Actually, the child was flying on a full-fare ticket, she said.

For want of a full-fare ticket, a playoff series may have been lost.

But today she buys a full-fare ticket for her instrument.

Older children can get 20 percent off full-fare tickets - but those are usually bought only by business travelers.

Full-fare tickets still account for 30 percent of American's revenue and the airline wants to encourage business travelers to keep using them.

Of course, relatively few people buy full-fare tickets.

Rates are seasonally geared to what the courier company must pay for a full-fare ticket.

Northwest Airlines also failed to go along when it allowed an adult to fly free with a child holding a full-fare ticket in May.

Its 25 percent discount is only on coach seating and full-fare tickets, not the Metroliner or the Auto Train.

An (almost) surefire way to get an upgrade is to be an elite-level frequent flier traveling on a full-fare ticket.

How would you explain the virtues of deregulation to those who had to pay the full $60,000 - or to passengers who have to buy full-fare tickets?

In some cases, they are issuing "debit memos," demanding that the agencies ante up the difference between back-to-back and full-fare tickets.

T.W.A., for example, grants an extra mile for each dollar spent on a full-fare ticket.

For airlines, the full-fare ticket price has on average increased about 150 percent since deregulation -roughly double the country's general rate of inflation for the same period.

A one-way full-fare ticket from Houston In-tercontinental to Baltimore on Continental is $10 less than the same ticket to Washington National.

Some tickets, especially full-fare tickets, were honored by other carriers, including Continental Airlines, which like Eastern is owned by Texas Air.

If you have completed your outbound trip and the airline seizes the ticket, you may then have to buy a full-fare ticket for the trip home.

American's policy is to accept all full-fare Eastern tickets, as well as full-fare tickets for seats on Eastern flights written on other airlines' ticket stock.

Northwest and Delta also said yesterday that they would match American's offer on Monday to give free tickets on many international flights to buyers of full-fare tickets.

Airlines say some changes are just attempts to enforce rules they had been waiving, and others are intended to encourage business travelers to buy more flexible full-fare tickets again.

"I don't know any travel manager who is going to pull back and say we're going to start buying full-fare tickets because that's what the airlines want us to do," she said.

But it said business travelers, long one of its prized markets, were defecting to low-fare airlines and were also switching from full-fare tickets on American to cheaper fares with restrictions.

But although they reserve the right to end their programs at any time, they cannot risk angering business travelers - the major clients for full-fare tickets - whom the programs were designed to attract.

The fee does not apply to passengers who buy tickets through travel agents or who buy full-fare tickets, or to travelers who are executive platinum members of American's frequent-flier program.

The tickets exempted from the rule, outside the Northeast, are tickets on trains that require no reservations, one-way full-fare tickets and trains in the Michigan or Pacific Northwest corridors.