7.7 Fare Rules, Restricted Fares, Refunds & Reissues

Fare Rules, Restricted Fares, Refunds and Reissues

Normal Fares Versus Special Fares

An IATA normal fare is the published, unrestricted fare for a cabin - full Y, C or F. It buys freedom: no advance purchase, no minimum stay, stopovers usually permitted, changes and refunds generally permitted, and a full year of validity. A special or promotional fare buys a lower price by selling away pieces of that freedom. Each piece sold away is a restriction, and every restriction is written into the fare rule you are contractually obliged to read before you quote.

Fare rules are filed in numbered categories, the structure your GDS displays. These are the ones a Foundation-level consultant actually reads:

The endorsements and restrictions box matters operationally: NON-END means the ticket may not be endorsed to another carrier, so a disrupted passenger cannot simply be walked to a competitor's desk.

Ticket Validity

Under the IATA General Conditions of Carriage, a ticket is valid for carriage for one year from the date travel commences, or, if no portion of the ticket has been used, one year from the date of issue. Special fares carry a shorter validity set by the maximum-stay rule. A wholly unused ticket must therefore be exchanged within its original year, and once that year expires the fare and its associated taxes are normally treated as dead. Reissuing solely to extend validity is a documented debit-memo reason.

Upsell and Branded Fares

Modern carriers sell branded fare families within a single cabin - Basic or Light, Standard or Classic, Flex or Plus. Your job is a genuine value comparison, not a hard sell.

A legitimate upsell is arithmetic. If Basic plus a paid bag plus a paid seat plus a realistic probability of a change fee exceeds the Flex fare, Flex is the cheaper product for that client. Say exactly that, and let the numbers do the selling.

Consolidator and Net Fares

A consolidator buys inventory from a carrier at a net fare under a negotiated agreement and resells it. The agent buys net and adds a markup, so the ticketed fare is deliberately not the published fare. Two consequences follow. The private fare carries eligibility conditions - point of sale, passenger type, routing, ticketing carrier, sometimes a corporate identifier - and issuing it outside those conditions is one of the most common causes of an Agency Debit Memo (see 7.4). Second, the memo lands on the agency, not on the client, so a mispriced private fare is a direct hit to agency margin.

Forms of Payment

The FP element records the form of payment on the ticket, and it decides who carries the risk.

The decisive distinction is the passenger's own card versus the agency's card. Where the client's card is the form of payment, the airline is the merchant and the transaction settles from cardholder to airline. Where the agency pays on its own card or on BSP cash and invoices the client separately, the agency becomes the merchant of record and absorbs the full chargeback and fraud exposure. Card fraud concentrates on high-value long-haul tickets issued for immediate departure - verify the cardholder and never issue against a card you cannot authenticate.

Refunds

Read Cat 33 first, then calculate. A fully unused refundable ticket returns the fare less any cancellation penalty, plus refundable taxes. A non-refundable ticket returns refundable taxes only (see 7.5). A partially used ticket is not refunded pro-rata by sector count; the standard method deducts the applicable fare for the portion actually flown.

Worked partially-used refund - refundable LON-SIN-LON, outbound flown, return unused:

The refund is filed through BSPlink and appears as a refund transaction in the next BSP billing period (see 7.4).

Reissues and Exchanges

Any change to a ticketed itinerary requires a reissue to a new ticket document; you never simply amend the old one.

Voluntary changes are the passenger's own decision. Collect the fare difference, the penalty under Cat 16 or Cat 31, and any tax difference. Worked example: original base fare GBP 380.00 with taxes GBP 145.00; the new applicable fare is GBP 455.00; the penalty is GBP 90.00; recalculated taxes come to GBP 148.00.

1. Fare difference: 455.00 - 380.00 = 75.00
2. Change penalty: 90.00
3. Tax difference: 148.00 - 145.00 = 3.00
4. Additional collection = GBP 168.00, taken on the reissued ticket. Many carriers instead collect the penalty on an EMD-S (see 7.4). Any agency service fee is your own charge on top and must be disclosed to the client separately.

Involuntary changes are caused by the airline through a schedule change, a cancellation or a long delay. Normally no penalty and no fare difference apply; the passenger is protected onto the next available service, the ticket may be endorsed to another carrier where the fare rule or the carrier's policy allows, and a full refund is due if no acceptable alternative exists. Annotate the endorsement box with the reason, for example INVOL REROUTE DUE SKED CHG, so the receiving carrier and the revenue accounting audit both see why the normal restriction was waived.

No-show is the trap that costs clients the most money. If a passenger simply fails to appear and has not cancelled before departure, most restricted fare rules void the remaining value of the fare. The ticket may then be worth nothing beyond its refundable taxes, and the right to a routine reissue is gone. Train every client to cancel before departure, even when the fare is non-refundable - cancelling preserves options that no-showing destroys.