Originally Posted by
docbert
When is the flight? It seems very unlikely that an international flight would go from R8 to R0 within 12 hours.
This is UA34 IAH-LHR 12 September, which I variously observed at R8 (at about 11 p.m. on the day I bought the two trips), R7 (at about midnight, after one ticketed and I applied a GPU), R3 (an hour later, while still waiting for it to ticket), R2 (at about 2 a.m.), R1 (at about 3 a.m.), and R0 (by the time I went to bed, and it never came back).
During that same time, load in the front cabin went from 26/50 to 27/50 to 28/50, according to the "Booked:" amount on mobile.united.com.
No idea what inventory management was doing there; this is just what I saw happen.
Less dramatically, availability in that same week on LAX-LHR 9/10–9/14 has been bouncing up and down among [R0, R1, R2, R3] with changes about every four hours.
Originally Posted by
docbert
And no, this isn't "bait and switch". Not only does "bait and switch" imply malice, but you are/were free to cancel the ticket within 24 hours for no fee if you were unhappy with the outcome - that's not a characteristic of B&S.
My understanding from reservations agents is that if I cancel within 24 hours a ticket booked with a CO-style electronic travel credit, I get a refund in the form of a newly generated electronic travel certificate in the standard refunds time frame (2–3 weeks). With travel 4 weeks away, this didn't seem great.