Originally Posted by
masa9
I've poked around FT in the past but this is my first time posting. Infact, this thread alone was reason enough for me to register and put in my 2 cents.
I checked the seat inventory within a Fare Class every single time I've booked a ticket through the website. If I see that only a few seats are available within a fare class throughout the day, I'll book the next fare up just incase I'll have to hop on a earlier or later flight once it's time to check-in. Not having the option to take a different flight (within the 24 hour rules) because I booked a lesser fare class puts me at a disadvantage because it affects my schedule and my business. For me, it's not about getting an upgrade, it's about knowing there are seats on other flights in my same fare class and being able to change my flight without paying the price of a new ticket + change fee.
Originally Posted by
WineCountryUA
wanting to do SDC closer to the 24 window versus sweating it out to a few hours before original / changed flight?
Originally Posted by
Bonehead
Basically correct. Many flights open up all fare buckets at some point relatively close to flight time in order to accommodate SDCs (same-day changes), depending upon the real (and possibly historic) demand for a given flight. Unless I misunderstood the poster, I'm not sure that anything is gained by booking a higher fare class for a given flight, with the possible exception of a booking done close to the flight date.
I don't think anything else is gained either. Assuming masa9 is booking more than a few days (and probably more than a few weeks) in advance of the flight, the fare class inventory at the time of booking is highly unlikely to have any bearing on what the fare class inventory will be at the time s/he wants to do SDC. And the chances that buying up to that next fare class will mean the difference between being able to do SDC and not being able to do SDC are incredibly small.
But if masa9 wants that (faux) peace of mind, s/he can get an ExpertFlyer subscription, which will show all the revenue inventory buckets, as well as the fare listings so you'll know what the "next higher" available fare is. And as a bonus, you can set alerts to notify you when a particular inventory class becomes available, AND when a particular inventory class falls below a specified threshhold. Potentially very useful info.
I've been keeping up with this thread pretty well, and I really haven't seen many, if any, legitimate situations where UA's change prevents them from doing XYZ. Lots of (absurd) complaints from people who claim they're now going to have to spend hours on the phone with a reservation agent to find a flight that they can confirm a GPU/RPU on. Newsflash (for the fourteenth time!), you can still see if flights have "R" availability or not during the search process! It's maybe 2 extra clicks. Big effing whoop.
And if you need to see revenue inventory, because it's that important to you, suck it up and pay for ExpertFlyer or KVS, or I think there may even be a free site. EF is much better than UA was for revenue buckets anyway, because you can see multiple days on one screen, and you can filter results for a particular class.