Originally Posted by
mgcsinc
But see, here's the issue: it's not actually finding cheaper fares that UA intends to offer for sale. It's tricking the system into giving the customer a price that s/he is not supposed to get. On other airlines - DL, for example - married segments are a bar to using the individual-segment availabilities. I'm pretty sure that that's what UA means to be doing, but it's broken. I'm much happier this way.
Are you totally sure about this? If these trips are actually being fared out with individual-segment fares and if the fares allow end-on-end combinations into a single trip, then I think you are wrong here. Have you looked closely at this specific example?
I do agree with you that it is possible to use united.com multicity search to price out an A->B->C trip using generous per-segment A-B + B-C inventory and covering the trip with a single A->C fare in a lower fare class than is offered in the married-segment A-C-through-B inventory. But are you sure that that is what is happening here? In the fare constructions
sbm12 has provided I see multiple fares covering a journey, in which case using inventory per each fare might make sense.
I haven't studied these examples deeply enough to see for sure what's up.