Yep, so instead of a hub premium with UA, its a *connection* premium at IAH :D

I pretty much cringe everytime I ask my company to book on UA, as the ticket is almost always more expensive than the CO non-stop, except this last time, but thats because I'm flying mid-week. In any case, UA is the "preferred" carrier for our company, as they negotiated a small discount for all tickets.

I suspect that this is related to the fact that most any UA flight out of Houston connects at one of the hubs...you have to 'snag' the cheap fare bucket on both legs to get the cheap fare...but when flying the CO nonstop you only have to 'luck out' once and find one leg with a cheap fare bucket seat. Say you're going from iah to bos. On CO you'd go non-stop mostly likely...need to find one cheap fare bucket seat...but on UA you'd go iah-ord-bos and would need to snag the cheap fare bucket on iah-ord And ord-bos...a bit tougher often. (IF I understand the whole fare system correctly...which might be debatable :eek: )

While I think what you said is a factor, I also think the fare rules for the lowest fare on a route for UA is often "stricter" than for CO, in that I've found UA has day restrictions, like TuWedThu only, Sat. stay, etc, while CO's lowest fares typically apply everyday of the week and generally no Sat. stays, fares to EWR are the exception of course ;)