leftysauce

Did another search and it seems like UA released a few T spaces. However, take UA1945 on 7/5 as an example (one-way), it's selling at T1 (lowest G1 but no fare) for $340 and the fare is TAA2JQEN. On ExpertFlyer, the lowest fare published is also TAA2JQEN but it's only priced at $134+fees. I highly doubt that the fees are $200+. What am I missing here?

jsloan

Interesting. I wonder if there's some kind of IT glitch.

In ITA Matrix, I see QAA3AKEN at $342.60 as the lowest available fare on that flight. In ExpertFlyer, I see H9 Q1 V0, so the Q fare makes sense there.

However, in the app, I see the same thing that you do -- G1, with a T fare that seems like it should price much lower than it does -- but is still a little lower than the Q fare that I'm getting from ITA.

I double checked my region and it didn't magically get changed away from the US, but that's the only thing that I can think of that would explain the differences we're seeing.

This one's got me stumped. Any ideas?

leftysauce

lol I called in to the Premier Desk and the agent got in touch with the fare/pricing/rate department and was able to honor the T fare price on two one-ways (round-trip booked on separate PNR). It's def a glitch though because all flights are showing V1 down to G1. Flights on 7/4 are stuck on Q fare instead of T for some reason while the fare class is also available down to G1 and the lowest published/valid fare is T.

jsloan

I'm glad they were able to honor the fare, but I'm still very perplexed 🤣. UA displaying a completely separate set of inventory makes no sense at all.

leftysauce

yea I was surprised they actually were willing to do that

I don't think it's completely separate - there is a pattern here: starting from G, the first non-1 inventory is the lowest (or the second lowest) available fare class lol

What's weird is the fare basis code attached to the booking is valid but the fare/price to be collected is incorrect.

findark

I got nothing... website and UA direct booking systems seem to be extremely broken.

Most revenue classes show a minimum of 1 regardless of inventory, and everything claims to price in W. Prices make no sense - they are less expensive than the correct price, by a varying amount which seems to be around 10 percent (maybe 8 +/- 6 percent). But they are obviously anchored by the true inventory. Prices in First seem to be correct.

gokeeper

UA.com glitch, showing correct price in GDS.




Actually its K.

jsloan

Except that the GDS was/is showing no inventory in T in the first place.

I agree with findark; somebody really, really broke something on .com.

leftysauce

It says it's sold out tho?

fumje

Agree, noticed some very weird inventories last night, matching the description above (post 42).

Purchase receipts on the website are coming out very strangely too, showing a very small number for the airfare line (maybe just the last segment's??). Email receipt is correct.

Can't help but think all this is related to whatever meltdown they had yesterday.
Seat Map issues 7 June 2022

Might be a good time to make a booking if you can wade through the glitches and pick the right ones to get your low fare. (Nicely done above, leftysauce. )

findark

It seems likely. What I have not been able to determine is where the prices shown on .com are coming from. They don't correspond to any published fare that I can find, although they are usually in the same ballpark as the correct fare with real inventory (notwithstanding they all price the same W fare in "fare rules").

I did not try to ticket one to see if it actually works, or what the fare construction looks like on the issued ticket.

leftysauce

Re-fared another res from S to "L" as displayed on united.com and saved $20 each pax. However, the PQP displaying in-app and on united.com is $20 lower than the one in the email receipt. Looked up the fare basis LXXXXXXX in EF and the fare should've been another $20 less.

Called in again and the agent could see the same PQP as in the email receipt. She had the fare specialist price it out and I was able to get the actual fare ($20 less) for the fare basis on my res LXXXXXXX. The same flight is selling for $90 more on Amex Travel so i guess something is broken somewhere between UA backend system and GDS.

findark

I am shocked that this phantom inventory seems to be persistent enough on the UA side that agents are able to reissue based on it

leftysauce

Actually none of the agents I talked to were aware of the issue. One mentioned the seat map meltdown yesterday but I've talked to frontline premier desk agents, web support, and supervisors and no one seemed to know anything about it which is odd.

I don't think it's phantom in UA's system because the fare specialists are seeing these when manually (re-)pricing it themselves. Also to "increase" the inventory, just search with however many pax. For example, if you put 2 adults, all lower inventory will show 2 (S2 T2 L2 K2) instead of 1 lol

jsloan

I'm not sure what UA is planning, but I don't think I like it.

The idea that UA's inventory can be separate from the GDS inventory is not a good sign. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I am a software engineer, and nobody builds this kind of functionality without a reason. It's too much effort, and too specifically weird.

I can't think of any good reasons for UA to have secret fares and secret inventory. I can, however, think of some bad ones.

FWIW, I can reproduce the issue with the inventory as well. In my testing, it seems to happen more with ORD flights than with other hubs, although I admit it was a small sample. It's not all flights, but it is a fair number of them. If you increase the size of your party to be greater than the actual Y inventory, it will not return that flight, so at least it knows not to sell 9 seats when only three are actually there.

I do have one affected flight, which maybe I could call and try to force through the pricing, but it's not in my nature. I don't think I could make it through the phone call (and I don't think I've ever successfully gotten an agent to call the rate desk because I wanted them to do so, anyway).

As long as they're willing to keep selling the tickets, though, I don't see any issue with other people continuing to try to buy them. The rate desk agents are going to wonder why they're suddenly so busy.