International and domestic itineraries work exactly the same. In both cases, if you attempt to refund a partially-used ticket, it will be repriced based upon the coupons you actually did use.

I'm not sure what you mean about getting to the "muckety mucks in Pricing" -- I'm guessing you mean Rates, but generally the agents who work there are not consumer-facing -- but for most UA itineraries, the correct fare difference (independent of any change fee) is the difference between what it would have cost to buy your itinerary originally and what you actually paid.

That means that if all you're trying to do is change the return date, it may be zero, or negative, if inventory is sufficient. It may also be positive, and even large, if inventory is limited. On the other hand, if you're trying to change cites, then it can get very complicated -- but in all cases, the correct price depends upon what you already flew and what you're now adding.

Examples:

• book EWR-MXP / FCO-EWR, change to round-trip EWR-MXP. This should combine just fine and I wouldn't expect anything outrageous.
• book EWR-MXP RT, fly the first leg, ask for a refund. This will price as if you purchased EWR-MXP. This can lead to a small, non-existent, or negative refund due to the cost of international one-way tickets.
• book EWR-MXP RT, fly the first leg, try to apply the credit to EWR-SFO. This will probably cost you more than buying EWR-SFO outright, because EWR-MXP / EWR-SFO is not a valid open jaw, and most EWR-MXP fares won't be combinable with a EWR-SFO fare.

To reiterate, though, this is all theoretically true domestically as well. There are still many, many domestic routes where UA charges more than half the round-trip price to book a one-way ticket, and in those cases you'll see this same kind of behavior also.

I'm trying to book domestic flights and keep seeing the deep discount fares and buy-ups for premium seating. I was hoping to book the fare class that fully refundable and with the premium economy seat access as part of the fare to capture the spend under PQP instead of deep discount PQP + out of pocket expenses (non-PQP) rev.

There�s no difference to your PQP earnings in these two cases, although there is a difference in mileage earning.

You wrote Premium Economy, but I�m pretty sure that you meant Economy Plus. Fare that book into B will give Economy Plus access. AFAIK, they do not offer discount fares that book into B and are also refundable. If you really want that, you�d need to call and ask for the true B fare, but note that it�s likely to be several times more expensive than what you�re seeing, and likely more expensive than discount first class.

Personally, I�d book the refundable flight, then add on Economy Plus seating, and give up on the few redeemable miles that you�d lose. You�ll still get PQP, and the Economy Plus cost is refundable if you decide to refund the primary ticket.

While from a technical/systems perspective this may be true, from an individual travelers perspective, I will still contain that there's a lot more caveat emptor pitfalls when flying internationally:

1. Prices for international r/t tickets are rarely 2x one-way. In understand your point that for many city pairs in the US, this may also be the case. However, in the last 5 years, I have never encountered this. There is no need to come up with examples that satisfy these conditions, I am certain they do exist. But for my travel, it is simply not a factor. YMMV, of course, but on a probability based comparison, it is till a very big deal. We can agree to disagree (for whatever reasons), and it is not too hard for travelers to check out, as it does inform different booking strategies.
2. Using credits for domestic tickets is generally as simple as drawing them down before you use your credit card when booking any new ticket. Internationally, credits are limited to the person on the booking (similar to domestic), and only valid for the identical city-pair of the original booking.
3. When trying to use my international credits, even when deploying it to the same city pair, it has never been as easy as taking my dollar credit and applying it to the ticket I am trying to buy. Instead, I believe the system prices the itinerary I would like to use, based on the original rules of the canceled ticket. Invariably, this has resulted in it being more expensive for me to use my credit rather than buying a new ticket, not using my credit. Whether this happens a 100% of the time, as it has for me, or merely 50%, it feels extremely ...... when it happens, and the rate at which it does happens, is astronomically higher than for a domestic ticket.
4. Last year, when doing a r/t IAD-HND-IAD, I found myself with meetings being canceled for my last day, and so wanted move up my return date by one day, so as to be sure to make a wedding. The r/t ticket was originally procured in J for $14K. Changing it one day earlier, would incur a $10K "change" fee (which obviously was due to the repricing of the ticket, not some random fee just to be allowed to make any change). Buying a completely new r/t ticket going HND-IAD-HND would be in $8K as the front cabin was not nearly full. If this sounds normal/appropriate for anyone, I have a bridge to sell you.
5. I called the GS help line, who sympathized with my frustration, and got the approvals internally to do a like-for-like exchange, meaning I got to fly out one day earlier with no upcharge. Yes, I got their department name wrong. It is Rates, not Pricing. Boohoo on me. But this is not a high school debate team. I was merely pointing out that the folks working there can be more human and helpful than leaving your luck up to "systems." I recognize that not everybody will be able to get Rates involved, and I maybe I was lucky. In either case, I was paying them a compliment.

In my humble opinion, for domestic, it makes a ton of sense to buy two one-way tickets rather than r/t, since pricing is most of the time 2x one-way's (but check for your city pairs). For international, less so, since there is almost always a discount for buying r/t tickets, but caveat emptor:

• I have found that changing international itineraries after starting my trip almost always generates significant additional payments, which sometimes (ofttimes) makes it cheaper to abandon original tickets and buy new ones).
• I have found that using international credits almost always puts you at a disadvantage from a pricing perspective. I've never been able to use mine, since buying a new ticket has always been cheaper.

So, if you want to feel better thinking international is just like flying domestic, that's totally fine, but it isn't. Maybe theoretically, but we don't pay for our tickets with theoretical money. If you are about to make some flights, and you are not smoking OPM, I find it appropriate to warn people that it requires a little more thought than if staying within the 50.

YMMV

Sure — check into your specific flight before booking, and this may become a non-issue. I take slight issue with the assertion that it’s not a big deal on a probability basis, though; well more than half of my tickets over the last couple of years had a round-trip discount. It’s just that it’s market based, and you likely live in a market where these discounts aren’t offered, and you travel to places where the discounts aren’t offered.

Both of these are false. International credits are generally not restricted to the same city pair (although some are), and partially-used domestic tickets can have the same restrictions as partially-used international tickets. However, under your first point, you’re right that you don’t have to worry as much about the restrictions if a round-trip is priced as two one-ways, because you can reprice it and have an unfettered credit. (I think UA does that for you automatically in some cases).

Yes, the system prices the itinerary you would like to use based upon the original rules. If that’s invariably a bad thing, you’ve had some awful luck, though. I will say that there is a known issue with the online change flights tool, and you may be able to get a better price when calling. In general, if you’re keeping the same cities, you aren’t breaking a length-of-stay rule, and inventory is available in your original class of service, you can do an even exchange.

As you point out, there is no such thing as a $10K change fee —it’s a fare difference. Did your change happen to turn a 7-night trip into a 6-night trip? If so, you probably ran into a length-of-stay restriction, and $10K was the correct fare difference.

I wasn’t trying to score a point in a high-school debate; I was honestly confused as to whether or not you meant something different, because AFAIK the agents in Rates do not take calls from the public. I’d love to be able to call Rates.

If they called Rates, and “got the necessary approvals” — did the GS agents ever quote you the $10K? Or was that just an online price? Because in this case either (a) you were violating a minimum-stay requirement and you got a break or (b) you ran into the same pricing glitch and $0 was always the correct price, and Rates just did what they do and interpreted the rules correctly.

There is one reason for booking domestic round-trips even if the price is the same as two one-ways — it can make changes to the return substantially cheaper. Despite your experience with international tickets, the fact is that if you change the return of most UA round-trip fares, you get to use the ticketing date of the original itinerary, which means you qualify for advance purchase discounts. If you’re always traveling with no notice, this may not matter, but if you routinely have at least 7 days notice before your trip, this is a huge win.

I don’t know what to tell you. Your experience is not only out of step with mine, and many board reports, it’s also out of step with the published fare rules. I’ve read dozens — probably hundreds — of fare rules and while I’ve found some ridiculously anti-consumer language in a few of them, absolutely none are close to what you’re saying. I know how Rates operates; I know how to look up historic fare information, and when to do it. I don’t have access to all of the tools that they do, so I can’t find exact prices, but I’ve been able to find prices in the ballpark on many occasions — generally within a few dollars.

The rule is simple. In nearly every case, the price you pay for the new ticket is the difference between what you already paid and what it would have cost to book a ticket with current inventory levels on the day that you purchased the original ticket. In other words — apply current inventory to historical prices and calculate. That’s it.

Everybody should be aware of what changes may cost — sure, we can agree on that.

I will say, reviewing the original message again: you mentioned being able to refund partially-used domestic itineraries. Here, if you do live in a market that uses only one-way fares domestically, you do see a difference in effective behavior — not specifically because of international vs. domestic, but because of one-way pricing vs. round-trip pricing. If you want to refund a partially-used itinerary that was constructed with one-way fare components, it’s easy; they just keep the money for the fare components you used and refund the money for the ones you didn’t.

Sorry about that. You are indeed right: Even if I may be correct on the probability part, it�s caveat emptor, and the right decision comes down to individual situations. I was probably thinking of the inverse: The fact that r/t tickets get you discounts in some domestic markets is in no way a generalizable rule.

Again, not more false than the implied assertion that the inverse is true. I have a number of international credits restricted to city-pairs. Unless we want to get deep into what �generally� means, I was trying to assert that ignoring it could end in costly misery. Unless one of the UA folks on here would confirm either way, we�re probably stuck here. (I�m guessing fare codes also play a role.)

I have had zero domestic credits in my own name that are restricted to city-pairs. Zero. Maybe this happens to people in the US a lot, but not to me. I have had it happen to me with several fairly common destinations in Europe, though.

I may have had some awfully bad luck, and probably I have. But I find that a poor defense of how the system should work. It is a bad customer experience. (To have a bad luck, that is. We�d all rather be lucky than dead.) . For me, I have been able to expense most of these things, but what if you cannot do that? It might be an argument between contracted rules, and what feels reasonable to customers. I�m in the customer experience camp.


I obviously get that. It�s not like either one of us only travel on school camping trips. While my argument was not about arcane fare rules, my trip wasn�t even 7 days to begin with. Being asked for a $10K additional charge (not change fee) on a $14K trip in J when ample inventory is available, is simply beyond the pale from a customer experience viewpoint. If you do not agree, I suspect I can�t get you there. Just like nobody can make me think my experiences was a good one just because the fare rules allowed the airline to do something. (And I�m in the far-far super lucky camp where very little of this has come out of my own wallet. Still doesn�t make it a good non-paying customer experience.)

(In this case I unfortunately don�t know the difference between the online vs the call-in experience. One of the great GS benefits is the ability to call in and get somebody on the horn quickly, so I never checked the app/web. However, not so long ago, I was not so privileged, and then the wait times at UA often made it an untenable proposition to pick up the phone.)

Agreed! I never thought about this use case, and did not know about ticketing date based pricing rule for itinerary changes. Hasn�t worked for me internationally, and I can think of a couple of times it also hasn�t domestically. But if this is a thing, I think it well worthy of changing the approach to certain itineraries. My main own reason for not liking r/t tickets is to not have my return canceled if I miss the outbound. (Don�t ask. 😁 )


There is nothing needed to tell anyone, I suspect. I would just expect that changing your tickets on an international journey to be expensive. If it hasn�t been for you, that is objectively great! Others might just take a cautionary note, that it could happen. My own experience has been that changing a o/w international ticket has come with far fewer contract rule driven change gotcha�s than a r/t itinerary. For me this has several times made it cheaper to buy a new return ticket from where I am, travel back to the US, and then just discarding the second leg (rather than changing the return details and keeping the same itinerary code). YMMV.

Perhaps. I am not trying to say there are ghosts in the UA machine, but the �simple� rules appear either poorly thought-out, or so heavily optimized in the airline�s favor, that they ends up screwing the customer. And it is not as simple as current day inventory. When you throw in o/w vs r/t pricing, and the fact that changing your ticket may throw you into another category for pricing purposes, this seems heavily tilted against the buyer. I have several times abandoned the return leg of my international ticket instead of changing it, and buying a new r/t (and abandoned the return leg of that new ticket as well), because it got me home, and ended up costing me less money. I understand this doesn�t happen to everybody, but to have had that experience several times, would indicate (to me, at least) that it is a non-zero probability, which warrants consideration. YMMV.

I would merely want to point out that changing your return on an international ticket may be pricey, and your fare class could also impact that. Not saying this will bring instant joy, but if this change scenario happens, it might be worth checking out a new itinerary with the identical date for going back to (presumably to the US), but picking a return date to wherever you are at some point when prices seem good. (TL;DR Buying two r/t tickets and only using half of each can be a cost saving decision.)

This reads to me a splitting hairs, but sure. Most of my domestic tickets are booked in fare classes where UA will just refund to my CC (which happens to be United branded, but is not a requirement - great benefits, though), and that is not true for all fare classes. On the occasion that the fare rules do not allow this, however, I can easily use my credit on most any other UA booking, system-wide.

You are booking refundable fares? As most domestic RTs are two one-ways, this would make sense for refundable fares.

100% agreed there.

The fare rules do play a role, but generally a higher fare class will lead to less restrictive, not more restrictive rules. Specifically, you�ll find them in the combinations section of the fare rules. In order to be restricted to specific city pairs, the fare would have to specify A-B-A only, or disallow open jaws, double open jaws, and circle trips. That does occasionally happen, but it�s rare. It�s much more common to find fares that allow open jaws but disallow double open jaws, I�ve flown many such trips, where I can fly, e.g., Austin to Osaka, then return Tokyo to Austin, and the fare is reasonable; but try to return Tokyo to Houston and the fare jumps up by thousands of dollars. (However, in this same example, Osaka to Houston would be fine; either one is a single open jaw � either an open jaw between Osaka and Tokyo or an open jaw between Houston and Austin).

For example, some rules for business class tickets Washington to Tokyo. Here�s the fare rule for a refundable D fare available for a Monday to Friday trip next week:

So, if you happened to be flying on that particular fare, you�d have been able to cancel and use a credit for a valid open jaw. However, something I learned last year is that not all open jaws are created equally. If you combine this with a ticket departing Japan, and returning to Washington, you�ll be able to keep this fare; but if you wanted to depart, e.g., Shanghai, it may not work. With the exception that both US/Canada and Western Europe appear to be considered one country for these purposes, you may run into higher fares if your open jaw crosses a country border.

That said, I wonder if we�re splitting hairs here. They�re not linked to the exact same city pairs, but the city pairs are obviously highly relevant in figuring out what you can do with the credit. It is by no means unrestricted.

The point I was making originally is that for non-refundable domestic fares that are not one-way fares � common for me, less common for you � the restrictions work identically. If I have an AUS-DTW round-trip that uses a round-trip fare, and I want to change the return, I can change it to CLE-AUS or EWR-AUS or TVC-AUS or whatnot, but I can�t change it to AUS-CLE or SEA-AUS or anything else that doesn�t make a valid round-trip.

Sure, that makes sense, but the problem is that United�s business model is built around price discrimination, and allowing too many reasonable exceptions for customers destroys that. I�m not suggesting you were doing anything wrong � but if you could always defeat minimum stay requirements by calling and asking nicely, there�d be 19,000 blog entries about �one weird trick� that would destroy UA�s pricing model. So it�s a bit of a fine line between a better customer experience and not shooting yourself in the foot.

If there is ample inventory and you weren�t violating a minimum stay rule, I wonder if the agent just fat-fingered the change originally and tried to put you into J without actually needing to do so. The other option would be that there wasn�t actually ample inventory, even if there were a lot of empty seats on the seat map. UA generally won�t go J9 C0 on a flight that�s only a day away, but it could easily have been J4 C0 but had a lot of people not select seats. I would be upset by the $10K request myself.

LOL � I�ve been there.

Whether or not you can ignore advance purchase requirements when changing the return seems to be dependent upon the fare as well, which is something I just learned today in answering this (so, thanks!) A non-refundable Washington to Tokyo business class ticket allows you to ignore advance purchase requirements when changing the return fare. For some reason, the refundable fare doesn�t have the same provision. It does allow you to use historically filed fares but not with the advance purchase restriction ignored. There�s probably some rationale there regarding people changing the return to a cheaper non-refundable fare once they�ve locked in the outbound date or something.

Throwaway ticketing is technically a violation of the Contract of Carriage, but in this case I think any reasonable person would do the same thing. I�d just hope you�d find a use for the return ticket eventually. I wonder if you�d have better luck with nonrefundable tickets in this case, based upon what I�m seeing in the refundable ticket fare rules.

With the caveat that if you do this as a course of habit, UA may decide to come after you. Once or twice is not going to be a problem, and even I, as a stalwart believer that �I signed the contract, I have to abide by it� would take little issue with this. (I�d just hope to find a use for the remaining, thrown-away part later. )

Without going through the debate again , UA definitely still offers many domestic round-trip tickets that are priced on a round-trip basis. AFAIK, that can include refundable tickets, depending upon the city pair.

I think the OP's experience and certainty mine most domestics are OWs (to be more precise two OWs are essentially the same prices as as RT -- with a slight difference of an extra security fee for the OWs), while some markets may be different. Could this be a case of hubs vs out-stations? There may be other factor of fare class? How significant of a difference do you see?

There are several factors involved. The difference can be anything from fairly small � say 10% � to quite large; maybe 50%? When it�s larger, the reason is generally one of fare class. For example, take AUS-DTW as an example. Even though there is significant competition on this route � DL flies it nonstop, and I think NK still does; WN also has quite a bit of lift into DTW � it�s quite common for the lowest one-way fare to be an S or a T while the lowest round-trip fare is an L or a K. If there�s no L or K inventory, you probably wouldn�t notice. If there is, the difference is substantial � hundreds of dollars on the round-trip. (At the moment, it seems they�ve raised prices � the lowest roundtrip is an S and the lowest one-way is a W).

Because of the way that UA generates refundable and domestic first-class fares from the underlying discount economy fares, much of this is true for those fares; it depends upon whether or not the particular fare was one that RM chose to pair up with a refundable / first class fare. I haven�t figured out if there�s a pattern where they will and will not.

It�s more prevalent for smaller cities without LCC competition, and it�s something that AA, DL, and UA all do. If most of your flying is from a UA hub to a large city, you may not see this � for example, AUS-SFO appears to price out as two one-ways. However, being at a hub doesn�t make you immune � SFO-OTH (North Bend / Coos Bay, OR) shows this exact same pattern.

The overall TL/DR is that airfare pricing is extremely complicated, to come to FlyerTalk if you need help deciphering the fare rules, and to try both one-way and round-trip pricing, particularly for unfamiliar markets.

There's no extra security fee for one-ways vs. roundtrip. The TSA fee is $5.60 in each one-way direction domestically unless you have a layover of over 4 hours which will result in $5.60 for each segment. This is baked into the federal regulations. DL, US, and AA fares require a 4 hour connection or less to book on a single fare component on US 48 fares.You can still book longer connections domestically, it will just result in a separate fare on each segment. WN allows up to 8 hours. The feds don't care and anything longer than 4 hours domestically gets an extra TSA fee.

Fares between smaller, less competitive markets are a big part of it, but even larger ones can have cheaper roundtrip fare filings. For Example, UA SFO-MSP one way fares start at $304 Basic/$349 Economy while roundtrip fares start at $329 Basic/$419 Economy. SFO-DTW are similar at $304 Basic/$354 Economy for one-ways vs $349 Basic/$449 Economy for roundtrips. DL fares on SFO-MSP are the same and they are even higher on SFO-DTW. It's all about competition (or lack thereof as no LCCs compete on these routes). Roundtrip domestic fares require you stay until at least the first Saturday after departure (a roundtrip booking alone is not sufficient). If you primarily make shorter duration trips that don't meet these min stay requirements for roundtrip fares, you will just get one-way fares in each direction.

Some other larger markets from SFO with cheaper roundtrip fares vs. one-ways include ATL (another DL hub). There are some cheaper one-way fares in the spring on SFO-ATL, but summer fares are similar to DTW/MSP fares. Also, SFO-PHL route (AA hub) and SFO-IAH UA hub-to-hub route see similar one-way vs. roundtrip pricing to those mentioned above.

Well, that has certainly been my experience, and together with my travel profile, I strongly prefer purchasing o/w tickets for domestic. Internationally, there are just a lot more considerations.

Once again, it depends on the market. If you mostly are just flying between top 10 markets, then yes, they are mostly only one-way fares. Once you get beyond that, it varies quite a bit. In addition to SFO-MSP/DTW/ATL/PHL/IAH routes mentioned above, here are some other UA non-stop destinations out of SFO with cheaper roundtrip fare filings vs. one-ways -- RNO, OMA, MCI, SAT, IND, PIT, CMH, MSY, RDU, TPA. I'm leaving out many smaller stations without non-stop service that also have cheaper roundtrip fares.

Agreed. My message wasn�t that every itinerary prices like mine, but that they could, so one should always price things out. Caveat emptor remains the rule of the day. (Additionally, fare rules are in general more restrictive for international flights.)

In full disclosure, I just ran into 2 OWs > RT pricing . SFO-BNA , I don't think this was true my last BNA trip. Amounted to 5%, which I can live with as high probably one of the dates will need to be changed.
It was also interesting the RT trip was S. Q fares and the OWs were both Q.
I will be watching for fare drops.