radiowell

I was looking at January on, and lo and behold, a whale showed up

jsloan

And the saga of UA's arbitrary restrictions on ICN-SFO continues...

In order to get a stopover in Tokyo or Osaka on the way to the USA, you have to go up to a Q fare.

In theory, you could get a stopover in Japan on the W fare on the way back from the USA. However, that would have to be booked on a UA code, and it doesn't appear that you can book the UA codeshare without a connecting flight. So, your options are to up-fare to Q (outbound) or V (return), and then you can add a 7C flight as part of the fare.

It's as if there's a contest at United to see who can write the most difficult fare rule to use. :-)

warrenw

The upfare cost was over $2,000! On a fare originally ~$1,000 confirmed into R. I'm flying direct on the way back so no stopover there.

I mean yeah I understand that there is a direct ICN-SFO route but I like connecting through Japan because it offers more options and widely opens up the opportunities to book into R. UA leaving the market for ICN-NRT is really making things difficult..

Kacee

And many of them involve Tokyo. Very common as well to run into combinability restrictions which force you to a Q or even an H if you want to use a GPU.

williamqian2014

Sad, i used to take a lot of the fifth freedom flights within asia. Now they are gone one by one.

jsloan

+$2000 doesn't really sound right, unless there was a major inventory crunch. Looking at ICN-NRT 10/31, NRT-SFO 11/2, SFO-ICN 11/17, I get about $1550 (Q/W) if you're willing to fly 7C, or $2625 (M/W) to fly OZ. I'm guessing that the agent you spoke to missed some of these options, or you happened to pick a heavy travel day.

BTW, I don't blame you a bit for wanting to connect in NRT. It's unfortunate that UA makes it so difficult.

As an aside, I once got a really, really awful agent while trying to make a rather complicated flight change that took advantage of some quirks in UA's routing rules (mostly necessary due to limited R inventory). The fare should have been $1100, and she managed to price it as $2600. I thanked her, declined, called back, and got an agent who priced it properly. Maybe you ran into the same situation.

findark

To be fair, this is almost certainly driven by the fact that SFO-SEL fares were undercutting the TYO market, even after a USD 500.00 surcharge for a TYO stopover (i.e. SFO-TYO(stop)-SEL(4h "destination")-SFO) was cannibalizing TYO nonstops.

warrenw

I think that is exactly what happened in my situation!

Boraxo

This is just UA management thinking ahead of the curve. ICN may be out of commission for a while if there is another conflict on the Korean peninsula. The longhaul flights will be next to go.

warrenw

Just checked and yes, it has been changed to an A380!

warrenw

I know you're probably joking, but...

UA holds the government contract for SFO-ICN, and sells many, many spots to US military personnel and their accompanying family, if applicable, and government employees. Remember, travel orders have to be flown on a US carrier. They won't be getting rid of their spot in Seoul for a long time to come.

iquitos

And, I predict they will live to regret this move.

drewguy

Not necessarily - code shares qualify as well for contracts. Eg., IAD-ICN contract is Delta codeshare on Korean.

warrenw

Yes, as well as Emirates with a code share with Jet Blue when Jet Blue doesn't even fly internationally

I would still wager that the vast majority of contracts are with actual domestic carriers instead of codeshares with foreign ones.

drewguy

Yeah, not arguing that point. Obviously all flights within US are US carriers, but even among international most are US as well, although I believe that with Europe there may be a fair number of codeshare availabilities, like LH/UA.