Travel Agent or Married segment expert?

[thepaul500]

Trying to book a route online...pulls up fine in google.com/flights and kayak, but always reprices on DL....can someone tell me why? Is this some sort of reverse married segment logic???

Itinerary details
Itinerary

Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) to Atlanta (ATL) — Mon, Jul 6

Delta 1171
Dep: 2:35 pm
Arr: 5:50 pm
2h 15m
MD-80
First (A)

Atlanta (ATL) to Kansas City (MCI) — Mon, Jul 6

Delta 1461
Dep: 8:10 pm
Arr: 9:21 pm
2h 11m
Boeing 757
First (A)

Mileage

• 1,420 total miles

CO2 Emissions

• 416 kg (estimated by ITA).

Airport Information

• Dallas/Ft Worth International (DFW)
• Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson ATL (ATL)
• Kansas City International (MCI)

Cost per passenger (including taxes & fees)
$228.10
Total cost for 1 passenger
$228.10
How to buy this ticket
Tickets cannot be purchased directly from ITA Software.
Provide this information to a travel agent to help them match the fares found.
Make sure to provide the exact booking and fare codes shown.
Fare for 1 adult
Fare 1: Carrier DL UA21A0OA DFW to MKC (rules)
Passenger type ADT, one-way fare, booking code A
Covers DFW-ATL (First), ATL-MCI (First)
$191.16
US Transportation Tax (US)
$14.34
US September 11th Security Fee (AY)
$5.60
US Passenger Facility Charge (XF)
$9.00
US Flight Segment Tax (ZP)
$8.00
Subtotal per passenger
$228.10
Number of passengers
x1
Subtotal For 1 adult
$228.10

• This ticket is non-refundable.
• Changes to this ticket will incur a penalty fee.

Fare Construction (can be useful to travel agents)
DFW DL X/ATL DL MKC Q9.30 161.86UA21A0OA 1S20.00 USD 191.16 END ZP DFW ATL XT 14.34US 8.00ZP 5.60AY 9.00XF DFW4.50 ATL4.50
Total Airfare & Taxes
$228.10

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[TheBOSman]

I can't get Google Flights to pull it up at that price, perhaps Google Flights was using cached data for the search and the price was not available on DL.dumb, and now I can't find it since Google's cache has caught up to DL's availability.

 

[thepaul500]

Need to pull it up by searching as a multi city DFW-ATL, ATL-MCI to get that price.

Searching as a 1 way shows the higher prices.

 

[TheBOSman]

At what point does it reprice on you? I have "Total amount due at time of booking: $147.60 (USD)" at the screen to fill in credit card info right now.

 

[thepaul500]

after putting in all info and clicking submit it reprices. Called the diamond line and they refused to help as it is found on a 3rd party website and I can't replicate the search on dl.dumb

 

[TheBOSman]

I can get a DFW-ATL-MCI on those flights to pull up on DL.dumb for July 28th at $172.10, but it books into a G fare code according to DL and ITA (discounted, restricted, but first class). A is what yours is booking into, and it is available on each flight individually. It might be a Google or ITA issue where it is checking availability on each flight and then pushing it on the total fare, which DL doesn't want and isn't permitting. I'm really not sure, could be a reverse married segment issue where DL doesn't want to sell DFW-ATL-MCI that cheap that day (since nothing lower than A is available on each flight).

 

[thepaul500]

Its just confusing since there is apparently a fare rule it is covered under that was filed, but there is some restriction not listed there...

 

[jmw]

I have a trip where I'm trying to do the same thing ORD-MSP-SJC with class A and it is kicking me out after the credit card portion for a $180 increase. I think I will try to use an OTA when I have more time to work on this. Let me know if you get this to work, because this would save me a lot of money.

 

[thepaul500]

cant find any OTA's that will price it. Tried some really obscure ones that I use for FD's and nothing would work.

This is crazy annoying....and why I likely will be flying AA on the route instead.

 

[jmw]

I looked at past threads on FT about married segments, and this looks like a giant waste of time to try to get this booked at this price. I think they got the backend locked down real good so even bad booking engines like delta.dumb won't work.

 

[thepaul500]

I was able to find half a workaround. I put in the multi-city I wanted (at the awesome low price), clikced through to DL, then selected upgrade to refundable first. Yes, it add $100 to the fare, but it gave me the routing/times I wanted still way cheaper than any option I could get dl.com to spit out. I was able to get it ticketed.

However....i'll probably just buy an aa ticket....its direct and quite a bit less.

 

[janetdoe]

Y-UP fares on deep-discount coach (like these in this thread) are often finicky and are easier to book on third party rather than directly with the airline, IMO. I've noticed that for AA and DL. I've seen weird ones you can pull up on ExpertFlyer and ITA and OTAs as a published fare, but no agents of the airlines can sell it, it's only available through online channels, and for some reason the airline website can't find it. There's probably an opportunity for some BRG arbitrage here if you're willing to work at it.

My advice is, if you can pull it up on ITA, you can almost always pull it up on Orbitz. I would start there, and if that doesn't work, try a metasearch like Kayak or skyscanner.

You can also use farefreaks.com to enter an ITA-style search and it will create links to a ton of booking sites, so you can type the search once then click through the links until you find a site that works to book what you want. Steppo has also made some of his code available as a browser plugin that works directly from the ITA pricing page, if you are comfortable with greasemonkey or tampermonkey:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-tools/1623427-ita-purchase-fares-orbitz-delta-united-userscript.html

Also be careful because on some airlines, if there are irrops, this will be treated as a coach fare. Hopefully DL wouldn't do that to a Diamond... but I don't know. I would think the fully refundable F fare for an extra $100 could be a good deal if you need MQMs or MQDs.