Booking: Flexible less than "lowest economy" to SYD.
Feb 13, 2016, 1:57 pm
#1
Original Poster
Join Date: Jun 2013
Location: Healdsburg CA and Provincetown MA
Programs: UA 1K and MM.
Posts: 135
Booking: Flexible less than "lowest economy" to SYD.
I've been looking to book a trip to AU or NZ right at the 330 day mark. I am seeing two strange things that might be tied together.
1. The flight out has a great deal for the non-stop SFO/SYD leg. $792 each and we can use GPUs. But this seems to come in as a "flexible fare" in W. ("Lowest" V is over $1200.) So when choosing this, we are only give very expensive returns and never just on UA metal.
2. I can find the return flights, non-stop. But when I look at award travel. .bomb will show it. Just never provide this option to buy. I have flexibility in return dates and have started looking at a number of days. I can't get these flights, at any price. Only under award travel.
Any hints on how to book this (paying) and use GPUs on United metal?
1. The flight out has a great deal for the non-stop SFO/SYD leg. $792 each and we can use GPUs. But this seems to come in as a "flexible fare" in W. ("Lowest" V is over $1200.) So when choosing this, we are only give very expensive returns and never just on UA metal.
2. I can find the return flights, non-stop. But when I look at award travel. .bomb will show it. Just never provide this option to buy. I have flexibility in return dates and have started looking at a number of days. I can't get these flights, at any price. Only under award travel.
Any hints on how to book this (paying) and use GPUs on United metal?
Feb 13, 2016, 2:14 pm
#2
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Nov 2014
Location: MSP
Programs: DL PM, UA Gold, WN, Global Entry; +others wherever miles/points are found
Posts: 14,404
The booking engine on .bomb is completely non-functional for me right now (can't get signin to stick for Expert Mode or select any flights), but I have a pretty good guess about what you're seeing.
The number one rule here is segment prices on the UA booking engine are misleading. Often, as is the case here, you might see a segment to your destination (A-B) with a low price because the engine actually priced you on A-C with a stopover in B. It's admittedly a little difficult to say how the engine "should" show you these if it's letting you select per-segment.
In any case, you're probably seeing the result of the fare WHX0ZUMZ SFO to AKL, which allows a stopover in Area 3 (Asia/Australia/NZ) for $100. So the booking engine is allowing you to book SFO-SYD-AKL, with a "stopover" of your destination time in SYD, followed by AKL-SFO with a "destination" time in AKL of whatever the connect is.
If you're looking to go to Australia or New Zealand and like the overall price (about $2,300 in W), do both! You're already fared that way. But the $792 segment price to SYD is misleading and cannot be booked on its own.
The choice of outbound segment is probably also locking the choices you see for the return. This is unusual - it will normally price the other options as if you re-fared your outbound, but .bomb is really broken right now..
A wonderful and in-depth explanation of this phenomenon can be found here. Make sense?
The number one rule here is segment prices on the UA booking engine are misleading. Often, as is the case here, you might see a segment to your destination (A-B) with a low price because the engine actually priced you on A-C with a stopover in B. It's admittedly a little difficult to say how the engine "should" show you these if it's letting you select per-segment.
In any case, you're probably seeing the result of the fare WHX0ZUMZ SFO to AKL, which allows a stopover in Area 3 (Asia/Australia/NZ) for $100. So the booking engine is allowing you to book SFO-SYD-AKL, with a "stopover" of your destination time in SYD, followed by AKL-SFO with a "destination" time in AKL of whatever the connect is.
If you're looking to go to Australia or New Zealand and like the overall price (about $2,300 in W), do both! You're already fared that way. But the $792 segment price to SYD is misleading and cannot be booked on its own.
The choice of outbound segment is probably also locking the choices you see for the return. This is unusual - it will normally price the other options as if you re-fared your outbound, but .bomb is really broken right now..
A wonderful and in-depth explanation of this phenomenon can be found here. Make sense?
Feb 13, 2016, 2:18 pm
#3
A FlyerTalk Posting Legend
Join Date: Apr 2013
Location: PHX
Programs: AS 75K; UA 1MM; Hyatt Globalist; Marriott LTP; Hilton Diamond (Aspire)
Posts: 56,446
It was doing this to me recently on an SFO-KIX fare, where I could not get it to display the nonstop on the return. Extremely frustrating. You know the flight is there and that there's wide open availability, but .com won't return it as an option.
Feb 13, 2016, 3:42 pm
#4
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Nov 2014
Location: MSP
Programs: DL PM, UA Gold, WN, Global Entry; +others wherever miles/points are found
Posts: 14,404
Poking around with the US-AU routing, I noticed that even ITA isn't smart enough (for whatever reason) to suggest the SFO-SYD-AKL-SFO routing. It will offer the AKL fare on SFO-LAX-SYD-AKL-SFO, and price the nonstop SFO-SYD that way if I force the routing. UA does the same, but still broken enough that I can't confirm the forced routing gives the lower fare there.
Feb 16, 2016, 9:39 pm
#5
Original Poster
Join Date: Jun 2013
Location: Healdsburg CA and Provincetown MA
Programs: UA 1K and MM.
Posts: 135
Thanks. This seems to be the issue. Fares that are available are WHX0ZUMZ with AKL routing required. I'd be happy with at an actual "stay" in AKL, but the W routing in economy is pretty pricey too get the dates that work.