Originally Posted by
joeyE
Why would UA (or any airline) offer a BE fare when there’s no low-cost nonstop competition on a route? If there’s no price shopping to be done, why not have economy as your lowest fare? Take IAD-CMH as a simple example. Seems like they’re giving money away. This assumes that a sizable portion of price-shoppers will still pay a premium for a nonstop.
I think you're missing the purpose of BE. Offering these fares actually makes UA money. It's not a discount fare, it's what they would set the lowest economy fare at if there were no BE on the route -- then they collect checked baggage fees on top of it.
The general public probably assumes, as you did, that BE is a discount on the lowest economy fare, when in fact it IS the lowest economy fare and all other fares have been raised. It's just that on some routes it's positioned as BE and some it's not. Eventually I think we'll see it on every route. I saw it this week when I booked ORD-LIR. The round trip was exactly $50 less in BE -- but bag check was $30 each way. Since I wouldn't be allowed to carry on a bag, I'd have to pay $60 if I weren't Gold. They make $10 on the RT. In my case, they made an extra $50 from me because I avoided the BE. No matter how you cut it, UA comes out ahead by offering these fares and screwing it's customers.