17

I have booked the following flights on KLM:

Buenos Aires - Amsterdam    
fri 4 nov 16              

Amsterdam - Barcelona
wed 9 nov 16    

Barcelona - Paris
wed 16 nov 16   

Paris - Buenos Aires
sun 20 nov 16

I have already paid for it and a friend told me to read about the conditions of the tickets, (which I had before without paying much attention); Tickets say they have a minimum stay requirement of 7 days. Why did they let me book this way then? Shouldn't this schedule be unavailable if it's not allowed?.

What's the penalty for this? Am I gonna pay more for some of the tickets when I'm about to check in?. Are they gonna allow me to board?

EDIT: All 4 flights say this:

Minimum Stay: A minimum stay of 7 days is applied.

  • PS: None of the Destinations are "main", I built the schedule because I wanted to visit all 3 locations and the price was good.
santialur
  • 445
  • 3
  • 5
  • 10

2 Answers2

37

The "minimum stay" is only important before you buy the ticket, or when you change a plane ticket. You would not be able to buy a ticket without your itinerary meeting the relevant requirements.

The "minimum stay" requirement is part of the technical construction of a plane ticket. It means the minimum time at the fare destination you must spend, according to the ticketed itinerary, for the fare to be valid. (The idea is that people who want to stay for less than seven days are probably business travellers, who are willing to pay a lot more for their plane tickets than tourists. So the cheap tourist fares have a 7 day minimum stay requirement. The business traveller who insists that he goes home to see his family at the weekend pays a lot more for his ticket.)

It is not a requirement that you must physically stay in Barcelona for seven days. You can leave Barcelona if you like. You can even take another KLM flight somewhere else, as long as you don't change your existing ticket. There is no penalty if you travel somewhere else as long as you don't change your existing flight tickets.

If you need to change your flight ticket to stay in Europe for less than seven days, the repricing will require you to use a different fare which could be much more expensive.

5

If KLM Ticketed your itinerary, meaning they processed the payment and issued tickets for the flights, you're fine. They check all these rules beforehand and would not even let you book an invalid fare.

DTRT
  • 32,878
  • 1
  • 70
  • 112