Multi-city pricing issues?
 

In February I flew a multi-city itinerary that included PHX-IAH-LGA (meetings in CT) PVD-EWR-IAH-BTR (visit w/ family) BTR-IAH-PHX for under $500.

Today I'm looking at a similar trip in May pricing out at >$2,000 when searching Multi-city with both ITA/Matrix and on United.

Searching for one-way tickets:
PHX - LGA on May 13 lowest price is 139.60 (G fare)
PVD - BTR on May 17 is 158.60 (K fare)
and
BTR - PHX on May 23 is 205.60 (T fare)
$503.80 all in

I'd really rather have this itinerary all on one ticket for IRROPS protection, but $1,500+ is a steep premium to pay.

I'm fairly certain the similar itinerary I flew in February was constructed by stringing together 3 one-way fares. I'm just wondering why I can't accomplish a similar feat today. Has United recently changed their fare rules to disallow this?

Fares come and go all the time, are good for specific periods of time, and often have combinability restrictions. You may have run into one of these restrictions.

IRROPS really should not be an issue with multi-day layovers either.

Looks like the G fare PHX-LGA and the K fare PVD-BTR don't allow for a 3-leg circle trip like you're trying to book; I didn't check the third segment but I'd bet it is similar. The $2200 fare is booking mostly into first class to find a fare flexible enough to allow for what you're doing.

Also, that PVD-BTR trip on UA metal sucks. Gotta be a better way to make that work.

Just book them individually; the risk is not worth the $1500 premium, as you note.

Funny you bring this up - I had the exact same experience with two upcoming fares. Luckily I put them on "fare-lock" so got/will get them at the more reasonable ~$500-600 range. Those exact same itineraries are now pricing out ~$1500-2000 range.

I've been doing multi-city trips on these same(ish) routes for the past two years and have never seen them this high.

I get that fares come and go and there are restrictions, but basically anytime I add any additional city the prices goes up ~$1500.

Seems like something is up to me too...we'll see.

We already know...see above. The fare rules do not permit the cheapest fare classes to be used on multi-city itineraries.

Right...but this seems like a change to me. I have multi-city itineraries booked right now that have multiple different fare classes in the itinerary and it seems like they were priced accordingly. E.g. I have one with both G and V and another with W and N.

I find it hard to believe that all of a sudden any itinerary I want to book involving multi-city is ~$1500 more. And this is not just one itinerary, it is multiple different ones to different destinations over several different months. I've been keeping an eye on them over the past month or so and they were all in the ~500-700 range and now all of a sudden they are all priced ~1500+ ....how does that work?

The fare bucket is not relevant. There may be a dozen different G fares and two dozen V fares. It's the rules of the specific fare that count.

Believe it. United may have decided that some fares and combinations were being abused, so they set the rules accordingly.

While all the fare bucket stuff is too complicated for me, I agree with what you're saying...I feel like they decided to change what they allow with multi-city ticketing.

Rules change all the time.

Fair enough...I've only been with UA 2.5 years but this is the first I've ever seen pricing this outrageous - seemingly brought on by recent changes.

I just ran into something similar.

Was planning a RT from CVG with my wife. Except found out instead of returning here, I have to go to YYZ straight from our destination. Initially, could do one way fares for each direction for both of us, getting a G on the way out (so we could be on the same reservation at least), and then K for both of us our separate return reservations.

Something changed before I booked though, because the return direction for her went up to something like a W when booked separately, so would have cost like double, while keeping the same K on the way back when booked on a return. So I booked her round trip, and then when I went to book mine on a open-jaw, it forced the outbound leg up about $100, booking into L or T, I think. So I ended up booking my trip as two one-ways, which allowed me to keep the G fare on the outbound.

Weird pricing for sure, but that doesn't make it necessarily untypical of the airlines. It would be a real bummer if I needed to cancel for some reason - since the fees would well outweigh the cost of the tickets.

Many (most) times this is driven by what the competitors are doing. If the competitors have a fare limitation, say min stay or number of connections or .... airlines will match their competitors until one breaks ranks. And after awhile they will all go back to the more restrictive rules.

What a shame. I've been enjoying going the long way around for the past 2.5 years. More opportunities for CPU's, more stop ins at various UC's and a few hundred to a few thousand extra PQM's...usually all for only $50-100 more than the RT fare.

Well, that doesn't happen with revenue-based accrual anyway.

Reference was to PQMs...which still aren't revenue-based.