How to find a flight’s fare class

How to find a flight’s fare class | Secret Flying

We often receive messages from many of you asking which fare class a particular Secret Flying deal belongs to.
This information is important to those who are enrolled on Frequent Flyer Programmes (FFPs), as it determines the amount of miles/points they are credited.

 

This brief guide will show you how to find the fare class of any cheap Secret Flying deal.

 

1. Acquire the flight infofare class blog 2

The first thing to do is click the GO TO DEAL button on the deal you are interested in. When you have reached the Online Travel Agent (OTA), take note of the departure and arrival cities along with their dates.

You must also take note of each of the flight numbers in the itinerary. This is an alphanumeric string which begins with 2 letters (the airline’s IATA code), followed by numbers.

 

We’ll use this Manchester to Chicago deal as an example. Because this deal is expired, you will not receive the same results if you tried this now.

 

The image BudgetAir displays the flight numbers DL9486 and DL9382 on the outgoing segments, and AF2457, AF377 and AF1068 on the incoming segments.

 

Remember, a flight can be marketed by one airline, but operated by another. In this example you can see the first two flights of the itinerary are marketed by Delta Air Lines, hence the “DL” flight numbers. However, the flights are actually operated by KLM.

 

Now we have all the flight information we need, we can proceed to the next step.

 

 

2. ITA Matrix

Google own a really useful website commonly referred to as ITA Flight Matrix.
If there is any information you need regarding a particular flight, this is where you’ll find it.

 

Complete the search box with the flight details you took down earlier.
To input the flight numbers, click “Advanced routing codes” and enter them with a space between each one in the correct order (see image below).

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Ensure that all the details are EXACTLY the same as on the OTA to guarantee you get the correct flight. Then click the Search button.

 

When the search is complete, you are given a list of flights to choose from. Because Secret Flying always post the cheapest deals available, it is very likely your flight is first on the list. Ensure the price quoted on ITA Matrix is similar to the OTA price (they are rarely exactly the same).

When you have clicked this specific flight you are given the flight itinerary details which provides you with all the information you need.

 

In this example, you can see the outgoing flights are Delta “V” class, whilst the incoming flights are a mix of Air France “V” and “L” class.

 

 

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