Originally Posted by
Dieuwer
Then the "other carrier" was engaging in deceptive advertising.
You specifically state "inventory...was available", but then state "was sold or or removed". Those things are mutually exclusive. Either it is available, or it is not. You should not advertise something that is not available. The DOT is VERY clear about that. At a minimum it is bait-and-switch.
It depends on the sequence of events.
1. OAL carrier shows E1 (made up fare bucket) for desired flight.
2. OP sees the fare for E1 on ua.com.
3. OAL customer buys ticket in E1.
4. OP tries to purchase fare, UA tries to ticket with OAL but now the bucket is at 0.
Of course it's also possible that inventory was taken hours before but due to caching ua.com showed stale information.
Ultimately we're talking about a huge distributed system. It
can't be perfectly consistent and race conditions and the like are just reality, which is why airlines have 24-72 hours to actually ticket partner fares like this.