kctigers

trying to book a ticket on united.com

they have this graph, block thing, with the days of the week listed and the price for each day listed one ways for a round trip purchase and for example it says monday $500

but when i go to list flights view i cannot replicate this price it is higher, can someone explain this to me, sorry i cannot screen shot this..

thank you.

findark

Generally speaking, it will show the lowest price available but not subject to either your filters or the display order. Flights are usually displayed by (number of stops ASC, flight duration ASC, price ASC) and so the cheapest option may not be on the first page (or easy to find).

fumje

When you see the list of flights and prices, you can click the header of the particular column you're interested in to sort by price for that column. Otherwise UA applies some kind of 'smart' desirability-sort that factors in several things, as findark described.



E.g., here is a search for IAD-SFO that shows $267 as the most desirable fare:




But here is what you see when you sort by price—a $243 fare with one stop—after clicking the 'Economy' header:

Duke787

If you are having trouble you can also try pulling it up on google.com/flights first. Assuming it's a valid fare, Google Flights will deep link you into the UA website so you just have to confirm the flights and pay instead of going through UA's search functionality.

kctigers

i still don't understand i am looking at a flight for july 12 mnl lax as part of a round trip the end part

the little boxes rectangle boxes say the cheapest flight should be $340 and the cheapest flight in the big search boxes down below says 648 a big difference, how do i get the 340 fare

and can someone please explain to me in layman's terms


original schedule lax-mnl manila--lax july 3 to july 12 united air lines

i do not know why i cannot replicate this 340 fare
what am i doing wrong???

thank you,
kc tigers

to me this is almost a bait and switch type of deal

Kmxu

You have to use multiple destination search to get the $620 RT fare. Here is the google flight search link. Good luck.
https://www.google.com/flights/#sear...=STAR_ALLIANCE

IAH-OIL-TRASH

If the little box has a lower fare, just order the economy fares by price by clicking on the blue "Economy" header. It's that simple. As someone has already mentioned, the fares first come up by (usually) quickest routing, not necessarily the best price. It is not bait and switch. One would argue that the cheaper price you see at top is actually helping people realize that there's a cheaper fare available although it may not be the quickest routing.

Google makes it simpler. You don't have to figure out how to use each airline's flight search interface.

jsloan

While that's normally true, I tried this particular search and I couldn't find the low fare on the return flight. The price being displayed is for a K fare, but I couldn't find a K fare in the results that were returned.

findark

Yeah.. I suspect that the query which fetches the price somehow manages to have a different timeout parameter than the one getting itineraries. Unfortunately when constructing international trips, some due diligence goes a long way..

mauiUAflyer

I too have often been puzzled by that "lowest fare box". Generally I can get it to match. But sometimes I can't (even by sorting). And sometimes I even find a lower fare.

emcampbe

haha, I just had the opposite. Said the lowest fare was $236, but there was one flight that was $138.

I also find the app doesn't match always. Sometimes, the boxes at the top give the 'lowest' fare, but at the bottom of the page, there is a little 'ticker' (for lack of a better word I can think of) that says something like "50 flights from $X". The fare number at the bottom may or may not match the lowest fare in the box, and generally, when they mismatch, it is the box on top that is not correct.

kctigers

thank you everyone for your responses

here is my problem

i am on ual.com right now 10 04 am saturday morning central time may 6,2017 the rectangle box that is highlighted in green says $488.00 but when i click on it the rectangle box is the first box on the page about halfway down

then i click it and it then goes to the bog square box and the cheapest fare is $577.00 how do i get the 488 fare and why in layman's terms is it showing this 488 fare? if this fare is not available....

thank you,
kctigers

returnoftheyeti

How did you figure that out, and man that routing is painful.

WineCountryUA

Suspect there is false / stale fare issue.
If you look at fares for adjacent days it is $648 $340 $707 with july 12 reporting the $340. However in the search filter area it states "75 of 75 flights from $648"

There is probably a stale fare and the daily view is get it but the more detailed views are catching the fare is gone and not listing it. Probably a stale fare from a partner that has not gotten flushed out of the system.

Airline cache data on other airline fares since they are charged a fee to do a real search. This is one reason you can see a fare but as you try to book it, the system fails or displays a changed fare.

There also could be a combinablity issue or fare rule constraint that prevent the display of the fare.

So while what folks are saying about clicking the column or the low fare will work most of the time. This occasionally stale fares will mess things up. You can try calling but I doubt the result will be any better. The fare is not availability.

wolfie_cr

why is it that I cant find the famous 402 dollars fare (this is not the first time I see this)