Another "enhancement" for Govt Flyers
Well after shooting off an email to 1KVoice, and then a lengthy discussion with the Govt Fares Desk, United has basically indicated that unless they have a contract on a specific market, they don't want their business. Meaning if I want to fly UA on SANPHL, the only way I can do that is to fly SANIAD and then IADPHL. They indicated basically the way SHARES will price it out is the sum of two markets. And since this can only be done in SHARES or on the UA website, travelers using DTS will not be able to select UA since it will only return results that price SANPHL, not giving the option to price it out as two markets.
sCO policy around 2006 was that they didnt bid on contract fares, but at least matched OAL contract fares (I should know because I actually worked in CO pricing). So fast forward to today, SANPHL govt fare is $400-500 each way matching US, which is about $1000 RT. Compare this to the standard advance purchase fare which prices out at $450 RT. If this was an issue where UA would be losing revenue, I could see the justification. But in yet another way, UA has failed to communicate this to its customers. So I'm 4K short of getting to 1K and if I want to requalify the only way I could do so is to fly US....which is great except next year I'll have benefits on UA and be stuck flying US which doesn't even let you book an exit row.
Pretty bonehead move on UA's part...they are going to lose $20k/year revenue from me + probably $60k/year from my team just because they aren't going to offer -DG fares. (multiply that by every other dept and other sites I'd imagine the revenue loss is going to be substantial) We can argue the whole YCA issue all day long....clearly UA would rather offer cheap YCA fares with corresponding (supposedly unlimited) upgrades than match OA. And even to the fact if UA were to match with a $40 premium that might be ok...except for the fact that due to sum of markets you can only book via UA.com which travel policy dictates booking through CTO. I sincerely hope UA reverses this decision or comes up with a solution....they said they will look into it but we shall see. Guess I better start looking at AA/DL.