Fare Rules Guide

Fare rules are the conditions and restrictions that apply to any reservation based on its fare type.

Related Content: Air Pricing Guide, Fare Rules API Reference

In this topic:

Basic Concepts

Fare rules determine the price of the fare. Generally, less expensive fares have more restrictions and more expensive fares have fewer restrictions. Fare rules can include blackout dates, advanced reservation requirements, minimum and maximum stay requirements, and cancellation and change penalties.

The JSON APIs return fare rules as distributed through their ATPCO filing. ATPCO stands for Airline Tariff Publishing Company, a company that collects and distributes fare data for the airline and travel industry. ATPCO fare rules use the following formats:

  • Long rules: The detailed fare rule text. Not supported by most NDC carriers.
  • Short rules: Abbreviated fare rules that summarize each rule category. These are usually high-level conditions better suited for use by experienced travel agents.
  • Structured rules: Structured rules limit the rules returned to one or more of these categories: advance reservation/ticketing requirements, minimum/maximum stay, stopovers, penalties, voluntary exchanges and refunds.

Fare Rules Support and Formats

The table below notes which types of rules are available for GDS and NDC using the standalone fare rules reques. See the Fare Rules API Reference for endpoints and object descriptions.

For all requested fare rule types, when no fare rules exist for an NDC carrier, the response returns the error message No Fare Rule Available or No FareRule data found.

Fare Rule Type

Supported after Search for:

 Supported after Price for: Supported on existing reservation for:

GDS

NDC

GDS

NDC

GDS

NDC

Short Text Fare Rules

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Long Text Fare Rules

No

N/A: Not supported by most NDC carriers.

Yes

N/A

Yes

N/A

Structured Fare Rules

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

No

No

When to Request Standalone Fare Rules

Per the support guidelines in the table above, you can send a fare rules request after your Search or AirPrice requests before making a reservation, or for an existing reservation.

Request after Search

Send a GET request per the Fare Rules API Reference with the identifiers from the Search response and the offer and product for which you want to return fare rules, and the fare rule type.

When standalone fare rules are requested after the Search response:

  • For GDS, only short text fare rules and structured fare rules as noted above are supported.

  • For NDC, only short text fare rules are supported.

  • Fare rules can be requested for one and only one product per request, using the productIDs query parameter.

Request after AirPrice

Send a GET request per the Fare Rules API Reference with the identifier from the AirPrice offer for which you want to return fare rules, and the fare rule type.

Request for Existing Reservation

Send a GET request per the Fare Rules API Reference with the reservation locator code for the reservation, and the fare rule type.

When standalone fare rules are requested for an existing reservation:

  • Only short and long text fare rules are supported.

  • The booking must have been made using the JSON APIs.

  • The reservation must contain a valid fare and fare basis.

  • Not supported for split ticketing itineraries.

Fare Rules for Split Ticketing Itineraries

As explained in the Air Shopping Guide, split ticketing allows you to book a roundtrip ticket by sending two separate pricing solutions in one booking request. In other words, a split ticket has two separate one-way reservations instead of a single round-trip reservation.

After either a Search or AirPrice request, you can send a fare rules request for a split ticket itinerary. Note the following limitations:

  • The response returns the rule number, tariff number and fare basis code only for long text and short text fare rules, not for structured rules.

  • If both offers have the same fare basis code and same rule number, the response returns the one fare rule that applies to both offers.

  • If the two offers have different fare basis codes with different rule numbers, for short and long text fare rules, flight details for the fare basis code for the first offer return the id values f1 and f2, and flight details for the fare basis code for the second offer also return f1 and f2.