Bonehead

Post 13 is probably the best answer. Ok, back on topic. What was the topic again?

anc-ord772

Yup, I just almost paid $30 more than I needed to because I didn't check the itinerary against a multi-segment search.

I called back and the phone agent couldn't break the married segments to unlock the lower bucket on the second leg. Web support had no problem doing it and refunded the difference to my credit card.

Thanks to this thread, or I would have forgotten to check!

respectable_man

Airlines always price the market never the itinerary. This is how one can sometimes find A->B->C lower than B->C. What does the competition charge for the same travel time? Does UA offer a shorter overall transit than others on that route?

Without a doubt they sell the segment with the short connection at a higher price because they know they will sell it at the higher price. Seems completely logical to me.

CO FF

OP is back.

Thanks for the lessons, all. Since I've only lived in NYC and LA, I dont have that much experience with the nuances of connections -- I'm spoiled by nonstops.

Bonehead

You're not the only one. I sort of knew these pricing aberrations were out there, but this thread has served as a great reminder to try different options if connecting.

emcampbe

I know there have been a few debates on this topic on other threads, However, IME, much more likely to be a bug in the website that has never been fixed allowing an A-C itinerary with a connection in B to be priced based on A-B and B-C availability, instead of properly pricing it based on the A-C availability. Essentially, the site isn't doing the extra check for married segment availability. Don't really want to go OT on Apollo vs. Shares, but it's interesting to note that the PMUA site would not allow this - it would do the extra check when searched as a multi-city and correctly price it as point to point, every time.

In which case, the question becomes is it still "deceptive" if it is offering a price for an itinerary searched as multi-city that it never intended to offer.

sbm12

It is not GDS platform issue necessarily as both DL and AA have similar "problems" in their systems.

As for the source/cause of the problem, that's a tough one to nail down. They're either unethical or incompetent. Neither is a particularly positive place to be.

TerryK

Not an UA issue. I have seen this connection issue on many airlines. Simple supply and demand using married segments availablity to control yields.

TerryK

It may not be logical from a passenger's perspective. However, it is perfectly logical from yield management perspective where high demand connections are priced higher.

Kmxu

The married segments are very tricky when you do multiple destinations search. If you break the destinations the wrong way, the price can be easily doubled. If you just do a RT search, you may pay $300 more. Here is an example: SAN-MNL-NRT-SAN, compared to SAN-MNL-SAN. Of course, your inbound flights will be very different from these two searches.