Buy LH ticket on UA
 

Found a fare on LH.com for $1300, but the same flights on UA.com price out to $2300. I've usually seen both sites offer the same fares and would rather buy on UA.com for PQD. Would UA agents be able to get the same fare as LH.com? Want to make sure I know what to ask before going down the rabbit hole.

No. This generally means that United has sold out of the lower fare buckets, and the only way that will change is if Inventory Management decides to make those fares available again.

Update: went through Google flights and it generated a link that took me straight to the UA.com booking page and magically had the same fares as LH.com...

Where the flights native LH flights in all cases or was the higher price case UA codeshare?

One leg out of 4 (FRA-SJC) is a UA flight number, the rest are LH.

The LH and UA codes for the same physical flight will offer different inventory; usually but not always the native flight has more space. The UA website will sell most things as UA codeshares, and the LH site will sell as LH codeshares. This is responsible for the difference.

Technically you can call UA and get the lower (assuming LH flight number) price, but you may get some pushback if the itinerary contains no UA flights. Or use Google Flights, like you did, to force .bomb to spit out LH flight numbers.

While UA might give some pushback, is this a scenario that one might be able to go to a travel agent to book/or check? Never used one but I would think a TA would be more "understanding".

Just a clarification, by definition it is not possible to buy an "LH ticket" from United. You can buy LH flights, but UA can only sell you a ticket on UA (016) ticket stock.

As OP already discovered, google flights will often allow you to click through and purchase from UA an all LH (or LX) itinerary, under native flight numbers, with no UA flight on the itinerary. This is the JV in action (no plating restrictions).

Is there a way to force that for all LH intra European flights with Google Flights?

No the discount intra-Europe fares all have plating restrictions.

Said differently - yes you could force UA to plate LH flight numbers for intra-europe, but the fare you'd get would be significantly higher (as Kacee notes, the discount intra-Europe fares have plating restrictions which were recently added).

Thanks for clarifying.

You don't really need to "force" the full fare LH intra-Europe options using google flights . . . united.com will typically return those if you search on its website.

Ah yes - that's right. UA will only return the UA codeshare on intra-Europe flights when booked in conjunction with TATL flight.

Actually, united.com will sell the native flight numbers intra-Europe in discount classes, but only as part of a TATL (i.e., JV) fare. For example, I flew LX1652 yesterday and will fly LH249 next week as part of an SFO-MXP P fare purchased on united.com via google flights.