Help me understand booking class
 

I am looking at IAD-HNL for next year. I have family traveling PHL-LAX-HNL on 1/7 with a return of HNL-SFO-PHL on 1/14 (*A Award, US miles - all UA metal). Ideally I'd like to meet up with them for the same flight out of LAX and leave them in SFO on the return.

When I check these dates on .bomb I see that both the outbound and return show K9 but when I get to the "Review" page it is giving me a W class - which I assume to be more expensive than what the K class would be.

So my question is why do I not get the cheaper K class if it is available on all segments?

Right now it is pricing out a little over $1K - I'm in no hurry to buy at that price - I could go with a saver award but end up with more connections and a different return. I'm hoping the fares overall drop - I'd like to get the EQM/RDMs. Just hoping to get an understanding of the booking classes.

Thanks!
-TP

The fact that the K bucket is "available" doesn't mean there is a K fare filed for that segment, or even if there is, that you meet the fare criteria. You are getting the lowest published fare for which you qualify. It would be nice if the buckets only showed available if there were an actual fare available, though that would still not guarantee that you qualify for that fare.

If you're going for an award ticket, then looking at revenue tickets like K fares is not relevant. What you need to look for is XY availability (saver coach). You can do this by logging onto ual.com, setting your preferences for "Expert" mode, and then doing a standard award search. This will allow you to see XY availability (or lack of availability) on all itineraries.

If you want to purchase a revenue ticket, just because UAL shows K availability doesn't mean that it is actually selling K seats. UAL rarely sells K seats (SFO/LAX-SYD being a recent exception) - sometimes the K inventory exists to allow one to add additional flight segments to that rare K fare (i.e. SFO-HNL-LAX-SYD) even if you couldn't purchase the specific segments (SFO-HNL-LAX) in K.

I do quite a bit of fare shopping for Hawaii flights ex-PHL and have never seen a K fare quoted.

Ok, I think I am getting it a little bit.

What I did was break it up into two itins: IAD-LAX/SFO-IAD and LAX-HNL-SFO; I get S for the LAX-HNL-SFO and W for the IAD-LAX/SFO-IAD.

So I assume that means the IAD segments are my limiting factor in getting the W fare.

In your case, I'd say yes. Fare rules are complex, and not all fares can be combined. In your original case, the W fare was a "married segment" fare, where the S fare from IAD-LAX could not be properly combined with the LAX-HNL W fare, so you got W the whole way. Fare rules can become complicated.

I think it is called booking code, not class. In my experience, it helps when talking with CSRs. Also, the cheapest fare on UA Was-hnl is in W code. WLO30JN for 966$. There may be fare code available but just no fare between the city pairs you are looking for.

I don't really know; all my itins and everything else on .bomb shows booking "class".

I'm not looking for the lowest fare but some specific connecting flights as I am trying to meet/leave family in LAX/SFO.

Also I think WAS includes DCA & BWI - I live 11 miles from IAD so I prefer that departure.