asquare

I have had this same issue as well. Beware that this also carries over into Same Day Change offers on the computer sometimes, although the 1K agents are able to get it done for me on the phone when that happens.

higher_flyer

Is Expert Mode permanently broken? For at least a few months now, every flight I search shows 0 in all or practically all buckets, even when a wide variety of fares are available and offered for sale in the Search results. I thought this was just a glitch back when COVID first caused booking system chaos, but it has never been fixed.

Example from a search I did when purchasing a ticket this morning: N, K, B, R, and P were all 0 but all offered for sale in their respective "columns."

cfischer

works fine for me ...

Duke777

I have to search by segment or it shows incorrectly. Really frustrating.

higher_flyer

Wow, really? I see the same thing in the App and on the Web. Here's the flight I mentioned above with all classes available for sale:



Ahhh fascinating. Just tried that, and voilà.

Yessss, incredibly frustrating. Even more so, considering the SFO non-stop I have flown monthly for many years is gone for now. Connecting flights only, and I am guessing that will be the case for a long while.

I didn't even imagine that domestic connecting flights would cause such an issue with fare classes. So very lame

jsloan

If you search segment-by-segment, the results you get are meaningless, unless you are looking specifically for upgrade inventory (in which case, that's not only the correct procedure, it's the only valid one). Even if there is an appropriate fare in place, the fact that there is K inventory on ABC-DEF and K inventory on DEF-GHI does not mean that there is K inventory on ABC-DEF-GHI.

It didn't; there's something else wrong. I'm able to reproduce the issue that's being described, but I've flown on connecting flights for years, and Expert Mode has always been 99%+ accurate. Somehow, UA has managed to break their inventory retrieval code.

ExpertFlyer (and presumably KVS Tool) still show the correct information, but right now, the only thing that UA Expert Mode can reliably be used for is finding upgrade space.

Duke777

I know but this works for PN and PZ. Also let’s me know how much P and above is available. P availability is always a positive sign for upgrades. I don’t care much about Y inventory and married segments. Plus I’m still ending up in G or K these days.

higher_flyer

Oh I totally agree. I never had this problem until the COVID chaos melted down the reservation systems in late spring. This appeared around that time, and in all the ensuing months it has not been fixed

jsloan

Fair enough; I just wanted to point that out in case anybody reading this thread got confused. As you say, if you're looking specifically for anything related to upgrades, point-by-point searches are far superior.

fumje

I see this on one search



and this on another


--is the second one accurate, at least?

Quite strange.

WineCountryUA

Is the second one a fare break? Is there a fare for ATL-LGA routing via ORD?

Fare breaks separates the fare class inventory

fumje

Both are KAX7ADES.

Here is the fare construction for each, which matches what UA is showing:

jsloan

They're actually both broken fares. That's why CHI appears at all; if they were through fares, it would only have shown one component for each search; SFO-NYC for the first and ATL-NYC for the second.

So, it's sometimes faulty with broken fares also.

fumje

Sorry, yes indeed they are both broken. But to the question about the expert mode problem, I find it quite confusing that there is a different display, especially in this case where it's pulling the same fare and presumably then applying the same routing rules. The zeroed inventory is obviously wrong, but I wonder, if a nonzero inventory is displayed, is it correct? It doesn't really matter with 9 all the way down in this example, but the discrepancy makes me doubt both.

jsloan

It isn't the same fare. The origin and destination cities are part of the fare; even if two fares have the same name, if they serve different city pairs, they're different fares.

I share your doubts. I would not rely on any of the values, although I suspect that the non-zero values are probably correct.

What's happening is that the Expert Mode code (and, in most cases, the pricing software) is searching for each fare component separately. This bypasses the married segment inventory that UA puts in place for all sets of flights that it intends to sell as connections. (I don't think it's intentional -- I just don't think UA has bothered to go in and clean it up). So, that explains the case where the values appear to be correct -- but it doesn't explain the case with all of the zeroes.