Airline flight inventory and pricing can be a mystery sometimes – they have so many different ways to price tickets and constantly update the price, that it can be hard to analyze and find a pattern. One way in which an airline determines the inventory, availability, and price of a flight is through married segments – essentially, they view two flights as one based on the origin and destination, and adjust flight inventory and prices based on that.
What are Airline Married Segments?
Have you ever noticed that a ticket from Miami to New York will cost more than a flight from Miami to New York to Boston? Married segment logic is a part of this – essentially the airline is viewing the two flights from Miami to Boston via New York as one and releasing more availability based on the market demand and prices. The demand could be much higher for a nonstop flight from Miami to New York and therefore there is less availability on the nonstop flight – and people are often willing to pay a premium to fly nonstop.
Married segments is when an airline combines two flights as a union and views the inventory and availability from origin to destination without having the connection city in mind. Demand and pricing on flights is largely based on origin and destination with nonstop flights costing more than connections, because they’re more convenient.
On revenue/cash tickets, the price could vary widely between two different journeys – even if one of the flights on both journeys is the same. For example, a flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco could cost more than a flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco to Denver – because in the second example, the airline is simply pricing your journey as Los Angeles to Denver and has a list of connection points that are allowed.
Married Segments on Award Tickets
More and more airlines are applying married segment logic on award tickets – so a nonstop flight might not be available, but as soon as you pair it with a connection, it will magically become available.
For example, Lufthansa likes to make more awards available using married segments – so a flight from New York to Frankfurt might not be available using miles, but a flight from New York to Frankfurt to Vienna could be available, with the first flight being the same one. This is yet another way airlines control flight inventory and availability.
Flight Changes and Married Segments
A ticket could become messy if you want to change only specific flights in a booking – and one of the flights is married to another. In some cases, it may be possible to “break” married segments during a change, but in a lot of cases even if you can “save” the new flights and divorce segments, the ticket may not re-price or re-issue due to violations in the record.
For example, if you book a flight from London to New York to San Francisco and down the line want to change only the New York to San Francisco to a different time, it may not be possible because the new flight you want could not have any availability when paired with the original London to New York flight – like I mentioned, airline flight availability and inventory is complicated.
Hidden-City Ticketing
Hidden-city or “throw-away” ticketing is the practice of booking a flight from city A to city C via city B and simply leaving the airport at city B. This is done to achieve a cheaper price on a ticket, because as you will recall, availability is different based on where you are flying from and to and not necessarily where you are connecting.
While hidden-city ticketing is not illegal, it does violate the airline’s contract of carriage, and in addition:
- you could be banned from the airline
- your frequent flyer account could be terminated and miles frozen
Not only that, there are so many things that could go wrong on a hidden-city ticket – like if a flight gets cancelled and you are rerouted to your final destination via another connecting city instead of the connecting city where you planned to ditch the rest of the ticket. In another example, if your carry-on gets gate-checked it will go to your final destination and you will have no way of picking it up in your connecting city.
All in All
Married segments give airlines more flexibility in controlling how they sell flights and what those flights are priced as. Not only that, more and more airlines are implementing married segment logic on award tickets because it allows them to improve revenue and have higher pricing. Airline pricing will always be complicated and this is yet another layer of how an airline determines availability on flights.