Anyone Else Getting Crazy Fares Today? Full Fare Only?
 

I have been pricing out a trip from LAX-EWR-FLL for the past few weeks to get an idea of the average fare range (ideally in Business First for the PS and First for the others) on specific dates. Since I have been searching in the early morning hours, the prices have differed from browser to browser at the same time. It also only shows full fare options or says none available for every flight that day. For example. for lowest Economy, it shows all flights LAX-EWR segment as $858 outbound, yet if I try another browser, it might show $175 lowest economy. On another, it shows lowest Business on the LAX-EWR segment as $599, but on the other browser shows it as $1,000.

There also seems to be a discrepancy in pricing trips round-trip and multi-city and one-way. For multi-city, shouldn't the segments price out the same as one-way? (I am also getting the full fare option only for the multi city searches too and one time got only full fare economy options and discount first on another where the lowest Economy from EWR-FLL was mid $600 and First was mid $300.)

Has anyone else experienced this today or lately? It is driving me crazy since I want to book a trip and don't have confidence in what I am seeing.
(In case it mattered, I cleared by cache and have expert mode enabled and have the add-on for it). Thanks.

Have you tried pricing via Google Flights?

I had. Search some one-way, and got full-fare (B) only, especially on Int'l flights..
Multi-city sometime cheaper than one-way.. like search LAX-EWR+EWR-FLL may cheaper than search LAX-FLL one-way via EWR...

Apparently, there are lots of issues with united.com recently.. just hope them can fix asap..

Google flights showed full-fare as well... and now Expert mode "down" so I am not sure whether is tech issue, or they didn't open... but what I searched are flights in August, just five month later..

I am getting perfectly normal fares today.

That's normal. International one-ways are typically only available at full fare.

Having similar experience with mileage redemption tickets - no saver available on legs where they have been available as of a couple days ago. Trying over 5 different routes, dates, itineraries. Not an extensive search but noticeable that only full price mileage awards are available at a time when others are finding only full price revenue tickets...

I recommend not using the UA.sux fare search at all; they've tried to make it show per-segment pricing but given the complexity of their fare structure and state of their IT, it just doesn't work well or consistently and becomes very confusing. All of the issues you mentioned are artifacts of this.

I'd recommend one of the superior fare search engines, like Google Flights, that show the lowest complete trip price from the start; it also has the bonus of being quite a bit faster.

Yes by a factor of as much as 10 or 20x if you're using the calendar to search for fares and imposing restrictions such as limited number of stops.

From my perspective, the only reasons to use united.com are (i) you need to search for a specific fare class, or (ii) you need to see fare bucket availability. And of course the second is currently irrelevant since it's not being displayed.

I've got a new one here. Looking at an upcoming reservation (July) and it has the originating and destination airport correct, but the two flights and the connecting city are both completely different. It's the right date, same confirmation number, but the flights, completely different. :confused:

How much does anybody want to bet that once United.com finishes it's hissy fit my flights will appear normal again?

It's also showing me this. Yum... I'm hungry for a meal of "1". Hope only one person is hungry :D

http://i.imgur.com/BtGnRzd.png

There's definitely some weird stuff going on at united.com.

Booking flight PEK-EWR-PEK

When selecting the PEK-EWR as a non-stop, the return EWR-PEK non-stop prices out approximately 50% more than when selecting a 1-stop PEK-EWR. Both P fares.

Looks like another 747 PEK-SFO UD trip for me! :)

Just another data point that the fares I am seeing for a multi-city itin are all wonked out... Showing lack of lower buckets (on all options), pricing to fullish fares, etc.. Very annoying.

Website has absolutely been driving me nuts today. Trying to find award inventory. Running the same searches, I keep getting inconsistent results in terms of saver availability. Sometimes flights show as available, sometimes they don't. Sometimes the search results display standard award options, sometimes they don't. And the lack of expert mode data makes it impossible to check / confirm award inventory via a revenue search. And this is the one type of search where there is literally no other web search option, since no one else displays XN/IN availability.

They need to fix expert mode quickly. It's a complete mess...I look at the awards chart, and it shows saver J availability in IN...and then the flight being pulled in shows IN = 0 (because it's the 2nd segment).

I am flying out of Newark tomorrow and received the regular email from United informing me that TSA wait times may be long during early morning and evening rush hours. My flight is at 2pm so the email seems unnecessary. And I have precheck. But United is United.

Meantime, I booked a PNR in late April for a friend and me to fly from Denver to Las Vegas. It's a separate reservation and that's the only leg on it. And it's the only time I have ever booked a reservation with/for that friend. Well, that friend received the email from United today regarding the wait times at Newark as well. I live in New York and he lives in Missouri and he has a mileage plus account so they know who he is. Further proof that United's systems are all screwed up.