airfare codes Archives | Nicholas Kralev

How to recognize and fight airline tricks

There have been hundreds of media stories in the last week about the Delta Airlines website “glitch” that overcharged members of its loyalty program on airfare across the board, but what none of those stories tells us is how to recognize and fight such airline practices — whether deliberate or accidental.

As this column has pointed out before, airlines try to overcharge customers all the time, and a decade ago, I used to fall for some of those tricks. That’s why I decided to learn the system — and that’s one of the reasons I wrote “Decoding Air Travel.” If you ever needed proof that knowledge means power, look no farther.

So how could you have known that the Delta website was charging you more than the lowest available fare? First, you have to understand what an airline tariff is: A list of all published base fares on a certain route, along with their rules and permitted routing — they carry a code corresponding to a letter of the alphabet. The second thing is the flight inventory, or the number of seats in each booking class made available on a certain flight…

Fighting airlines’ attempts to overcharge

How do you know that an airline agent is trying to charge you much more than necessary to change a ticket? Two agents attempted that on me just yesterday, but they quickly realized they were messing with the wrong guy and retreated from their positions. The difference was thousands of dollars.

In my book, I explain why it helps to know what exactly you want before calling an airline, and more importantly, to know the outcome of an agent’s actions. I never trust agents to tell me how much I need to pay for anything — I call them simply to accomplish something I can’t do online. A couple of months ago, I issued a Business Class ticket for a client who flew the outbound portion but had to cancel the return. I called the airline to take him off that flight and said I wasn’t ready to rebook yet but would call back when I was…

U.S. fares now filed four times a day

North American airfares are now published four times a day during the week, after the Airline Tariff Publishing Company (ATPCO) added earlier this month a filing feed at 4 p.m. Eastern time to the already-existing feeds at 10 a.m., 1 p.m. and 8 p.m.

This means that, at any of those times, a certain fare can be put on the market, changed or pulled off the market. It also means that a fare’s entire lifespan can be as short as three hours. The 4 p.m. feed had been planned for months, as I wrote in my book “Decoding Air Travel.” Although the airlines update their data 24 hours a day, ATPCO sends that data out to Global Distribution Systems (GDS), which are used by airlines and travel agencies to book flights, four times a day during the week. On weekends, there is only one feed at 5 p.m. ET…

My book ‘Decoding Air Travel’ is out

My new book, “Decoding Air Travel: A Guide to Saving on Airfare and Flying in Luxury,” which aims to help travelers master the increasingly complex and frustrating airline system and to work it to their advantage, has just been published.

The premiere is scheduled for June 29 in Washington, and my book tour begins on July 7. Some of the cities I’ll visit are Santa Fe, NM, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Manchester, NH, Fargo, ND, Charlotte, NC, Portland, OR, San Francisco, San Diego, Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo. An updated list, as well a sneak peek at the book’s content, reader comments and other educational materials, can be found on DecodingAirTravel.com, where you can also purchase a copy with a 20 percent discount. Of course, you can also buy it on Amazon, which offers free standard shipping…