American Airlines posted a travel agent advisory about how it has updated fare class for US Airways.
For tickets issued starting today for travel beginning on September 17, US Airways has worked to align its fare classes with American.
US Airways is shrinking its economy fare buckets from 15 down to 12. T, U and R will no longer be US Airways economy fares.
T, U, and R are ‘special classes’ on American. T is a coach award, U is a business class award, and — while I haven’t had occasion to search this recently — R has been a booking class for upgrades to business class on domestic 3-class flights and on two-cabin transborder flights.
It strikes me as a little strange to see the US Airways ‘R’ bucket transition to ‘E’ because that is a special class with American as well. E is used for employee travel, and for same-day confirmed changes. Perhaps American will be using that bucket in a different way going forward.
Tickets issued before today, regardless of travel date, use the same buckets they were issued into. The mapping of fare classes matters for changing such tickets and determining whether there’s inventory in the original booking class.
A minor step in many ways, but merger progress continues.
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Yesterday was frustrating as US pulled a lot of fares in preparation for this. As an example LAX-STT showed only 4 fares (as opposed to 35 the day earlier!) We’ll see what SABRE shows today….
You know, there’s not many comments here, but I think this is one of the most important articles to AA elites out there. And “Z” is the first class award ticket.
Thanks!