Originally Posted by
chinatraderjmr
I was looking at fares on UA to PVG today. I found a great F (A) fare for myself earlier this month & while I have not flown UA intl. since 3/3, this fare was to good to pass up. (JFK-SFO-PVG R/T $4599 all in GF).
Anyway, I need to send someone i work with to PVG from NY (JFK/LGA, not EWR) next month after the Holiday who prefers UA so took a look a biz class fares for her. WHAT IS GOING On, i Could not understand these fares for the life of me. All on pmUA 3 cabin 777's exact same day
P business class (BF) restricted $4469.00
A First Class (GF) restricted $5499.00 (I've never seen a non holiday GF fare this cheap)
Z Business class (BF) restricted $5999.00 (This is normal)
D Business Class (BF) unrestricted $8900
F First Class (GF) unrestricted $11,990
P, A & Z all have the same restrictions. How can Global First (A) be less then business first (Z) & what's the point of offering P & Z on the same market since they both have the same restrictions. I've seen plenty of markets where GF (A) is less then BF (C) because the A class was heavily restricted and the C was not but that's not the case w these China fares
Could UA, knowing that the end is near for GF just be slashing prices? This seems to only be happening on the PVG & PEK flights but maybe someone could explain it to me. And then explain why anyone would buy a Z fare for more then an A fare?
I know all about dynamic pricing, blah blah blah but this makes no sense to me.
Wouldn't the most likely explanation be that someone just did something stupid in how they set up the fares in the system?
This certainly wouldn't be the first stupid or incorrect thing that we've observed since 3/3.
Still, however, P is $4469 and A is $5499 so although A > Z, it's still the case that C is < F, so from that point of view, doesn't this still make sense?
This matches what I mentioned yesterday, that I'm seeing an explosion of super-cheap P fares that are almost priced like B fares, and for me, this makes it worthwhile to forget about 1K, forget about GPUs, and just pay those P fares and balance my budget by cutting discretionary flying. Fly less. Pay more. And never sweat upgrades or W fare lottery BS.
This strategy won't work for everyone, and not even for me when I'm flying under contract restrictions, but when I'm able to control how I fly, it's perfect.
In fact, it also works out for UA, because though I'm flying less, my yield is going up, and if everyone behaves this way, their per-mile yields will triple over what they are getting today from a typical 1K.
And, we never even need to think or speak the word "upgrade" again.
It's always been my opinion that the fundamental problem with the current system is that they price F and J irrationally high. If they cut the price to where people could afford it, we would all be much better off than this nonsense where it's priced in the stratosphere and then we have to play stupid lottery games to try to get the seats.
Incidentally, I'm seeing the same behavior on NH and a little less of it on LH and I notice that prices between UA, NH, and LH always seem to be the same for SFO-NRT or SFO-FRA (I think they got an anti-competition exemption that allows them to do what would be illegal for any other company to do) and so it seems there is a global trend in this direction, at least on these routes and amongst these alliances.
Time will tell if it's just seasonal or really a trend ... but I'm seeing this into the spring of next year.
Originally Posted by
UA-NYC
Goosing PRASM yields at this point? FTer mitchmu reported getting a $300 HOD buy-up from Y to Z on booking for a 10 hr flight.
Or maybe SHARES is just taking over a la Skynet...it can't be stopped
Well, we know that what they love about SHARES is the "dynamic pricing" but nobody has told us what that really is except that it has a magical ability to set the price of an E+ seat for kettles in real-time. Wow. Big deal. Maybe it's a massive neural-network engine that is kicking in now that it's having enough history to work with and it more broadly affects offers.