Artpen100

I fly a lot of UA domestically, often in paid F, and find they are are usually competitive there, though I am picking them based on routes and times, certainly not loyalty. But what I find internationally is that they are rarely that competitive in business class. Other airlines, especially the EU ones, are usually cheaper or have upgrade space available at booking. And that is setting aside that UA Polaris soft product is awful.

The upshot is that I flew international business class half a dozen RTs last year, and none were on UA (and all, frankly, a nicer experience). Of course, if they are selling out anyway, I suppose they don�t care.

beachmouse

And C+ with DL is often filling up a lot quicker than Main Cabin is. Which could be some sort of combination of PM elite glut (I�ll cheerfully admit to being part of the problem) leading to PMs booking earlier to grab those to driving up cash prices for C+ leading to more PMs trying to snare those seats as they seem scarce.

Kacee

I'd be keeping my fingers crossed B6 doesn't cancel the flight.

anc-ord772

So very true. Been burned before by B6, but I guess I like living on the edge.

findark

UA is "more expensive than others" because the submitted data are cherry-picked dates and citypairs from a thread complaining about how UA is expensive.

I could just as soon bemoan that the bottom of the fare table is now $478 for DL on SFO-MSP despite the fact that UA is flying the route again and significantly undercutting DL, while AS offers even cheaper fares via SEA or ORD.

Especially when looking at individual flights, where specific inventory is a consideration, there will be enough outliers that it's possible to pick data supporting any conclusion. As xliioper pointed out on another market, it's actually most common to have everyone competing in a market offering the same fares, and the only differentiation being the inventory modeling and current sales loads on the various flights.

Fare tables are indicative of market pricing strategies. Single-flight inventory is indicative of a computer spitting out numbers based on a statistical model, and one sample is hardly enough to infer something about the model.

exjock4foodie

Even budget airlines are more expensive
they just want to make more money since they lost too much during the pandemic

OpenSky

I was 1K for 10+ plus. Give it up. It's the most liberating ever.

Today I fly the worlds nicest airlines, that treat me way nicer than United ever did.

Kacee

True enough, but fare tables won't tell the full story because carriers also use inventory restrictions to keep fares higher. For example, there have been entire months where AA zeroed out discount economy buckets PHX-SFO. This may well have been an error (AA makes these kinds of mistakes) but the impact was that AA economy fares were consistently $200 higher than UA, AS, or WN for an entire month. More relevant to this thread, even when UA publishes discount fares on a route, they may not release any discount inventory 6+ months out, particularly in business class, for reasons already mentioned in this thread.

Bear96

I am not trying to be snarky, but it sounds like a no-brainer - go with DL or AA.

To me it is a tougher call when the price difference is not so much. But if it is really a 2x/3x price difference, and you are looking at business class where you'll still get the trip-day perks like priority through security, lounge access, boarding before the hordes (if you want), etc. even if you have no status? Easy call IMO.

wanderlustFL

I absolutely agree with you. Perhaps pre-Covid the pattern was different. But I have 4 intentional flights booked (AU, IT, CH and ES/FR) with travel dates between March and November. I booked all of them approximately 10-11 months out. In each case, post booking fares on my dates in business have risen significantly, times dramatically. They are not all UAL, but the pattern I see in the lower fare buckets is that at least a few seats become available early and I pounce. Once they are gone, they may or may note ever return. What I do, is start monitoring the routes I seek well before travel to understand current pricing so that when my window opens I confirm that the fares are good value. Obviously, this strategy won't work to capture a sudden sale unless you are willing to live with a fare credit.

BTW, the pattern the OP notes with UAL I see with Delta from MIA. For instance, looking to a trip I want to take to France, Delta is consistently 1K higher in business than almost any other carrier regardless of routing or number of stops involved. I see this too on domestic travel from South Florida. UAL is very competitive on almost all routes (except Oceania), even to Cape Town where I see the fare drop to 4.5k R/T on some dates with a nonstop from either IAD or EWR. Delta is thousands more using their ATL-CPT nonstop. The point is I cannot speak for LAX originating traffic, but even if UAL is attempting to extract a premium in that market this strategy does not appear to be system wide.

FullFare

Getting a low fare (or a decent fare anyway) has always required perseverance and diligence, IMHO. Case in point: Wife and I want to visit family at the Jersey Shore in July from Bay Area. UA is running 8-9 flights/day from SFO. On the Saturday we wanted, all business seats were either $3,419 or $2,589 one way, depending on time of day. AS, on the other hand, has 3 flights each way for $782 in business class.

We have been flying UA fairly regularly for decades, and are GS and Pass Plus members. But $3,419 vs $782 (double that for round trip) is already out there, and has been, for some time that I have been looking. One has to be insanely loyal to UA to be paying such fares, when AS has a very reasonable alternative in J cabin.

Seph87

My question is who is buying these inflated international J fares. I had to fly LAX-GRU for work late last year and our corporate travel policy allows me to book J on longer flights. Round trip UA was around $14,000 and AA was around $5,000. I would have preferred to fly on UA since the schedule and hard product are better, but I would have been laughed out of the room if I tried to expense a $14,000 flight. Do some companies just not care if you try to expense a five-figure flight? My company is pretty relaxed with expenses but I feel like $10k+ on a single flight would be pushing it too far.

mduell

United is smart enough to observe most people don't book this far out, so they don't worry about the flight being empty now when they generate pricing.

Bear96

Yes, if a flight is not mostly empty 5-11 months out, it would mean they priced things way too cheaply.

Artpen100

For me, it is most often AF or BA, but also OS, TAP, KLM, LH and SN.