Few things seem more complex than the revenue management division of a major airline. Forget about the miracle of flight; current marvels are humans and machines deciding how much you and your fellow passengers will pay for a ticket; passengers in the same row of a plane often pay quite different amounts.
There’s quite a bit of pressure to deliver a strong bottom line, and one of the ways airlines manage income is by selling tickets in several fare levels for every flight.
Within what we consider to be service classes—economy, premium economy, business and first—there are boundaries that even many committed frequent flyers cannot recognize.
Although airline fare classes—which are even more divisions of each of those service classes—are complicated and vary from airline to airline, at least some knowledge of the lingo will help the next time you’re looking for an elusive award ticket, booking an upgradeable fare, or just trying to estimate how many miles you’ll earn for an upcoming trip.
Today, I’ll answer a common query by outlining ticket classes so you might know what the fare basis code indicates regarding your future journey.
Fare Class Basics
The most basic description of the several fare classes is that they separate every seat on an aircraft into several categories, each with its own pricing and policies. One-letter fare codes help to identify fare classes. While some fare classifications and codes are universal among all airlines, others vary greatly based on the carrier.
Here are some of the fare codes usually found across all airlines:
- Y: Full-fare economy-class ticket.
- J: Full-fare business-class ticket.
- F: Full-fare first-class ticket.
Delta and United no longer provide any flights with the F fare class among the major U.S. carriers; J is the highest fare class that is sold. American Airlines employs the F fare class, but only on three-cabin aircraft flights providing Flagship First services, like the Boeing 777-300ER and the Airbus A321T.
On message boards such as FlyerTalk, these letters are also frequently used as abbreviations to refer to the “generic” class of service (e.g., “I’m flying in Y from New York to London and want to upgrade to business class”). But this guide concentrates on the actual airline-stated fare classes.
Travel agencies and airline reservation systems sell tickets on a plane using fare classes, which also help them monitor which fare classes are still available.
How Airline Fare Classes Affect You
Here’s a scenario showing how these several fare levels apply while you’re ticket buying.
Assume, for the moment, you want to schedule a flight from Chicago O’Hare (ORD) to Los Angeles (LAX). You discovered a $305 round-trip ticket yesterday when looking at the pricing, but before finalizing your travel plans, you had to verify dates with a family member. The price of the booking today has increased to $375. The only reasonable justification for the price rise is that yesterday’s more discounted fare class is now sold out.
This could also impact you when you travel since, from both a redeeming and elite-qualifying perspective, your price class will occasionally determine the mileage you accrue on the flight.
While American, Delta and United have all converted to a revenue-based approach of granting miles for flights on their own (respective) flights, traveling on most of their partner airlines will utilize a fairly convoluted calculation that considers distance flown as well as price class booked.
For instance, below is Delta Air Lines’ mileage accrual chart showing credit of an Aeromexico flight not booked through Delta to the carrier’s SkyMiles program:
The lowest fare class (V) just pays you 25% of the miles flown, as you can see. Traveling from Mexico City (MEX) to Atlanta (ATL), a round-trip flight will traverse 1,331 miles. Still, that would just get you 333 miles. Booking into a fare class at the following level (E, N or R) would double such earnings.
If you are pursuing Delta Air Lines Medallion status as well, this is equally vital. With the chart above, the lowest economy fare class would earn you 1,331 Medallion Qualification Miles but only 5% Medallion Qualification Dollars.
For instance, you would only get 10 MQDs if the MEX-ATL flight on Aeromexico had a base ticket of $200. Even buying into full-fare business class gets you a maximum of 40% MQDs, but those figures would be increased if you booked into E, N, or R.
Delta has limited the MQD earnings as an incentive for its most devoted customers to gain status by flying on Delta’s own aircraft or, at least, booking partner tickets through Delta.
Lastly, it’s crucial to be aware that many carriers will either add cash copays to enable you to upgrade tickets reserved into specific fare classes or forbid you from doing so. Knowing what fare class you have scheduled will help you to fully grasp how it will affect your flight.
Standard Practices and Common Fare Rules
Although fare class is usually denoted by a single letter, this gets somewhat complicated very fast. A fare basis code is the sequence of alphanumeric characters produced when you mix a fare class with other restrictions. This provides all the information travel agents and airline reservation experts require on your ticket and fare construction.
For instance, you have a fare basis code KAA2PHEN for a United flight from New York (LGA) to Chicago (ORD). Though I know this is a K-class fare, I would have to click on “rules” to grasp all the restrictions linked with this fare.
Generally speaking, the lower the fare class, the more restrictions there will be connected with it. Upgradeable using cash, miles, PlusPoints, or a space-available Complimentary Premier Upgrade for MileagePlus Premier members, a K fare with United is a significantly discounted non-basic economy flight that nevertheless earns 5 miles per dollar for non-elite members.
Fare basis codes also tell an agent whether a fare is refundable, good for one-way or round-trip tickets, departing to or from particular countries, combinable with other fares and good in high or low season, as well as whether the fare can be booked far in advance and whether there are any routing restrictions or change penalties.
Example: Fare basis code WH7LNR tells me the following:
- W: I have a W fare class ticket.
- H: It’s a high-season ticket.
- 7: I have to book seven days in advance.
- L: It’s a long-haul flight.
- NR: The ticket is nonrefundable.
Understanding fare basis codes requires experience and expertise specific to the airline since each one writes codes in their unique style. I wouldn’t spend too much effort trying to grasp anything beyond your fare class and stated policies.
Common Fare Classes in the Points and Miles Hobby
As already mentioned, you will frequently find bloggers or frequent reward travelers talking about tickets using generic codes:
- Y: Economy.
- W: Premium economy.
- J: Business.
- F: First.
For instance, “There are great Y fares from the U.S. to Europe this winter”. Recall that these letters are also frequently used for particular fare classes as well as the more expensive (full-fare) ones.
For those who enjoy points and miles, however, the most significant impact of fare classes is award tickets and upgrades. Most airlines will designate particular fare ranges for these awards. Just because there’s an open seat in the designated cabin that you want to fly doesn’t mean that it’s available using miles.
The same is true for upgrades, whether your goal is to take advantage of elite status for free bumps to the front of the plane or redeem miles or use certificates. Almost daily comments along the lines of, “But there are three open first-class seats! Why won’t (enter carrier here) upgrade me?”
The carrier isn’t making those tickets available for upgrades if those seats aren’t put in the fare class set for upgrades. Note that this might not occur until sixty or perhaps thirty minutes before departure.
Star Alliance provides the simplest means of visualizing this. The 26 member airlines have standardized their award-booking classes; hence, you will require the following inventories if you want to utilize miles from one carrier’s program on a flight run by another carrier:
- X: Economy award seat
- I: Business award seat
- O: First award seat
All Star Alliance member airlines are searchable on ExpertFlyer, thus it can be rather easy to find award inventory and create alerts should your preferred class of service not be available. That said, there are certain limitations here.
While Singapore generally releases long-haul first- and business-class awards to members of its own KrisFlyer program, Swiss, for example, usually only lets elite members of its Miles & More program redeem points for first class on its own flights.
Conversely, Lufthansa, Swiss’s parent airline, does distribute some first-class inventory to Star Alliance partners.
Knowing these ticket classes also comes in handy when my online booking screen fails to indicate the cabin I’m in for partner airline flights. Sometimes, my confirmation just shows “TG 678 (I)”, even if I reserve Thai Airways using United miles. I know “I” is business, so I don’t have to call United to verify I was booked in the correct cabin.
Special Airline Fare Classes
Many airlines use specific fare classes for their own products, passengers, or other circumstances. Maybe my best illustration of this is a feature exclusively available to MileagePlus Premier members or United cobranded cardholders.
Should you have any United cards, Premier Silver status or higher, you can access fare class XN – additional economy award seats just for Chase cardholders.
Although you don’t have to log in to access United’s website, which is among the finest for searching for Star Alliance award space, you really should if you carry a card like the United Explorer Card.
Every time you come across this additional award inventory, it will be notated straight in the award search results once you are logged in to your United MileagePlus account:
The following are some more instances of these special fare categories:
- OU: Delta uses this code for complimentary Medallion upgrades.
- PZ: United uses this code for complimentary Premier upgrades.
- U: Alaska uses this code for complimentary MVP upgrades to first class. Travelers confirmed into Alaska first class via U class are not eligible for access to the Alaska Lounge.
- CB: Indicates an extra seat for cabin baggage.
- P: Etihad uses this code for The Residence on A380s.
- IN: Infant fare, usually 10% of an adult fare
- CH: Child’s fare, varies from 0%–50% savings depending on the airline
- CL: Clergy fare (Who knew?)
- DP: Diplomat
- PG: Pilgrim
- YCA: Contracted military/U.S. government fares. They are treated mostly as full Y tickets but, unfortunately, are no longer upgradeable on American Airlines.
Bottom Line
For several reasons, knowing your fare class is crucial. First, it can inform you whether from a bought ticket you will earn 100% of your frequent flying points. This is especially crucial when credit your flight to a different airline.
Your fare class also indicates whether your ticket is upgradeable and where you might fit in the upgrade priority line.
Knowing your fare class will help you arrange your strategy for making adjustments before you contact the airlines and tell you whether your ticket is refundable and whether any change costs are needed should something go wrong or you need to make a change.
Understanding how the airline business operates will help you to be more suited to maximize the value of your points and miles since knowledge is power.