JoeKayaker

I am going to Europe in December and would like to find P-class (deep discount business class) fares for the over the Atlantic segments. When I do a flight search and check what fares are available I can see "P9" for all the segments (the flights are wide open), but the website only offers me Z class fares or higher - which are more expensive than I want to pay.

Is there a way to get the website to offer me a P-class fare? Is there something I am missing? Will a call to a human help?

Thanks, Joe

AeroWesty

Use the calendar function of ITA to search for which days have P fares valid for your trip. I did a calendar search for SFO-LHR, and only found a few days in late November when I did a month-long search, such as outbound Nov 28 returning Dec 4.

On united.com, those dates priced correctly for $2,465 round-trip in Business.

JoeKayaker

Thanks for the pointer - I had not seen that tool before. I thought if all segments had a fare class available that you could get a ticket in that class - guess not.

The Z-class fares are pricing out over $6K. $2.5 for a P-class fare is a pretty good deal.

Do you think it would work if I bought a P-class when one is available and then payed the change fee ($400) to move it to the dates I want to travel? I believe that if the p-class fare is available on the dates I want to travel I only need to pay the change fee (but no change in fare). It would still be much cheaper than the Z fare.

Kacee

No that's not the way it works. If the P fare were offered on your travel dates, you would be able to buy it now. Since it is not being offered for sale on the dates you want, you would have to upfare to a Z to change to those dates.

mherdeg

Yeah, UA has had a lot of trouble communicating how purchasing air travel works. They tried adding a multi-paragraph disclaimer to their Web site and forcing you to read and acknowledge it before you could enable the "expert mode" that lets you see fare classes, but either their wording was unclear or people just did not read the wall of text that said "published fares and fare class availability are two different things, please understand that and don't swamp our call center with complaints that you see L availability but can't buy an L fare."

keisari

Are u connecting from another city? If that is the case P fare for inside the US sometimes cannot combine with P fare for the TATL segment; u may need to purchase 2 separate tickets;

JoeKayaker

Thanks for the replies.

As an example, UA 56 on 12/5 EWR to CDG in expert mode shows "P9". The return flight of UA 57 on 12/12 CDG to EWR also shows "P9" (at least they did a minute ago). But the website will only quote a Z-class fare. You can find similar examples from ORD, IAD, or SFO in about the same time frame.

I'm originating from PDX. I'm fine to buy two tickets, but it does not look like that will help.

Looks like I'll just have to watch and see if something opens up, or upgrade with miles and co-pay. I was hoping for the paid biz class to avoid a mileage run to put me back at 1k.

UALboy

If you are interested in leaving between 12/14 and 01/03, P fare for PDX-CDG requires a 28-day advance purchase. However, if you are interested in leaving between 12/1 and 12/13, P fare requires a 50-day advance purchase. That is why they will give you the next cheapest fare (Z) for the time frame that you are interested in. So, if you are interested in the $3000 P fare, maybe you can consider leaving after 12/14?

mherdeg

Just as an example, that flight's full inventory right now is
"Available Cabins: J9, JN9, C9, D9, Z9, ZN9, P9, PN9, R0, RN0, IN0, I0, Y9, YN9, B9, M9, E9, U9, H9, HN9, Q9, V9, W9, S9, T9, L9, K9, G0, N0, XN9, X9"

So from an inventory perspective, it's pretty much "wide open" (except for a few upgrade and award buckets and the deep-discount G & N buckets).

But even though the flight has "K9", if I do a one-way search EWR-CDG, the cheapest fare UA will sell me on that flight is a B fare. That is, there are no valid UA fares in the cheaper buckets M, E, U, H, Q, V, W, S, T, L, or K for the kind of itinerary I want to buy — a one-way trip EWR-CDG with purchase on 10/29 for travel on 12/5.

Now, if I do a round-trip search for, say, 12/5 to 12/12, I am offered a K fare, fare basis KLXNC8S. So there is a valid K fare posted for round-trip travel between EWR and CDG for original departure on 12/5, return on 12/12, purchase on 10/29. But note that I only got this by meeting the rules of a published fare.

If you'd like to find deeply-discounted "P fares", try (1) first finding the fares posted and (2) *then* finding fare class availability.

Here's a quick snapshot from ExpertFlyer of all round-trip business-class fares posted by UA for travel EWR to CDG:



As you can see, there's a deeply discounted P fare ($933 round-trip base fare, not including taxes and surcharges) but it's only valid for Thanksgiving (original departure 11/24 thru 11/29). And there's another deeply discounted $1400 P fare valid for Christmas travel (original departure 12/14 to 1/3, minimum stay 3 days, 28-day advance purchase requirement). The next cheapest P fare is not a great bargain ($2440 base fare) and carries a 50-day advance purchase requirement and 8-day minimum stay.

So to recap— if you want to find a cheap trip and you think you can do better than Kayak/ITA/Hipmunk/Expedia/etc., first find the fare basis, *then* look for inventory that matches the fare you want.

A bit tough to find fare data for free. Expertflyer and KVS offer fare information on a paid basis. Travelocity will monitor fares for you but I've never found their tool useful ( http://travel.travelocity.com/mystuf...FareWatcher.do ). There used to be a great "Flyertalk tool" published by Farecompare, but they have discontinued it, either because they're lazy or because of regulatory reasons regarding advertising of flight prices. In a perfect world, you would be able to pay ATPCO some money and subscribe to a raw fare data feed, then send yourself an e-mail alert when you found premium-cabin fares priced at below X cents per mile…

Kacee

That is an awesome explanation of how to decipher fare class availability. Thanks mherdeg for taking the time!

JoeKayaker

Thanks for all the good info.

So it's miles and a co-pay for me.

Looks like the only thing for me left to do is figure out where I want to go on my mileage run...

Dieuwer

On ITA:

From: PDX /f bc=P
To: CDG
11/1/13 and a month later
5-8 nights

Result: PDX-ORD-CDG-ORD-PDX, 11/25-12/02, $2623.40 ai. PQNC3S

JoeKayaker

So I am guessing that I could not buy that fare, and then move the dates to the ones that I want (12/5 out and 12/14 return, with some flexibility) where there are P class fares, but I cannot make the advance purchase requirement.

Maybe I can buy that fare, attempt the move with-in 24 hours. If the move cannot be done (or cannot be done without adding $4K to the ticket price) cancel the original ticket. Never mind - too convoluted, and with SHARES I can assume something would go wrong and I would be out $2500.

I'm going to figure out the cheapest miles+co-pay combo.

Thanks everyone.