Originally Posted by
jsloan
1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Not true for elites, and, yes, you still get your free checked bag allowances. No need to trick anything.
4. No. If you want to sit with your companions, UA does not want you to buy this fare.
Thanks for this very helpful info. From reported experience, does UA TRY to sit "families" who buy BE together? My daughter recently had an experience with Ryanair where they intentionally split up her party (Ryanair admits they do this to encourage folks to pay for seats).
Originally Posted by
JBord
The only way they lose money is if people book away. I still haven't seen a really logical argument for why a frequent customer would book away, unless they were forced by an employer to book BE. However, I'll note, anecdotally, that while I'm flying less this year than before, I've received several upgrades as a Gold, and also had an empty middle seat exit row several times. Over the last couple years, those were very very rare occurrences.
So far I haven't exactly "booked away," but I have seen some UA fares that I would have booked had they not been BE. To me, it's a numbers game. I'm obviously not going to prefer UA if all I'm getting is their BE product (even the enhanced version given to high elites). The BE fare I did buy was $80 cheaper roundtrip for a 3 hour flight. For my party of 3, that would have been $240. I don't think economy plus and assigned seats are worth $240. Others may differ.