Airline Booking Codes
See also: Fare basis code and First class (aviation)While an airline may only have two or three classes of service, they will use approximately ten to fifteen different booking codes in order to control the amount of each fare level sold. The booking code used by airlines and agents is typically (but not always), the first letter of the fare basis shown on the ticket and in industry fare displays.
Historically, airlines only used a few codes, and these were almost identical across the industry. Typical examples were F and P for First Class, C and J for Business, and Y for economy. With the advent of cheaper fares and more frequent travel, airlines increased the number of available fare types and the number of booking codes required to differentiate among them.
There is now no industry standard with regard to airline booking codes, although the Y code is almost always still used for unrestricted economy travel.
Most low-cost carriers have greatly simplified the fare classes they use to only a few codes, unlike full-service airlines, which use many more.
Read more about this topic: Travel Class
Famous quotes containing the words airline and/or codes:
“My job as a reservationist was very routine, computerized ... I had no free will. I was just part of that stupid computer.”
—Beryl Simpson, U.S. employment counselor; former airline reservationist. As quoted in Working, book 2, by Studs Terkel (1973)
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—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)