SFOtoBOS

I broadly agree! It seems that likely the person booking the ticket, UA, and LH are all somewhat at fault for this problem not being caught.

To me the passenger is the least at fault. For one thing, surely this is not a one passenger only mistake. This must happen or have happened in the past to other non-FT flyers.

Fundamentally, if a passenger can get all the way to being ticketed and to having a boarding pass, then I don't see how things that should apply to ticketing (fare rules, routing rules, alliance partnerships) are fairly invoked to deny a passenger already en-route.

That being said, we don't make the rules. Would be really great for us all and the OP if someone who has had a similarly awful experience could come forward with their resolution.

As someone looking to travel abroad a lot more starting next year, this thread has me quite worried about the complications of international itineraries.

TerryK

This is an error fare. The ticket was issued in contravention of fare rules. Try booking this itinerary with a human TA and see what happens. Note: I am just kidding. You will probably get airlines to fix this error. Not a good idea.

We have discussed the airlines' obligations in the case of error fares ad nauseam in various threads.@:-)

Ari

busyLHflyer

Hi ,this is the fare code which was provided under fare rules-i cant read it its for experts only I guess

1 - psgr p1 adt rules display
fare component 1 adt selfra yy f pu 1 n
fcl: f trf:2307 rule: x108 bk: f
ptc: adt-adult ftc: fu -first class unrestricted
ru.rule application
normal fares between europe and japan/korea-rep.of-korea-
dem.rep. of-via ap

1 - psgr p1 adt rules display
fare component 2 adt frasel yy f pu 1 n
fcl: f trf:2307 rule: x108 bk: f
ptc: adt-adult ftc: fu -first class unrestricted
ru.rule application
normal fares between europe and japan/korea-rep.of-korea-
dem.rep. of-via ap

Boghopper

On the other hand, $6600 is suspiciously cheap for F R/T. Could be .bomb booked F part of the way and C the rest (I've gotten C/Y combinations before for no apparent reason that I noticed when I tried to select seats).

BenjaminNYC

That was what I was saying, but it seems the mistake .bomb made was applying a YY fare to an LH segment. Again, clearly a UA mistake and not an LH one, as predicted.

busyLHflyer

Then the UA website is misleading booking pax!
My friend (She is OZ-Gold) should thank LH for providing a seat I guess.
My friend is now back in Korea- the way back all in F class (UA & OZ metal) no problems!

I just did a dummy booking ICN-LAX-FRA rt for April on the UA website.
You find still the F-class fare (unrestricted) of approx 5100 Euro=6600 USD !

TerryK

UA and OZ participate in YY fares, LH doesn't. @:-) However, the routing is still not valid. Agents don't usually check routing at the airport. This is an error fare.

You can complain to UA and you may receive some goodwill compensation based on website error. However, you risk getting this fare blocked for all future travel if someone looks into this routing closely.

busyLHflyer

I dont think she will complain after arriving home with OZ hospitality ex LAX-
She will avoid LAX as transit point at all -flying via SIN or HKG to Germany is a smoother and still cheaper alternative

zrs70

I don't think it's a UA mistake. Expedia and Travelocity are offering the same fare. Do the three use the same basic search engine?

BenjaminNYC

Yes, it is.

Then they're making the same mistake.

Dunno. Don't care. UA sold the ticket. UA made the mistake. OP's friend is lucky LH even let him/her on.

sensei

Do you work for LH? Or fly with them enough that you are used to their ways? Even if all of this was UA's fault, LH did a poor job of communicating with the pax. They certainly didn't catch the problem until after BPs had been issued. Going out of their way proactively would have been to work with their *A partner UA to get her into F on a UA flight or work out payment with UA so she could continue on her booked itinerary. I think we all agree that the pax didn't do anything wrong, error fare or not.

gbsfo

Here is the truth:

i) The fare is not an error. The same fare is filed with both EH and TATL MPMs. Hence you can legitimately use the fare to fly SEL-FRA the long way. This is also not limited to SEL-FRA fares.
ii) The fare is "cheap" because of the exchange rate, as is the case for many ex-ICN fares right now.
iii) It is not a UA specific mistake. You can book these on many booking engines and get LH metal under a codeshare. In this case though, the error would lay with the TA, in this case UA, for ticketing an invalid ticket.
iv) LH could have (and probably should have) denied boarding as opposed to the downgrade. I see no reason for a downgrade. If LH were willing to accept the coupon they should have transported the pax in the ticketed class. Pax may have a case for EU comp, although it would be a fight.

Nuff said.

swanscn

I may have this all wrong since I do not fly on code shares very often or at all. But the way I see it is like this:
i) Ticket was purchased from UA for 1st class, and it just happened to include a LH code share.
ii) UA has a code sharing agreement with LH that allows them to sell tickets on each others airlines. For this each airline pays the other a fee for transporting those passengers based on class of service (not fare class).
iii) The passenger did not buy a ticket from LH, but had a F boarding pass most likely from UA for the LH portion of their ticket.
iiii) Why is this the fault of the passenger? LH should have transported them in 1st and billed UA for whatever additional fees they required.

As some have pointed out LH should not have transported this passenger at all, if the ticket was not valid. But they did so and in my mind doing so makes it a valid ticket.

I do not see how the conversation about YY fares is even relavent, the passenger bought a UA ticket with a code share. All compensation between airlines is covered under the codeshare agreement between the airlines.

While I am a fan of LH, I think they dropped the ball on this one and should be faced with a in-voluntary downgrade charge.

hch

AFAIK LH not participating in the IATA YY system means those fares are not available on LH flight numbers, but they are available on codeshares on LH metal. Maybe the agent casuing the issues for the OP was not aware of that, or the policy changed without proper communication to everyone involved. Very nasty situation indeed, and I would complain to LH about it.