Are the big airlines trying to kill multi-city ticketing?

jimntx

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Jun 28, 2003
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Dallas, TX
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Interesting pricing anomaly found by Brett Snyder (Cranky Flyer) Anybody have an explanation?

BRETT SNYDER recently ran an online search for flights from Washington Reagan to Dallas-Fort Worth to San Francisco and then back to Washington. He found something strange. If he booked the three legs of the flight as separate one-ways with American Airlines, the total cost was $412.80. But if he wanted to book the whole multi-city itinerary together, American was charging $1,837.20!!!! (Explanation points mine)

I mentioned on another thread my namesake nephew's luck with an SEA-DFW-BHM and return same stops for Thanksgiving. Total was $400 round-trip.
 
Interesting pricing anomaly found by Brett Snyder (Cranky Flyer) Anybody have an explanation?

BRETT SNYDER recently ran an online search for flights from Washington Reagan to Dallas-Fort Worth to San Francisco and then back to Washington. He found something strange. If he booked the three legs of the flight as separate one-ways with American Airlines, the total cost was $412.80. But if he wanted to book the whole multi-city itinerary together, American was charging $1,837.20!!!! (Explanation points mine)

I mentioned on another thread my namesake nephew's luck with an SEA-DFW-BHM and return same stops for Thanksgiving. Total was $400 round-trip.
Jim I used to audit airline tickets at TRIAD before I started working for TULE. There were all kinds of bizarre fare rules that resulted in vast differences in price.
 
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It's all dependent on how the fare rules are configured. A lot of these ultra-cheap one-way fares aren't combinable, which can come into play when a pricing request is no longer a round-trip itinerary.

This is how business travel agencies earn their keep. Folks clicking around the intraweb at home won't necessarily know how fare rules work behind the scenes...
 
It's all dependent on how the fare rules are configured. A lot of these ultra-cheap one-way fares aren't combinable, which can come into play when a pricing request is no longer a round-trip itinerary.

This is how business travel agencies earn their keep. Folks clicking around the intraweb at home won't necessarily know how fare rules work behind the scenes...
I can tell you for FACT (first hand experience) travel agencies violate fare rules all the time. The debt is rarely collected in full if at all.
 
Things have changed a bit on that front. I worked a bit with debit memos in my last role... Maybe it's not seen as being enforced as much in the US, but I know for a fact it's watched like a hawk in a lot of countries.