Originally Posted by
spin88
Well I got the $2249 from some really weird funky, hard to find web-site called United.com. It some low class, junk site as far as I can tell.
My response to the inability to find a decent not BE fare on the flights I wanted was to go to United.com, if that does not work, then the problem is not mine, its United. Lets be serious, my $$$ is green, and because UA can't get it crap together with LH, another airline (AF, via Delta.com) got that $$$$.
By going to United.com, you got UA codes instead of LH codes, and therefore you got different inventory, which is why the price jumped. If you had called LH, I'm sure they could have figured it out for you; any decent travel agent could have done the same thing. (If I had to guess, I'd say that the UA code for SFO-CDG didn't have L inventory but the LH code did; UA's SFO-CDG fare table for the summer escalates quickly).
Originally Posted by
spin88
And I don't think there is an inventory issue, the flight was available at a good fare because it is mostly empty. The problem is that how United is running its business is messed up.
Oh, for Pete's sake.
The flight was
not available at a "good fare." A "good fare" is the L fare that may have been available on a different date or a different set of flights. With some flexibility, you could have had a
non-light fare for between $800 and $900, depending upon the day of the week. Why wasn't that fare available, and why did they want $1200+ for a light fare? Inventory.
Originally Posted by
spin88
There was nothing about it being a BE on UA, with far more limitations, and the loss of key (E+ and seat selection) benefits. Even reading UA's web-site I can't find out what a W fare, but BE exactly entails.
Here:
https://www.united.com/web/en-US/con...onomy-faq.aspx
Look for the words "trans-Atlantic." TATL BE is just an LH light fare -- except for E+, which they don't offer anyway, it's the same restrictions you were willing to accept in the first place. It's a joint venture; the fares are aligned. It's the same product with a different name. They even issued guidance to travel agents about it:
https://loyaltylobby.com/wp-content/...nsatlantic.pdf . They then went and modified it in December, including adding the very confusing name of "Basic Economy."
Originally Posted by
spin88
And I don't think this was an issue of a limited number of seats. I got no "___ seats available" indication when looking on 3rd party sites which lead me to look at these flights.
That indication only means that the lowest available booking class has X seats. It doesn't mean that all of the lower booking classes are available. That's how you ended in in W in the first place.
If you're happy paying about 2x the fare to fly AF PE, more power to you. Maybe LH should improve their website -- I personally think it's awful, so it's hard to disagree -- but the rest of this is a little bit of confusion, the very-avoidable-by-UA misunderstandings about two different products with the same "BE" name, and an awful lot of unfounded assumptions on your part. UA is
not trying to charge $1000+ to move from BE to regular economy. It's just not happening.