Kacee

As I see it, that question has been pretty thoroughly answered. First, as several have pointed out, the basic premise (fare has gone to ">$10k on all major *A carriers) is not correct. Second, you're trying to book without a Saturday night stay, which UA's deep discount fare requires (and flying on a day of the week which does not qualify, either). Third, there may be limited inventory on your very specific dates. Finally, because fares are dynamic, and may change (i.e., get more expensive) based on projected supply, demand, and pricing power, as determined by UA's models.

malgudi

By the same token, should you also not know that prices are elastic?

gusd

dkc192

Looking at LAX-HKG fares for shoulder holiday season travel, namely mid-December (12/10 - 12/15 or so) out and early January (week after New Years Day) back. For some reason the return flights on 1/7 and before are being forced into R (premium economy) due to the lowest available coach bucket being B, leading to the RT price being $2,100-$2,300 (compared to $1,400 for a W RT). Is this inventory/pricing normal for that time of year?

Kacee

This is an interesting one. That week after New Year's, which used to be an easy upgrade back from Asia, has now become a relatively difficult ticket. As you note, UA is playing it particularly tight with the Y inventory on UA862/878 that week. As I'm sure you saw, they will route you via NRT for considerably less. Other carriers are also offering considerably more rational inventory/pricing. I might consider one of them (and wouldn't really want to fly UA in the back on that route anyway). And of course an SFO connection can be pretty dicey that time of year, particularly the outbound.

dkc192

I'm trying to use GPUs so gotta stick with UA!

I have a feeling it could be due to the new SFO flight gumming up RM. When the flight was first loaded, there was PZ9 I9 W9 (as reported elsewhere). The PZ and I quickly disappeared, but the W remained. Then the PZ came back (albeit on far fewer dates), but the W has since disappeared on those dates with PZ. FWIW ORD and EWR are PZ9 W9 across the board the week starting 1/6.

I also noticed some of this funny business happening with AA last year (my carrier of choice up until this year). US-HKG RT had a forced segment in PE on the way back.

AirbusFan2B

jsloan

No, they won't lower the fares overnight. They will keep them high, and they will use the excess capacity to move people around the network due to IRROPS or what-have-you.

It's fare discipline. They'd rather sell one ticket at $800 than three at $300, because, in the long term, the $800 tickets will be more profitable.

AirbusFan2B

jsloan

The lowest available fare on a given flight is a combination of the available fares and the available inventory. When you're booking 3-4 weeks in advance, you likely have a number of applicable fares, and revenue management will have set the inventory on each flight based upon projected sales, which often means that some flights will have space in low inventory buckets (e.g., G and K) whereas other flights might be open only down to a medium bucket like W. Thus: different prices.

You're seeing an effect of lots of excess capacity (so, the fare buckets are all open) but only a small number of fares published. In fact, UA doesn't publish anything lower than a U fare for one-day advance purchase in the ORD-DEN market. U is a fairly high fare, hence the $800 RT cost. Since the flights are all wide open inventory-wise, you can get that same U fare on any of them. The fares won't go down (unless they happen to publish a new ORD-DEN fare this afternoon, which they probably won't), but they might go up (if any of the flights fill).

Again, this is intentional; they do not want to offer low-cost seats for these flights, even if it means that the seats fly empty. That's because they don't want businesses to be able to wait for a lower fare. They know that most leisure travelers book further in advance, but business travelers don't always have that option, and they set up the fares accordingly.

Note that you can get the fare down to $514 if you return Thursday, as there's a 3-day advance purchase fare that books the return into the K bucket.

findark

The numbers tend to be even more skewed than that. Often it's more like there are four people in Chicago who suddenly discovered they need to be in DEN this week. For three of them, the need is great enough that they will buy any ticket under say $4,000 round-trip (this is a typical business traveler). The fourth might find some reason to skive off the trip if it's too expensive. The price is only down where it is because of competition, and some semblance of "fairness" (insofar as it affects their customer image).

The moral of the story is that anyone buying last-minute tends to be extremely insensitive to price. They might attract some spur-of-the-moment DEN trips by offer $39 seats that would fly empty, but it won't be that many people and it will cannibalize the otherwise $800 fares.

AirbusFan2B

findark

Inventory is only one of two inputs to the price of a ticket. The published fares are the other, and the $827 price (a U fare) is the lowest published fare with no advance purchase requirement. UA has decided they don't want to sell a cheaper ticket, regardless of how empty the flight is.

jsloan

Precisely. That doesn't mean that the other buckets are useless: someone who already has a K ticket may be able to change it (think SDC), or it might be used as part of a connecting flight. Even though UA won't sell a K fare on ORD-DEN, they might sell one on ORD-DEN-LAS.

villox