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I am trying to book the following ticket: SID-NSI 24 September Which consists of AT587 and AT507 with transit in Casablanca (CMN))

I have been trying to book this ticket for a week. I have spoken to the Royal Air Maroc call centre and they gave up and said "go see a travel agent".

I thought it might be that the AT587 which originates at RAI, might not take on passengers at the technical stop of SID. But I can book the same flight from SID to CMN without issue.

It is also possible to book a ticket from SID-DLA with a technical stop in NSI.

I have reached my limit of travel knowledge and do not know what to do next.

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  • 1
    I'm able to start booking it on onetravel.com.
    – JonathanReez
    Commented Aug 14, 2016 at 17:16

1 Answer 1

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Basically, it's because the the fare rules for these flights explicitly disallow what you're trying to do.

Firstly, AT don't have a specific fare published from SID to NSI. This isn't surprising, and doesn't in itself normally stop you from booking a ticket between them as you can (normally) just book it as two separate fares for the two flights - all on the same ticket.

They do have fares published between SID and CMN, and between CMN and NSI - so you can book those two sectors individually.

The problem is that all of the fares that they have published between those cities include the following rule :

Category 10: Combinability
  END-ON-END
    END-ON-END COMBINATIONS PERMITTED WITH DOMESTIC FARES.
    VALIDATE ALL FARE COMPONENTS. FARES MUST BE SHOWN
    SEPARATELY ON THE TICKET. TRAVEL MUST BE VIA THE POINT
    OF COMBINATION. SIDE TRIPS PERMITTED.

An "End-on-end" ticket is what it's called when you use two separate fares to create a single journey. As you can see, they are allowing end-on-end combinations ONLY with domestic fares. This means that although you can book these two segments individually, you can't book them as a part of a single ticket - as the rules explicitly disallow it when the connecting flight is international like yours is.

Combinability rules like this are common on cheaper fares, but in this case they have the exact same rule on even the full-fare (Y) tickets, so it's not just bumping the price up like you'd sometimes see, but actually stopping you from doing it at all.

The reason you can book SID-DLA is because they have a specific fare between those two cities (TA0W0CVA SID to DLA), so you're booking it as a single fare rather than attempting to combine two fares.

This could be an oversight on their part (eg, someone forgot to create a fare for SID-NSI), or it could be deliberate - nobody but the airline fare management people will know, and you're not going to be able to get in touch with them...

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  • Great answer @Doc - Exactly what I was expecting. Is there any public source to see the rules of fares?
    – jakethedog
    Commented Aug 15, 2016 at 6:24
  • @jakethedog - not quite a free public source, but www.expertflyer.com has a 5-day free trial and will show you fare rules - and all sorts of other detailed information.
    – EdC
    Commented Aug 17, 2016 at 9:47
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    @jakethedog matrix.itasoftware.com will show you fare rules after you've selected a flight
    – Doc
    Commented Aug 17, 2016 at 21:00

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