Originally Posted by
threeoh
Yes, I agree that doing that was their strategy for setting pricing on Day 1. I was asking if you had evidence that it's "still" that way. Having BE doesn't make them exempt from market forces affecting price.
In any competitive market where UA price-matches a competitor, they do so at the deep discount level using BE fares. This includes full-service carriers with no Basic Economy (AS, WN, B6). This also includes cases where AA or DL do not have the same differential for BE -- UA will match the BE price and normal Economy fares will be mismatched. I think this is painfully stupid on UA's end and illustrates a stunning incompetency when it comes to tactical pricing on an individual market basis, but this combined with their clear statements about BE being a driver of additional revenue in their investor slide decks makes it quite obvious that regular Economy is an upsell over what it used to be.