Oh, yes, you are correct. That is interesting. I thought they did away with this oddity of expensive one way tickets/buckets a long time ago.

I stand corrected in this and the other thread.

Consolidated: Is united.com or parts of it down? And other UA website issues
 

Yup - I noticed that a week or two ago with YYZ - ORD (and return) only showing one flight. From ORD-YYZ, it's only the 6am, and to add to the weirdness, that's actually an AC-operated flight. Should be about 13 flights each way (including UA &AC) on this route.

Submitted a feedback note at the time...obviously not fixed.

The websites ability to change any reservation - revenue or award - was broken well before this new website. Rarely worked properly for me on the old one, either.

The lightness depends on the full fare basis. You still end up with the same booking class regardless of options (unless you book via not-Swiss), e.g. on the Swiss website I'm currently being offered only (K), regardless of whether I go for light (KLGT...) or classic (KCLS...). I wanted to experiment and see whether booking through UA would give me something sensible, but it turns out when they say (K) you'll also book into KLGT....

Even if I try to select a more expensive fare on UA (e.g. Q, E, etc.), I still end up with ELGT... or QLGT... (and you have to go looking for the fare rules to even know that's happening). It's completely unrelated to how discounted or undiscounted your fare is.

While it may exist, I have never been able to find inexpensive one way longhaul flights over water - though I mostly search UA.

Canada, OTOH ....

Oh, I suppose that's can be the case if you're booking a LX fare. In my case I got LX segments on a UA fare so you get light or classic or whatever depending on booking class as far as I can tell.

Trying to pay with a PP MC. Select Mastercard. Enter 5588 #### #### #### credit card number.

I keep getting an error that the wrong credit card type has been selected for the credit card number.

Yes, United, cards that begin with 5 are Mastercards.

Commence strangle...

And just got an error after purchase that my purchase couldn't be completed and to call in - but then go to my account, and there it is, with a receipt, confirmation number, and ticket number.

The hold on my (debit) card has disappeared again, so it seemed cancellation did work. It seems the website is just showing the wrong message when you successfully refund to original payment (i.e. telling you you'll receive credit instead of refund)? I did however also submit a refund request via the refund form, but I highly doubt anyone actually looked into that that quickly (and presumably I would receive an email notifying me that someone had looked at it).

(I'll keep monitoring the card to make sure nothing has gone wrong though...)

It sounds more like you never ticketed. The funds should have been withdrawn at ticketing.

I was definitely ticketed. The UA and LX websites both changed what they were showing when I was ticketed, and even saudia agreed that I was properly ticketed (I'd heard about previous UA/LX ticketing issues so was being quite careful about double checking everything).

So if you go thru the process & come up with an "all-in" fare, does this include (somehow) the stopover charge? Presumably, a fare booked this way *would* be done on 016 ticket stock since what I'm looking at is outbound on UA (SEA-SFO-KIX) & on the return you'd have OZ(KIX-ICN)-UA(ICN-SFO-SEA). However, the itinerary "details" on the website don't give the PQM & PQD. But even if the OZ leg is not included, you'd get them for the UA legs. Am I making sense? In other words, what we're trying to do is SEA-KIX at a reasonable price with as much status-eligible goodies as possible. Sort of an optimized miles&dollars run, i.e., a fast-track process back to being 1K.

I think the answer to all your questions is yes. Think of this as a perfectly normal, above-board ticket which happens to have a weird fare construction. If you buy it on ua.com, it will ticket on 016 stock and you will earn accordingly. PQD by fare of the whole ticket (the stopover surcharge is treated as part of the fare), proportional RDM, and PQM by distance and operating carrier.


Here's an example of what is going on (exact prices may be different by day of week and inventory, but this is roughly accurate):

You ask the UA booking engine for a round trip from SEA to KIX in business class. It searches for fares and flights, and finds that the cheapest fare and itinerary to OSA looks like

It will show you this with a booking code of Z and that price (earning info may or may not be right). Then when you look for the return, the engine says "oh wait a minute, actually I think I can construct the following"
It will display this as a return option in P. The total all-in price for the above (including the $500 stopover) is $3,212.26. The engine thus computes the difference and assigns this number to your second segment. It will round ($222.22) up to $0, hence you see the "free flight". But once you select this return, it will re-fare your outbound to P as well and your ticket will match the second codebox. It's a completely normal 016 ticket which will earn on both legs.


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It's also worth noting that sometimes, for no apparent reason, the engine finds the stopover option first. It will then do the following, which is also confusing if you don't know what's going on.

Searching on SEA to KIX, it will find the construction

It's a little annoying to compute all the taxes involved, but the "half round trip" from SEA to SEL is going to be about $1,400 plus the $500 stopover. The engine says, "okay, so ~half of that gets us to KIX, plus $500 for the stopover", and displays a choice to KIX with a price of about $1,200 ($500 + $700), with booking code P. Seeing this, a customer goes "wow! I can get a $1,200 half r/t to KIX!"

Then, on the return, it will add the remaining $700 of the "outbound" plus the full ~$1,400 of the "return" to the price and show a ~$2,100 ticket in P back through ICN. It will also (sometimes but not always) show a KIX-SFO-SEA itinerary in Z, with a total cost of re-faring the entire thing to the $6,800 Z ticket (about $5,400). Or it might just not even show the UA return, as it thinks it's a bad idea based on how it started.

As a note, all of the above applies identically ex-SFO.


Make sense? Or did I just end up being more confusing?

Thanks for the explanation, and with tongue firmly planted in cheek: maybe the UA fare construction code writers should take a crack at decrypting that iPhone

I've tried today to both change an award and to redeposit 2 different tickets and all error-ed out on the last step.

On the change award screen it got all the way to asking for the credit card number, but the "terms and conditions" section was blank and it was claiming a full re-charge of the taxes.

Everything seems broken these days.

I've been trying for days to upgrade a colleagues flights with my RPU's - I make it all the way to the last screen and then get the "Error" screen with no reason. .bomb is still .bomb