Originally Posted by
jsloan
It doesn't make any sense to try to eliminate change fees as a way to move traffic to BE. UA wants to drive passengers away from BE. The fact that BE fares can't be changed, including SDC, was actually the primary reason I never booked one. If anything, free changes on regular economy make BE even less appealing.
I agree, but the pattern I see in practice is that UA, AA, and DL use Basic Economy as their competitive leisure fare in a market, with regular economy 50-100% higher.
ex-MCI, most of my routes have a Southwest option. Southwest's WGA fare and United's BE fare are often the same (or close), but Southwest WGA's fare rules are much more closely aligned with United's new no-change-fee regular economy rules. Southwest is a little better in that you'll get a residual credit on fare drops. United looks on the surface a little better in terms of SDC/standby. But by and large, a Southwest WGA should, in the future, be about the same kind of ticket as a United regular economy. But right now it isn't the same price.
If United were really using BE to compete with the Spirits and Frontiers of the world....the $20 midcons with tons of add-on fees....that'd be a different story. But I'm seeing them using it to compete with Southwest, meaning that I'm unlikely to pay a big premium on United just to get up to the same benefit level I get on Southwest.
I'm UA Silver...maybe if I were 1K and it was a route where I was fairly sure I'd get an F upgrade, I'd think differently.
It all comes down to how they price BE and how they price regular economy vs. the competition.