nickab

Oh interesting. Thanks for explaining!

nova08

I meant the ~$450-550 deals from the eastern half of the US to HNL.

jan_az

Though fuel dumps are nice - the price as it was was just great

JPCAG

Booked MSP->FCO in Business this AM
1477.00
July 18-24
Wow! Now 3380.00^^

cesco.g

Yep, just changed the date of the last leg on a SAN-MXP flight, add collect was $8. Didn't bother to ask, why, just pushed thru as my original $ 500 base fare stayed whole. Entire trip is now $1556, incl some 3 intra-EU connections on LH business class.

Thanks to "LufthansaFlyer" for posting over at the M&M forum ^, which I came across purely coincidental, while looking for LH strike news.
Lucked out this time!

Mike Jacoubowsky

Those of us who snagged this deal are fortunate that it wasn't in the "too good to be true" category. Realistically it actually is; normal "sale" TATL C class is in the $3k range, and this is half that. But it wasn't so cheap that you are hearing about it in the news or seeing lots of coverage on travel sites. And that's a good thing, because these aren't tickets that are going to go away. United will honor them and not make a big deal of it.

But if you're thinking this didn't cost UA anything, you're wrong. These seats sold for less than seats in Y, and in fact came up in any generic search for economy seats. You didn't have to be looking for them to find them. So UA lost about $200 on each seat for that reason alone. And then missed opportunity costs. If those seats were sold to an upgrader using miles, you've got the missing cost of 20,000 miles, plus a copay averaging $500, each way. So whatever the value of 40,000 plus $1000. And of course the obvious, the $1500 difference between the mistake fare and the normal cheapest price for a C TATL r/t.

The hard costs of providing that seat are irrelevant. They don't go empty in July, and the extra margin UA makes on a C seat offsets a lot of losses elsewhere.

So if you booked one of these fares (I did!), it's not unreasonable to see it as a bit of an offset for things gone wrong at other times. A "one time exception" gift from Jeff.

seanp7

I'm not sure I agree. sub-$2K C fares have occurred around this time of year, for summer travel, precisely because premium travel is down from the US-Europe in July / Aug. Consider Thanksgiving Week fares that are similar and will possibly return again this year.

There was nothing too out of the ordinary for this flash sale, particularly given DL just had one US *A hubs to FRA/MUC/ZRH/GVA (*A) ~$1800, and this release of seats was largely DL-served locations to SkyTeam hubs in Europe. As one poster mentioned, it may have been an automated response to to the DL sale; it may have been completely intentional to steal some DL usuals this summer in the premium seats and win them over; who knows.

Thanks to the OP for posting.

kathysrewards

I was trying to get hnl as an add on at the end of the trip but could not get it to price on ita. Honestly probably better I didn't as I would have booked it.
I'm sitting on tons of miles and really ought to burn instead of earn

Mike Jacoubowsky

My perspective comes from intimate awareness of SFO-CDG pricing, in July, for the past 13 years. Let's just say it's a route and time I'm very familiar with. Maybe you'll see $2k summer C fares elsewhere, but not on UA, not in July, from the west coast to CDG. With the exception of just one year, Y fares have been as low as $1300 and as high as $1750 2-4 months out. C fares have varied even less, $3200 +/- $200 or so.

If this was something UA had actually given thought to, they wouldn't have made it so easy to accidentally buy into it when you might have been willing to bite on Y at a higher price. It just makes no sense at all to display C fares by default, without anything announcing that it's a sale of some sort.

If UA wanted to fill seats up front, why not offer cheaper-than-normal upgrades to those who have already purchased seats in Y? A lot of $1700 coach fare customers would probably pay $800 (w/o miles) for a r/t upgrade, and the "hole" in Y could be filled by dropping the price a pretty small amount. $1300 TATL Y (west coast) would suck in a lot of people. You'd be $400 ahead for each seat.

Or you could offer limited-time "easy" upgrades to elites lower than 1K. Let your *G elites upgrade with miles alone. Or just dollars. Whatever.

United could have gotten much better yield with lower cost than half-priced C tickets.

RNE

Late to the party.

Out of curiosity, did anyone see/book one of these fares from CLE or thereabouts?

seanp7

You're giving UA way too much credit by thinking that they normally make sound, sensible, well-informed decisions.

You're giving UA way too much credit by thinking that they normally make sound, sensible, well-informed decisions.

You need to ask all the same questions to DL who just filed similar fares a few days ago.

Anyway, all of this is speculation - and (now) a done deal that, I believe, is typical of a US East Coast to Europe summer fare sale, and has a 100% chance of being honored.

Leela382

Initially purchased EWR-CDG-ARN, CPH-AMS-EWR for $1850 yesterday around noon on DL/AF, KLM/DL. Around 2:30 the price dropped to $1349. Price went up to $1950 around 5.

olouie

Glad I got two bookings. Wanted to change one but United site wont let me. Will likely just end up cancelling that anyways. SJC-FCO for $1500 is great, but 4 stops is a killer and rome in july is hot hot hot.

TAHKUCT

Nothing was available from CLE. PIT was an option and CMH

iahphx

I wonder how many were sold this morning. I'll say 1,000, but I have no real idea. It's not like this thing went viral across the internet. Did it cost UA money? Probably. But nobody's going to lose their job over selling $1500+ airline seats. I know there's tons of enthusiasm on this board to sit up front, but it's still $1500, and I'm not sure how many seats they sell for 2x that in summer.