Effective October 16, a number of changes to IATA fare construction rules have c ome into effect.

Some of these rules are fairly esoteric and won't come into pla y very often; the first one though is useful to the average FTer. At the very le ast, it's a peek at how crazy these rules used to be. Before reading this I didn 't know some of these rules existed, so please bear with me if my explanations a re a bit off. I got this information off of a presentation from Sabre, one of the global distr ibution systems. Europe considered one country for open jaw In order to combine two fares on a half-round-trip basis to create an open jaw, the "open" ends need to be in the same country. Europe is now considered one cou ntry for this purpose. (I don't know for sure which countries constitute Europe in this case.) Example: LHR-JNB-FRA used to price out as two one-way fares. Now it can price ou t as 1/2 of the LHR-JNB round-trip plus 1/2 of the JNB-FRA round trip. (Of cours e, all other combinability rules in the fare still apply.) Constructed minimum fare checks abolished If there is no filed fare between two cities, a fare must be "constructed" betwe en the departure/arrival city and the connection point (basically, the two fares are added together.) All of the weird checks like HIP checks won't apply within the construction points. Example: SIN-MNL-NRT-ULN, stopover in each city. There is no constructed fare be tween MNL and ULN. Previously, IATA required that MNL-NRT be HIP-checked; that r equirement no longer exists. Note that there does exist a SIN-ULN fare, and so the SIN-NRT HIP check does in fact happen. Increase in arrival/departure limit in Europe Previously, there was a limit of three arrivals and three departures within one country on a single ticket. (I believe, but am not sure, that this was effective in Europe only, and the rest of the world had a limit of four arrivals/departur es.) This limit has been increased to four (I think to be in line with the rest of the world.) Example: MIA-LHR-FRA-LHR-FRA-LHR-FRA-LHR-FRA-DFW-MIA has four arrivals and four departures each in England and Germany. Before this itinerary needed to be issue d on two separate tickets. Now it can be issued on one. Some minimum fare checks eliminated The following fare checks are no longer used: