Slurve30

I don't think it does. My company's contracts are with DL and UA, and the DL fliers on my team are super annoyed because they do get stuck with the basic fares that yield no seat assignments and upgrades. I've never tried clicking through to buy a DL fare (we use TBiz) so I'm not sure if my colleagues are just missing the scary warning page or if there is no warning.

mduell

In another thread someone saw N>0 when a flight was L0 K0 G0; speculation it's some testing for these basic economy fares to use the N bucket.

emcampbe

I'm going to guess that each company will decide what, if any, filtering it will do for these fares (or not) - just like companies now can decide individually on what they want their travel portal to filter out for.

I suspect that most companies that have at least a semi-significant amount of travel that includes even occasional changes won't save much, if anything, with these fares. Especially when their travel is mostly going to coincide with most business travelers so they aren't paying the lowest fares anyway. Throwing away a ticket and having to buy a new one is going to, in many cases, be a huge increase even over paying a change fee, especially when the changes come mid-trip when, for example, you'll have to pay the full round-trip basic economy fare, throw away the return half, and buy a new one-way, which may only at that point be available as a flexible ticket.

Of course, how long it takes each company travel department to both realize this, and decide how they want to handle, is going to be a completely different question.

Bowgie

No, it isn't. Delta is very clear on its website about what you don't get on an "E" fare. They tend to infect leisure routes or routes with LCC competition. Anyone half-awake can avoid them at booking. I'm not sure if OTA's are as forthright about how awful these fares are for the consumer.

The most legitimate gripe I hear about them on the Delta forum is from those poor employees whose employer buys "E" fares to save a buck. Concur and other booking services can be set to avoid these fares, but the employer has to be enlightened enough to do that.

xliioper

Correct. I work at a university and we use Concur and it does not filter them out, however, another university up the road from us has their Concur system set up to filter them out. Fortunately, we are not forced to use Concur and can book through any channel we want (so I just book directly on delta.com where I can choose a specific fare class and can easily avoid E fares).

I would note that most DL E fares often have restrictive advance purchase requirements (2 - 3 weeks) and many often require a Saturday night stay (the exceptions tend to be leisure heavy routes such as Florida markets). I would think many business flyers do not book that far in advance and/or do not book Saturday night stays. Obviously that's not universally true, but it is certainly more typical among business flyers than leisure flyers.

halls120

this. x1000

SFO_FT

According to the pop-up box, tickets booked in "Budget Economy" cannot be upgraded into E+ nor upgraded to F. I'm actually surprised that it didn't mention lower PQM earnings (or none) but I bet that'll be coming in the future. UA and DL and OAL definitely don't want frequent flyers buying these fares.

Maybe at check-in these pax can purch an E+ upgrade, but I would assume that's something UA will be testing as time goes by.

username

Then hopefully UA does not offer them for sale on the GDS like DL does. This way the corporate booking engines that are based on these GDS won't see them.

mduell

I bet they'll have a lot of options to purchase; that's the business model they're going up against.

Lani1

That would be a big concern

uastarflyer

This is s solution looking for a problem. Airfares generally are reasonable worldwide.

emcampbe

I checked a couple of routes today on UA, including a competing route that I know DL sells E fares on and I couldn't find them. However, DLs pop-up box clearly notates no buy-ups or upgrades at all, including into Comfort. Here is part of what they [DL] say on the page that explains the basic economy fare:

This indicates to me pretty clearly that there will be no option to buy up or receive free C+ or F upgrades - either in advance or at check-in/gate. I imagine UA is doing something pretty similar.

I checked CVG-FLL on DL, and their basic fare on this route in the random August dates I chose were -$40 ($276 vs. $316). If it was just not getting a seat assignment, might be worth it. But the fact this becomes throw away in the event you need a change makes these fares a no-go for me. On UA, as an elite, the ability to change, even for a fee, as well as the loss of seat selection, E+ and any chance to upgrade (which my rate is ~40% this year) is well worth the $40 premium.

Not offering these on the GDS would also mean that they wouldn't be available through travel agents and OTAs like Orbitz and Expedia. Given that lots of non FFs use these sites to do their comparison shopping, I don't see that happening - if the point is to sell these fares to folks who are primarily basing their purchase on the lowest price possible, leaving these off of the GDS would seem to not be a smart move. Companies can work with their travel portal to filter out these fares if they don't want to use them. I get corporate FFs won't like these fares, but as I said upthread, my guess is when companies realize the no change provision in particular, they would figure it would be in their best interests to filter them out anyway.

whlinder

I would assume UA will offer them on the GDS since UA has full content agreements with each of them.

mahasamatman

Sure they do. Why else would they offer them?

saFlyTalk

It would nice if the "basic economy" fares are absolute last priority for E+ seating. And by absolute last priority, I mean "basic economy" fare customers are placed in E- seating, even if there are vacant E+ seats.

Why?

For elites (and other often in E+), this reduces the density of seats taken in E+ when the aircraft is not at 100% capacity. This rewards elites and E+ purchasers by giving them a bit more relaxed of an atmosphere and the highest chance of a vacant adjacent seat.

In addition, it's not so uncommon for a standard economy fare to get "bumped" into E+ by pure luck. (When I was a non-elite, this happened to me maybe ~25% of the time, when I hadn't previously selected a seat.) By placing "basic economy" on the absolute bottom of the totem poll, perhaps "standard economy" ticket holders get extra leg room 35% of the time, but "basic economy" maybe <1% of the time. This adds to the "value gradient" between purchasing standard economy fares and "basic economy".

I'm imagining screaming kids or a rowdy group of high schoolers going on spring break on discounted "basic economy" tickets, but somehow getting put into E+ alongside elites travelling on business. I think most business travelers are not particularly fond of this image...