Nice to know about bookings and tickets of flights

[runabout]

Nice to know about bookings and tickets of flights

 

 

Hi there *waves*

 

Had a pretty similar topic in some german forum about that and thought it would be nice to post it here as well.

 

Actually this should help you to understand why a flight costs xxx today and xxx on another day and also explain some more stuff arround the booking / rebooking and issuance of flighttickets.

 

 

Service- and Bookinclasses

 

The serviceclasses is devided into Firstclass (also known as F), Businessclass (also known as C) and Economyclasses (also known as Y or M)

 

The bookingclasses is marked by single letters and sometimes airlines have up to 15 of them within one serviceclass especially in Economy (please see pic)

 

 

 

 

This bookingclasses go together with different rules for the fares like advanced purchase (AP), rebooking and cancellatio, also min- and maximum stay permitted.

Also the price plays a role in that one. See below a so called "Fare Quote". Easy to see how bookingclasses go with the different prices (prices here in € but without taxes)

 

 

 

 

Codeshare Flights

 

Codeshare does mean that an airline sells a flight from a different airline (called operating airline or operating carrier) under their own flightnumber. This is well liked in the alliances of airlines for eg. Star Alliance or One World.

 

De below pic shows this pretty nicely. The TG xxx is the original flightnumber of the operating airline and the LHXXX is a codeshareflightnumber for the same flight but sold and marketed by Lufthansa. The LH flightnumber is in this case also called codeshae flightnumber. Within the Star Alliance you can usually recognize codeshare flights at a four digit flight number for interkontinental flights.

 

Sometimes on codeshareflights you get cheaper fares than at the operating airline.

 

 

3-Letter Codes:

 

These codes are a short form for the different airports in different cities. (also available for other locations but these are unintresting for us)

 

ZRH = Zürich

BSL = Basel

GVA = Geneva

 

VIE = Vienna

 

LHR= London Heathrow

 

LAX= L.A.

ORD=Chicago

EWR= Newark

SEA=Seattle

 

FRA = Frankfurt

BER = Berlin

DUS = Düsseldorf

HAM = Hamburg

MUC = Munich

STR = Stuttgart

 

BKK = Bangkok

UTP = Utapao

USM = Ko Samui

 

Just to name a few.

 

 

Prices for flights and how do they come:

 

Pricecreating is the bookingclass that is possible at the time of booking, bookable under supervising the rules (advanced purchase, min and max stay .....)

 

Prices is actually not hard to understand if you fullfill certain prerequirements (the farerules) you get a cheap ticket as long as the cheaper (or cheapest) bookingclass is not booked out by other customers for the day you request. Thats also the cause that one day its xxx money and other day its only xxx money. At the other day theres simple not as many booked. Most of the times this is within the middle of the week the case as most Holiday travelers start at the weekend and end at the weekend with their holidays. Also most business travelers will go on monday or tuesday. Sometimes you get a midprice ticket by having a very low fare on the outbound flight and a higher fare on the inbound which mixes up to midlevel prices. It could help to check connecting flights via other cities as you might get cheaper classes on the connecting flights, as long as you dun mind transfers.

In general the availability is all the same at agencies / websites / airlines. The difference is usually only in the service fee for issuing the tickets. BUT its always worth to check a lot as there is many ticket brokers which buy fixed places and sell em round, which is sometimes cheaper than the airline. Also if a travel organisator has bought a fixed amount of space at some airline and he cant get enuff travelers they might sell just flighttickets cheap. So make sure you check your possibilities also search in google for specialized travel agencies as they might also sell some of their bought seatamount cheap.

Specials of airlines is something you can be lucky or not but they come only if the airline has problems to fill their planes, which makes it kinda risky to forsee that. Well your choice risk or not.....

In general its just the earlier you book the cheaper it is as you get thecheapest space buckets of an airline before the others book it, simple thing same as in a mall at the cheapy desks. If the cheapest fare is sold the next higher comes and so on.

 

 

Different prices in different countries:

 

Flightoffers of airlines are usually directed after the country of issuance, and the economy factors of the inhabitants of the country. Also its important for the airline if they want to improve their bookings in a certain country.

Below you see farequotes and you can see how prices is different depending on countries of ssuance. For people living close to a border a lil trip across the border to another airport could be sometimes usefull (don't forget in such cases request tickets at travel agents in the other country). Personally i know many people taking cheap flights to other countries and start traveling from there as it is all over all a few hundred bucks cheaper sometimes. Could also be good if you fly business in a special for an airline where you can collect status miles if they have cheap specials there for businessclass.....

 

Please be sorry that the naming of the pics is in German (was to lazy to change it) "ausgestellt" means issued.

 

 

 

 

Tickets or Farerules

 

Each ticket has differnt fare rules (some of them you can see in pic 2, AP = adnaced purchase, MN and MX = min and max stay .....) some of them could (but not must) be the following:

 

No rebooking

No cancellation

Rebooking against xxxx cash

Cancellation against xxxx cash

Advanced purchase xxx days (means for booking and rebooking it has to be xxx days before the flight takes place)

Minimum stay xxx days or a night Saturday to Sunday or both possibilities up to the fare.

Maximum stay xxx days / months

Routing ahs to go via xxx or xxx or go way xxx

Namechange impossible (all major airlines don't allow this due to regulations for security in airtransport)

Flight only applies on airline(s) xxx

In case of rebooking flight has to be rebooked before departure of original booked flight / any time rebookable also in case of no show

Flightcoupons must be flewn in sequence (means one flight after other as booked) or ticket is invalid

No refund in case of no show

and TONNS of others......

 

In each case it makes sense to let the travel agent exactly explain the rules for the ticket becaus you never know what happens, maybe you can stay longer or have to return ealier ....... better know up front before you have tonns of stress nailed on your arse.

A good travel agent ( office informs you up front about this stuff without any asking from your side.

 

 

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Hope i put some light inside this stuff for the one or other, if you have any questions regarding this stuff feel free to ask here or PM me.

 

PS: please excuse all spelling errors as iam no native english speaker. Thank you.

[chosen]

thanks for the insight. Although a little bit confusing, somehow it helped a little.