DELee

2 round trips (since these are OW prices) ~ $40K.

Ow.

David

jsloan

Yes. Nearly all UA domestic business / first class fares are now -UP/UPDI type fares.

findark

Worth noting that the bases matching the pattern -nnUPx are not differential fares. It's beyond me why they are filed with 'H' (and other letters), and as type EU/ER. For all intents and purposes they behave exactly as a Business fare.

nomad420

Off topic but looking for the exact definition of UP/UPDI type fares? Please feel free to redirect. Quick search was not helpful.

DELee

A Comprehensive Look at Domestic First Class Monetization (FCM) on United

David

Kacee

Economy fare basis that books into a premium cabin. E.g., an L fare basis, but books into P.

econ

Are the small pillows in Y no longer provided? Was on SFO-EWR recently and only blankets were lying on the seats upon boarding.

It's been several months since I flew this route, but I seem to remember these were pretty standard in Y.

mozilla

Not really. For more than a year now, UA has again filed authentic (or "real") F fares in most domestic markets, along with the -UPDI fares. You can recognize them by the penultimate letter in their fare basis code which is F instead of E.

These fares are nothing special nor do they bear any special requirements. The differences are minor, the -F- fares have a higher cost for transfers though, but they do not have the plating requirement of the -E-/UPDI fares. You can easily quote them using ITA Matrix by using the right codes, see example below. These fares are in general availability.

Case in point, I recently booked a few of these -F- fares and already flew on one, without any problems. It seems to be properly reflected as a Premium Cabin fare in the GA's system, unlike the -E-/UPDI fare which may show as an ER fare. I had to go through a travel agent since .bomb won't offer them as they are filed in parallel with /UPDI fares which .bomb always prefers and .bomb doesn't allow you to specify a fare. I don't know why .bomb does this, it could just be that it sorts alphabetically and since E comes for F, the -E-/UPDI fare will always win.

ITA matrix quote:


OTA which offers this -F- fare, you can tell it's the -F- fare because the fare rules say the fare exclusively applies for Business/First class, while -UP fares also apply for Economy class.

findark

With the current publishing schema, the /UPDI fares cannot be routed nonstop (prohibited in cat3), whereas the -F- fares may. They are usually the same price but /UPDI tends to get more matches.

jsloan

OK, fair enough -- and that might help when an overzealous agent attempts to talk about "instant upgrades." Of course, if United won't sell them directly, most people will never see them.

The fact that they're tied to an economy inventory bucket and start with an economy fare basis letter is likely to be enough to cause some issues, though.

I suppose the most correct statement is to say that nearly all domestic UA F is sold via differential pricing and dependent upon both economy and first class inventory.

mozilla

Yes, that's another issue. I'm still inclined to think that somewhere on their screen it must literally say "ECONOMY." I just don't expect the majority of GA's to do an attempt at deciphering fare basis codes. And if they'd do that, I'd expect them to know what an -UPDI fare is anyway.

That's why I speculate that it is the fare type of some -UPDI fares, which can be displayed as "ECONOMY RESTRICTED" that causes the issue resulting in "you're on an economy fare." The -F- fares have the advantage that the word ECONOMY doesn't appear anywhere in their wording. As you point out, they do have an economy booking class code along with a premium booking class code, but then again, a GA would be required to match code to class, and if they go that far they should know what -UPDI is too.

Didn't have any IRROPS on my first domestic -F- fare flight, but I have a few scheduled in the midst of the winter weather season, will report if anything happens.

ocn2ocn

You may be correct but those were the days when upgrade space was readily available and inexpensive to get.

Kacee

Yes, but there has been a tradeoff. Upgrades are virtually impossible, but you can buy discount J for about 35% of what it used to cost.

Did I prefer the old system? Yes, of course. Who wouldn't prefer flying up front for <$300 RT? It was more fun, too . . . if you knew the tricks (particularly SDC into open R at T-24), you could game the system pretty much every time.

ocn2ocn

In addition to being more expensive then the old upgrade system, seems from my experience that the advance purchase P fares are very difficult to find -- only offered on a handful of flights, sometimes on no flights on a particular day.

ocn2ocn

Where problems sometime come up with these fares is during irregular operations and the website or app allows you to rebook yourself. Often this lands you back in coach and you need to call an agent to straighten this out.