Fare Changes on 3/2?
 

So I am pricing an itinerary for end of March that is still $100 cheaper on CO than the same flights ticketed by UA.

Any bets on which price will stick after the merger is complete? Wondering whether to book 3/1 or wait until closer to the flight date.

Thanks for educated guesses or any reasoned strategy.

The odds are better for flights to get more expensive as time goes on. You can see what http://www.bing.com/travel/ predicts.

Only downside to booking now is getting a 005 ticket -- wait till after 3/3 to request upgrades. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/conti...march-3-a.html

Why would you wait?? The only problem would be if you clear and then have a change and have to request it again. I'll take that risk over not having the inventory available a week from now when I go to request the upgrade.
The fare difference is likely due to inventory mismatch. There will only be one set of inventory in a week.

Why would I wait?
 

Wow, I know you're more experienced than I am, but typically in my flight patterns the best fares seem to happen about 3 weeks prior to a flight. Except of course on COPA, where all bets about prices are always off...and there is no rhyme or reason that I can discern.

What would you say is the best interval ON AVERAGE for domestic and mixed domestic-international flights? I don't think these are terribly popular flights: PTY-IAH and IAH-SFO.

To my great surprise, a Mumbai itinerary which I involuntarily booked months ago in order to facilitate getting an Indian visa is now, two days before the flight, just a few dollars more than I paid.

Mind you, I am thinking of the price points, not the upgrade possibilities.

Unfortunately, BING rarely covers my flight patterns. I do typically monitor all my anticipated flights for some time on YAPTA before purchasing.

So if I understand correctly one of the reasons for price differences between the same itenerary priced out on .bomb and CO.com are that they don't always display the same fare class? So CO.com may display S and .bomb displays W. This mismatch will go away with the integration, but which inventory mgmt system will be in place? The one that displayed the W or the one that displayed the S?

I'm pretty sure that I read they're keeping the sUA revenue management systems.

Right. You can get UA to issue a CO-coded UA flight (just tell the agent how to book it). CO's systems prevent the agents from booking the reverse (UA-coded CO flight), but you can hold it with UA, get the CO locator, then call CO to ticket it.