether there is an available fare, as you've pointed out.

Hence the desire of UA to hide the visibility of the data -- as others have explained you need the fare bucket, the fare rule and need to meet all the requirements of the fare rule to be offered the fare. Not understanding all that creates confusion and likely issues for the phone agents when calling in -- "but I see the G>0"

Fare Class has Inventory - Not Able to Book into?
 

Hi all,

I've only recently started traveling frequently so please excuse me if this is basic. I couldn't find the answer with a search through this forum/Google/United's site.

I have a (personal, so low cost fare) trip coming up in ~10 days. I am booked in S on my departing leg. I now am trying to change to a different (6 hours later) flight. I can see via United's site that there are 3 seats in S left, but both the 'change flight' and new reservation systems only give me the option to change into V (which is an additional ~$400 plus change fee).

I know I can wait until 11pm that night and try to SDC for $75 (plus any difference) as I don't have status for the free change yet, but I'd prefer for my peace of mind to change now if possible. I am willing to pay the extra $125 for a full $200 change fee if I can change into S on the new flight.

So - is there any way for me to get into one of the remaining 3 seats in the S bucket on the new flight?

Thanks!

Welcome to FT!, phxrsng
Three things required
1) Inventory in a fare class exists
2) A fare rule for that fare class exists for you routing
3) the itin meets all the fare rules -- min stay, advance purchase days, routing, day of the week, ....

What is the number in your S fare -- 14, 21, .... that usually means the number of days prior to travel the fare can be purchased.
Only way to get around this is wait until SDC which waives the advance purchase requirement.

Welcome to FT!

Short answer is no. You're being offered a V fare most likely because you're now inside the advance purchase window for that S fare, and since you haven't started your journey yet the system is re-pricing your ticket by taking these restrictions into account.

Your only real options are to either go with the SDC option as you mention above, or to pay the fare difference.

Thanks for the info - where would I find that number? The Fare Class info on UA reservations says S3 but my understanding is that that is the remaining number in the bucket.

Edit: Thanks star_world. Makes sense. I'll hold out hope that since the advance purchase window is closed if I go into SDC the second that flight is available (So, T-18 if I understand it all correctly) then I can grab that change.

S3 is the fare class inventory, you need the fare basis used for your flight.

How to find,
1) call and ask
2) if purchased from united.com, your first booking e-mail has it (not the ticketing e-mail)

This will be a code typically such as XXxxXXXX for discount economy fares
XX is one or two letters, the first will be S in your case
xx will be 1 to 2 digit number, this is the advance purchase requirement
XXXXX will be 3-5 letters, probably one is N (non-refundable)

Note to really know the advance purchase requirement you will need the full fare rules, but the above is a shortcut that works most of the time.

Got it, thanks. 21 days looks like it was the window. So looks like I'll be waiting to see if I can grab one of those remaining S fares on SDC

I have the same problem I wanna book a K fare for an INTL r/t (available in both directions) but it looks like I can only purchase L.

Where and how can I see what the requirements are to purchase the K fare? I guess there must be some sort of minimum stay or something

Is there a k fare published in the market? As mentioned above, you need both availability in the fare class, which you are saying you see, as well as a published fare in that class. You can have a situation where one is available, but not the other.

If you do have both, you the need to meet the rules of the fare. Things like length of stay, sat. night stay, round-trip requirement, and others can determine whether you meet these rules.

oh gotcha but then how do I find out if there is a k fare published in the market?

.
Use wandering aramean's fare class searcher. Or start w expert mode to see if k is even populated.

Unable to book lower (available) fare class; Why?
 

I'm trying to book a SFO–HNL flight and see there is available space in N class, though UA.com is showing S by default (see below) and it is impossible to get N class to price using Advanced Search. Why would this be happening, and how can I book the available N space?

http://f.cl.ly/items/1C1Y1F313f2L2E0...59.56%20PM.png

There may be N space, but is there an N *fare* published and available for SFO-HNL on the date in question? Sometimes N might be available only on connecting itineraries, or only with longer advanced purchase/minimum stay/etc.

Every airfare is a combo of a published fare, a valid routing, and availability. You're just paying attention to one of those things.

If you leave three hours earlier, you get the 764.

When you sign up for expert mode, is makes you agree that you understand how fares work in an effort to avoid questions like this.

Every airfare is a combo of a published fare, a valid routing, and availability. You're just paying attention to one of those things.

************************************************** ********
OK, ease up. Flyertalk exists for just this reason. The answer is as you read above: the bucket is available on the bird (perhaps, say, as part of a IAD-HNL fare) but there is no published N fare in the SFO-HNL market, at least when the OP is looking.

This is why it is sometimes less expensive to fly through as opposed to from a city.

I disagree with "easing up" - it's called "expert mode" for a reason, and we have "simple question threads" for just this. We see this same (new) thread at least once a week. Usually mgcsinc isn't as quick to call this aspect out, so that says something.

By copying and pasting rather than quoting, you killed my little smiley face, which really was the most important part of my post. :)

+1

At least every week.

I think "expert" is a relative term. This thing really is for the experts of the experts. I am almost 1K MM, been reading FT for years and still don't understand the whole picture.

FT is where we come to learn. Is there a posting with a good explanation of this?

Thanks.

PS: if it makes OP feel better, I recently asked this question here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...rent-cxns.html that probably caused by the factors described here :D