UA can no longer compete in Brasil if connecting from GRU or GIG
 

DL/AA are 50% cheaper in Y (and 30% in J) if you are connecting through GRU or GIG. If you are terminating in those cities, UA remains competitive. For some reason, the addition of a leg on a Brasilian airline is making UA prices skyrocket while DL/AA are what one would expect.

Does UA publish a through fare for the route you need?

It depends on your flexibility and whether you are willing to make multiple connections and spend time in an airport. I booked a flight later this month for VIX-IAD. Routing is VIX-SDU-GRU-ORD-IAD-GRU-SDU-VIX. Most connections are 2 or 3 hours, but the last one is 8.5. The cost was under 2500 dollars for Business/First on the UA flights. If don't have flexibility or are not willing to do the multiple connections and possible longer connections, then you are likely right, prices are crazy.

When I fly, it's two stops, most. Even when buying tix for others, I would not subject them to that kind of routing!!! Tix I am looking at are $1950 in Y on UA and $1230 on non-UA. It is kind of shocking that UA would be so non-competitive in Y and to a lesser degree, J. For when I fly, I do not like AA but I do like DL's hard and soft product. UA is about to lose out on significant business...

Yes, this is the issue (if I understand the meaning of through fare, which means from point A to a desired point B). UA does publish this fare.

For this fall and winter, prices are 50% higher in Y (30% in J) if including the mandatory additional leg intra-Brasil. I thought perhaps there was price gouging in Brasil or something related to high gas prices. Not so. Prices were what I expected for intra-Brasil flights on Brasilian airlines.

SO, I priced out on UA tix not including the additional leg and they were what I expected. When I included the additional leg, an additional $750 for Y on UA even though a stand-alone RT on Brasilian airlines was $160 tickets! Crazy.

SO, I checked other airlines, i.e., DL and AA. Including the mandatory leg, their prices were $700 less than UA! Stated otherwise, adding Non-Partner Airline to UA Increases Ticket by 50% compared with AA/DL.

I'm not sure we're communicating well here. You're interested in a (RT) ticket USA-GRU-XXX or USA-GIG-XXX, where your destination XXX is a smaller airport in Brazil. (It's not your question, but have you checked fares if you transfer from the international GRU/GIG airport to the smaller domestic airports in Sao Paulo or Rio?)

When you look at the fare calculation for a dummy booking, is USA-XXX pricing as a single fare component or does UA want to write the ticket with a broken fare, so that you're really paying for one fare from USA to GIG or GRU and then a second fare (as if you were purchasing a stand alone ticket separately, but apparently on the same PNR and with the same ticket number in this case)? In other words, does UA publish a fare from USA to XXX (as a legal routing)?

To me, the price difference you're seeing looks suspiciously like a full fare domestic ticket for nonresidents of Brazil.

Depending on whether XXX is an international airport, does UA by chance publish a fare with a different routing from the USA to XXX, connecting in some other country? UA might not have a partner in Brazil that serves XXX from the international airports GIG and GRU.

XXX=FLN, which is an intl airport. I've flown there too many times to count. I've never seen this before.

Have not. And would not.

It's a legal routing. Fare shows USA-FLN. However, I almost always get a PNR for the foreign carrier portion, but I feel like I always do.

For the intra-Brasil flight, using G3, it is showing in the A bucket (which means nothing to me as a foreign carrier). Ironically, the UA RT ticket just went up another $100 while the AA ticket went down $100. I think I'm done waiting for UA to get its act together...

*A lost presence when O6 went bankrupt. I know AD was codeshare but that may have stopped. I say that bc I don't ever see tix with AD anymore. Indeed, UA has been using G3 mostly and LA less in the last few years with no price deltas that I am seeing currently

Strange, I see all three domestic Brazilian airlines when I search using UA's web site. The trip I mentioned above uses Azul and it was purchased about 2 weeks ago. Azul is also a partner airlines to UA, so would be even stranger if UA didn't use Azul. Trips I made in Mar and Jan used LATAM, which I liked as they put me in premium economy for a business class purchase on UA.

Correction, every ticket I've purchased in the last 4-5y has not included AD. Additionally, I cannot recall the last time I saw AD even as a potential connecting airline even when I knew AD had an available flight .bomb's search engine was directing to G3

While buying some tix, I just realized, perhaps, why UA can no longer compete price wise in Brasil. UA has reduced capacity. UA no longer flies from IAD to Brasil. One has to connect from EWR/ORD/IAH. I am not sure if that is the reason, but it is clear UA is the most expensive way to fly to Brasil right now

Not if you book the other way around? I booked day of travel from Fortaleza to Las Vegas (Orlando was an option too) and the first flight was with GOL followed by two United flights the price was much cheaper than booking anything last minute within Brazil.

UA has restarted their IAD-GRU flight. Son was just on it on Apr 19 and I'll be on it next week. Price seemed reasonable to me for business class, a little over 4000 RT, which included a domestic connection on LATAM.

$4k seems reasonable. I've been seeing >$8k and sometimes $10-11k, which makes no sense when looking at DL/AA

My GRU-IAD flight got moved back a month due to health reason, To reschedule it cost an additional 800. However, I was looking at prices in August for business class, and most every day the low price was 4045 dollars. if the connections would work for you. I'm connecting from VIX, and LATAM sems to offer the best connections and also puts me in the premium seats. I will say that the return usually requires going thru EWR to get the good price. If one wants to return IAD-GRU, then they do jack up the price. I have also looked at one way, and this normally involved Azul, but I have to connect to get to GRU. However, if I'm willing to do that, the combined price can be even lower, sometimes a little over 3000 dollars.

Testing LATAM business on a 787...literally tomorrow. Their prices are more reasonable. I'm ready to jump from UA.

With that said, fares for the winter on UA are more reasonable. I wonder if UA made the decision to extract as much value during the post-pandemic revenge travel period...