New to the "PL trick"
 

I saw the LHR deals yesterday and my friend actually booked one for 228 R/T ORD-IAD-LHR on UA. She's quite happy. I have 2 quick questions:

1. Is it really a trick or do people just stumble upon the rates when doing a multi-city search?

2. I saw the "trick" used on UA and US, but does it work on all other airlines?

These may be dumb questions, but please note the subject line.

Thanks for any help

1. William Shatner is flexing his bargainus maximus to get you the best possible deal. He fights hard and removes the fuel surcharge for the people brave enough to click through to an itinerary.

2. I believe that most of the time it worked when there is a codeshared flight involved. The latest occurrence was with BMI and sadly it could be the last because it got a lot more exposure than previous postings of the trick.

:D

I personally suspect it's the hawk, actually, pecking out the eyes of the beancounter with his YQ surcharge.

There are still other ways to drop the YQ, mind you (and they've been posted here before), but you might have to look just a bit harder.

Help on the trick
 

I know I sound absolutely ridiculous and I'm sorry for that, but I'm still learning :)

I've been searching through all the pl trick threads I can get my hands on. I see the instructions on how to do it, but I don't know that I actually get it? I know the deal died recently so I can't really check if I'm doing it correctly anyway...but I just want to clarify for next time. :)

In reading the "original" directions from a main thread, I don't understand the "reverse 1, reverse 2" part.

Go to PL and do multi-city search
1. PHL-UA Hub City e.g., IAD or ORD
2. UA Hub to EU city
3. reverse 2
4. Reverse 1

Is the "reverse" crucial (what is it)? If so, how do I do it? Or do I just go through the multi-city search and choose an itinerary, and when I select an itinerary it will show me the fare minus fuel surcharges? I know at the bottom of the screen it tells you how much the ticket costs, and how much the fuel surcharge is, and then the total. Will the fuel surcharge show up as $0?

Sorry for sounding completely naive...but I really have searched the threads and even googled it, and experimented. I've looked up everything I possibly can in the FT glossary and everything. I wanted to exhaust my resources before asking redunant questions. ;) I just want to be prepared next time so I can take advantage of the trick without stirring up a ruckus of conversation that kills the deal. :)

Thanks, everyone, in advance for your help and kindness!

I too am new to this and having a little trouble. I tried around the same time. My question is:
For the ones who got the deal did you keep plugging in different dates until one picked up a BMI codeshare, or is there a way to check availability without plugging in different dates.
cheers,
Ang

The last trick was:

1. ORD to IAD
2. IAD to LHR
3. LHR to ORD

After typing in the above information using the multicity search, select an itinerary that contained transatlantic segments using BMI codeshare flights. Hit the select button. If the trick worked, you would see a red notice at the top of the next screen "A new lower fare has been found". If it didn't work, you'd get the itinerary you selected with the same fare shown on the previous screen. Sometimes, after failing to get the red notice, hitting the "Back" button on your browser and selecting the same itinerary again would mysteriously give you the lower fare where the first time it didn't.

It's a specific combination of codeshare flights and cities that allowed the trick to work. We'll have to wait and hope it comes back again in another form.

I saw these fares on ORD-IAD-LHR-IAD-ORD itineraries with all UA flights, though perhaps they were BMI codeshares. Earlier this year, US had to be in there.

a systematic way of going about it?
 

Does anyone have a systematic or semi-systematic way of searching for these fares?

I snagged a couple of $300+ fares ex-PHL to go back in February, but had to cancel because of illness in the family. And found at least two of the ORD-IAD-LHR variety at $327 a couple of days ago, but stupidly waited to pull the trigger and it was all gone when I went back. So, I understand the basics. But I can't say that I found these fares by searching, since it was truly random. Is there no non-random way to go about it?

If you plug in your desired itinerary and dates, but the trick doesn't take, what next? It seems that for the same dates, there might be a number of flights it didn't work on, but then one that it did, with no apparent rhyme or reason why one panned out and the other didn't. So ought one go through one possibility after another, and there may be a great many, before giving up on one or both of those dates? One has no way of know whether the problem, i.e., why it isn't working, is because nothing is going to work for their given outbound date, or because nothing is going to work for their given return date, or both the outbound and return are the problem, do they? It's hard for me to accept that there is not a better way to go about it than the purely random one, but I don't see any alternatives. Is this just the way the PL website works, which is to say very, very poorly, at least for these purposes?

Be thankful that this is not easy to figure out. If it was, this sort of deal would be permanently gone in all of its permutations by now - don't you think the airline / booking engine IT folks would immediately program out these sort of deals if they knew how to do it?

Bottom line, even if someone out there knows enough to post what you want, the moment he or she does there will be a sudden and much more comprehensive death to surchargeless fares.

Does this work for NW and/or out of MEM or BHM??

It was a very specific glitch involving Chicago and London on BMI flight numbers. That combination has been fixed. You can keep hacking away at PriceLine in an attempt to find the next magic combination but it's anybody's guess as to which cities and when, if ever, the glitch will appear again.

Thank you so much. The "tricks" are just a matter of certain cities and airlines rather than doing some fancy clicking on PL then, am I correct? I assumed one had to use the specific flights discussed (the ORD-LHR combination)...so I played around with that. Of course, the trick was dead so it didn't work, but at least I know I was doing the correct thing. I'm in SLC and pretty much used to no wonderful deals coming from this isolated airport :) (although, obviously a huge step up from my homeland MQT). But I figure a SW ding could get me to ORD or any of the originating "trick" airports for a decent price.

Now I just need to more deeply understand codeshares, though I'm pretty sure I get the gist of it. :)

Again, thanks for your time and patience!

I just now booked SFO-DUB for $499 all in for 6-10 November. Not as good as my $300 SFO-FRA trips from earlier this year, but still cheap enough for a *A routing to a place that I actually want to visit!

Routing is SFO-IAD-LHR-DUB-LHR-SFO. SFO-IAD is on UA, LHR-DUB-LHR is on bmi, and IAD-LHR and LHR-SFO are bmi codeshares on UA metal.

I used multi-city and entered 4 segments (SFO-LHR, LHR-DUB, DUB-LHR, LHR-SFO). Not all dates I tried worked out to be cheaper, but the prior weekend priced out the same.

NB: You won't always see the "Congratulations/lower fare" message to indicate that the trick worked. I might have missed a few options until I realized that I needed to scroll down to the bottom of the page to see if the price changed.

If the issuing TA doesn't charge YQ no one bothers if the plating airline autopriced incorrectly. Thats what happened in the first wave of the PL 'trick' when UA fares plated on US stock didn't have YQ in them. I know of LH ticketing agents who saw these tickets but didn't hinder the pax as it was US messing up the YQ collection. See the ORP YQ thread about details who is liable for collecting the correct YQ.

Is this the same opportunity under active discussion in this MR thread:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=865847

I take it you booked through PL, not united.com, right? Any idea about other originating/ending cities this side of the Atlantic and dates farther out? Do fare rules suggest that this might be there in 2009 too?

Thanks.^^