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Welcome to a weekly feature on the Renés Points blog. Each week this series covers in a “rookie” way either a Delta or travel related theme and attempts to break down to a basic level each topic. You can read up on all the previous posts HERE. Now on to this week’s feature.
[youtube width=”500″ height=”415″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBkEG-k3tJo
With a HT to reader Rich, it is a good reminder that just like Delta.com does not work for you when it comes to SAVER award space, neither does it work for you to get the best price per person. What do I mean?
Delta, like all airlines, has an alphabet soup of fare classes. The plane is divided up and once a number of seats in one fare class is sold out then you move on to the next and often, but not always, have to pay more. Delta.com will even tell us only a few seats are left in some fare class so no huge secret going on here.
But what can cost you is if you say automatically search for seats for you and your wife for a trip and only one seat in the cheapest fare bucket remains then BOTH of you will be paying the higher price. Yep! Delta.com will NOT give you the cheaper price for ticket number one and then the higher price for ticket two. You pay the higher price for both of them.
In my video example above I took an extreme and went from a party of 1 to a party of 9. As you can see the fare class jumps from $1030 for one flyer to $1119 for all 9. Now here is the thing, there may be 8 seats at $1030 and only the 9th should have to pay $1119. But, for the convenience of booking all at once on one PNR or reservation you would end up paying $10,071 compared to, again if 8 were open at the lower fare, $9359.
I hope you see my point and in the example Rich sent me he would have paid for he and his wife $100 more if he had booked on one PNR vs breaking up and booking one ticket for him and then another for his wife on a separate PNR.
Do you still get perks if you book on two PNRs? Yes and no. Delta computers cannot put two PNRs into one so you have to “link” them. That can work well sometimes and not so much other times. Say you have a Delta AMEX card and you and up to 8 more get a free bag on the SAME PNR. Now if you book more than one reservation but are traveling together you get the same perks but you have to often ask for them rather than it happening automatically. Same goes for say free/discounted Economy Comfort upgrades when you are all on one as a medallion member; now you have to get Delta to do this manually for you since they are on separate PNRs. A pain, but maybe worth it for the ticket savings! – René
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Advertiser Disclosure: Eye of the Flyer, a division of Chatterbox Entertainment, Inc., is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as CreditCards.com. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers. Compensation may impact how and where card products appear on the site. This site does not include all card companies or all available card offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities. Some of the links on this page are affiliate or referral links. We may receive a commission or referral bonus for purchases or successful applications made during shopping sessions or signups initiated from clicking those links.
Responses are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
Good to know, thanks! Do you request at the gate or on the phone after you purchase?
@Madelyn – as soon as you book either call or even better please tweet to @DeltaAssit and be sure to print the tweet confirmation if there are issues later.
How about purchasing the tickets through OTA, do they jack-up prices as well? If not, that would be one good way to keep everyone on one PNR.