Yes, each tariff is loaded with a legal routing. SEA-SFO-PHX qualifies for a through fare, SEA-DEN-PHX generates an illegal routing, however DEN does odd things with pricing and usually - used to - result in a broken fare that was equal or better than a through or published fare. John C. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Matthew Montano" <mmontano@xxxxxxxxx> To: <AIRLINE@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2005 5:26 PM Subject: Airline fares/routing For those in the know, I have a question. The old/current philosophy was that the airline would offer a fare based on a city-pair. i.e. SEA/TPA and for the most part, no matter which hub or airline you went through (IAD/ATL/DEN/ORD/DTW/MSP) you likely find about the same fare. (plus and minus airport taxes and such.) The result was for say SEA/OMAha, UAL could take you through DEN or ORD. But from a pure cost perspective, taking you through ORD would be more expensive as you are essentially backtracking. One argument was that if the airline had an empty seat OMA-ORD, ORD- SEA it didn't matter. But now that virtually every flight I've been on for months are full, and airlines still loosing money, is there anything in the pricing systems that prevent routings that cost more money than others? Matthew