Originally Posted by
jsloan
The primary reason that they dropped this perk was that the Y and B fares they actually sold were, in fact, not the highly-expensive seats that Y and B were intended to cover. I'd wager that 90%+ of today's Y-class passengers are either on government YCA fares or on iRROPS; there aren't a lot of companies who still insist upon booking fully flexible tickets. And I'd also wager that 90% of B-class passengers were purchasing either (a) the domestic leg of a PE itinerary or (b) the differentially-priced tickets meant to upsell non-status passengers to E+ during the purchase flow.
I won't claim that this is a good change for passengers, but we also shouldn't act like UA is leaving gobs of money on the table here. The fact of the matter is that it's likely revenue-neutral at worst: instead of collecting the B premium to sit the passenger in PN, they'll have one more seat to offer as a discounted buy-up.
The curious thing about the B fare bucket is that, more often than not, it didn’t follow the pattern of price escalation. I often looked at prices in the fare ladder: it often took a precipitous drop when it hit B. It’s been a no brainer for me to buy B fares.
On the whole, the change is good for me and I will continue to buy B fares on most itineraries. When PN wasn’t available at booking, but appeared outside the 120 window, I would sometimes see PN1 or PN2 appear, then vanish a few hours later. Because the seat map shrunk, it looked as if someone snagged an upgrade at the purchase point. It won’t happen anymore.