TravelinSperry

So I had the option of buying a First Class fare LAX-BWI for $625 on UA. I decided instead to book economy for $182 and hope I am able to get the free Silver Premium Economy seat at checkin (24 hrs prior).

After booking the website popped an offer to upgrade to First Class for $776. I declined. The offer still shows within my itinerary. What is wrong with United? Why would they allow someone to buy First outright for less than they are offering via the 'upgrade' option. What kind of offer is that?

IADFlyer123

Sometimes, when folks from some companies arent allowed to buy First fares for work. So they go the "Buy Economy" + upgrade path.

Alternately, UA knows that there will be takers on the low FC fares and hence they dont care, because they have already had you buy the fare and I assume you are beyond the 24 hour cancellation point and can only either spend a lot of money to upgrade or waitlist an upgrade with close to zero chances on clearing on that route.

dordal

I had this the other day. It was $204 to fly to Portland in F (o/w), or $80+$249 upgrade fee, offered immediately after finishing checkout.

It makes no sense.

TravelinSperry

Interesting. I never thought of those possibilities. They make sense. As for me - I made my decision not to pay $625... so I'd never pay more later. I guess there are people who initially buy eco - but later truly want an upgrade and are stuck.

But I've noticed that route sometimes has a nice offer come available at kiosk checkin - I've nailed FC for $200. Not always, but it happens.

sbm12

Or the available inventory changes. Say the $625 fare is a H-Up which books into P and the $182 is a K fare. Buy the K and the inventory algorithm updates for the entire flight so maybe the P inventory is no longer there an now you're buying something which books into Z instead.

Also, there is a decent chance that most customers don't price out both F & Y before buying so they don't know that they've missed a better deal.

GoAmtrak

In other words, UA correctly bets that insulting their customers' intelligence will pad margins. What a vivid illustration of why "flyer_friendly" is cynical Orwellian crock.

exerda

I don't think it's due to inventory differences so much as it is the way they're calculating the upfare price. I often see it offering the fare difference to the full fare, when there are discounted fares available (though I do see fluctuation at that, such as my current IAD-NRT itin which seems to offer GF for $4k and $8k alternately).

The most egregious example I experienced was one of the "mistake" P fares last summer, where they offered GF for a total of around $16k upfare (r/t, with a "discount" of $2k if you bought r/t--otherwise, it was $9k o/w). At the same time, you could buy GF outright via an A fare for ~$6k. There, UA was clearly offering an upfare from P to full F, even though they were selling tickets in A at that very moment.

Maybe the A fares were a Y fare with UPDI or something, and UA's algorithm wouldn't offer a refare from the C cabin to an "economy" fare that booked into A? Whatever the reason, that was the offer UA made to me every time I looked, and throughout most of the wait before I traveled, the A fare was available.

I had the same thing on a 3-class 777 (domestic route) not too long ago, where I was booked via a P fare, and there was an A fare offered, but UA wanted me to upfare to full F.

hscottm

Without giving any technical explanation, clearly they are looking for suckers.

Seriously though, some people can't buy F tickets outright but can buy upgrades (eg corporate budget rules). Still crazy but can't blame United for trying.

raehl311

I'm pretty sure it's just an IT problem United isn't terribly interested in fixing.

I think in every place you're offered an upgrade, there is different code in place to figure out what the price should be, and with so many ways to get into F, there's no consistency in the pricing from just buying F outright to upgrading a purchased coach fare after purchase to finding the ticket in your profile and upgrading with cash there to upgrading at check-in on website or app to upgrading at check-in at a kiosk to upgrading at the gate.... not to mention whether you're an elite upgrading to a Y/B/M fare or a non-elite upgrading to a -UP fare or just a discount F fare or....

...you get the idea.

mduell

Airfare and upgrade pricing is a black box, where the airline controls all the levers and acts in unpredictable ways.

This is why claimed mistake fares should always be honored -- the buyer has no idea what is intended.

flyerbjorn

Bingo. I've seen this a number of times. UA isn't necessarily offering a cheaper (economy fare + upgrade fee) than buying a discount premium ticket outright. On a few occasions, I've bought the cheapest economy fares, hoping to trigger cheap upgrade offers.

For domestic tickets, I have never found economy + upgrade offers to be cheaper than buying discount first (in advance). I don't understand these fares very well, but the "first class" fare tends to be some *-UP fare that books into A. I've always gotten the A class fare bonus and never had an issue.

For international flights, it's a different story if you get a fixed price upgrade offer, which as an example used to be $1400 one way SYD-SFO. Otherwise, it's an upgrade to some fare in the next class, sometimes full fare and ridiculously expensive.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, as I've never tried this myself. If you have already bought an economy fare and want to upgrade with money, the smart thing to do is to upfare the flight to the lowest available first class or *-UP fare. Or if you're feeling adventurous, hope for a TOD upgrade on the day of departure.

I remember reading on FT a long time ago that there is no (change) fee to upfare a flight. You just pay the difference. Some people, whose corporate policy forbids buying first uses this to their advantage by buying an expensive economy fare and paying the difference to a cheap first class fare.

XCstud

A couple days ago I bought a Q fare on an multi-city Intl flight for about $1700. To upgrade the two TATL segments would have cost an additional $5600 so I'd be looking at about $7300 with the domestic segments still in Y. I could have bought a P fare for less than <$5k. To add insult to injury, the fine print indicated that you may only earn PQD and PQM on your original fare basis.

JumboJet

It's kind of a case of the airline gaming us

They know some people kind of have to upgrade that way.

cfischer

Happens all the time. The online upgrade does not recognize UP fares very well. Had the same issue BOS-EWR a few weeks ago where I had to book cheap coach and A-class r/t was less than $100 more. Couldn't do the upgrade online, but called the 1K line and they were happy to upfare it.

TA

If upgrades from coach were cheaper than F tickets outright, who would ever buy the F ticket?