Back when the Smisek team made the comment that no one wanted to book intl FC a business colleague and I had a lengthy dinner discussion about that. We both felt that post merger UA never made it easy to book intl FC. After the merger it became nigh on impossible to book business or first on the intra-Asian flights unless they were an immediate connection from the US. There were many times booking a RTW ticket on LH's engine that no UA FC flights were listed even departing from the US.

We saw the same UA flights from TPE to NYC for 2800 in business class and 11000 in FC. You could book FC via HKG on CX for 6000 on the same dates.

We concluded that UA wanted the numbers to show that FC was dead. Or revenue management was clueless.