Moderator: United Airlines
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: SFO
Programs: UA LT Plat 2MM, Hyatt Discoverist, Marriott Plat/LT Gold, Hilton Silver, IHG Plat
Posts: 66,943
Airlines have priced tickets based on O/D for years. (And there are similar practices in other industries / markets.) The prices that many times not been the the sum of the segments. Hidden city pricing is just another example of this. You can call it deceptive / sleazy if you wish but it is a common airline (not just UA) practice for a long time. In the case we are discussing here, the attempt to enforce O/D pricing can be circumvented by use of multi-destination searches. In a "correctly" (from UA's perspective) functioning IT system UA would catch this (and likely will in the future) but presently does not.
Is O/D pricing deceptive / sleazy? personal judgement call, but knowing it is a common industry practice is an useful understanding for the FF.
Is this useful knowledge that UA's system fails to enforce its O/D pricing in some cases, yeap.