threeoh

No, if I change my ticket and the airline charges the difference, that is not a post-purchase price increase. It happens all the time. If I have a ticket SFO-LAX and I call the airline and say "I want to fly SFO-LAX next weekend instead", they will say "no problem" and charge me a difference in fare (and possibly a change fee).

If you ask me, a truly unchangable fare was not envisioned when the CoC was drafted, and so it is a little vague. According to your interpretation, if I just no-showed for my simple SFO-LAX one-way BE ticket because I'm too sick to travel, I'm violating the CoC. If I call them and ask to change, they will say no.

CoC interpretation by FTers aside, nothing UA has said about BE, either in interviews or on their website, makes me think that UA thinks that buying a BE ticket and not flying it is against the CoC. They say "use it or lose it" or "your ticket has no value if not flown as ticketed" or similar.

malgudi

Splitting hairs. UA doesn't care, they will sell the seat either way ... nice try, though.

Often1

1. This is absolutely "throwaway" ticketing. Take a look at Rule 6(J)(2) of the contract to which the passenger agreed. The fact that this is a BE ticket is a red herring. Even if this were a standard penalty fare with a typical change fee of $300 and one wanted to change the return and the new one-way did not incur a fare difference, unlikely as it is, it would still make no sense to pay $300 to change half of a $279 ticket.

2. There is little risk of UA taking action against the passenger here presuming that she is not a serial offender.

3. There is zero advantage in cancelling the ticket in advance. As others note, UA has built into its RM/IM algorithms the likelihood of cancellations and thus overbooks its flights to take that into account. Additionally, if by some chance the return flight is cancelled or significantly delayed by UA, the passenger will be entitled to some kind of a refund, small as it may be.

4. The only caution here is that the new ticket cannot be an "impossible" booking. That will be picked up by UA and it is entirely possible that UA will cancel that. If the new ticket is "impossible" then go ahead and cancel the BE return segment and be done with it.

nsx

Correct. However the functional equivalent has long existed: a ticket whose residual value is less than the change fee.

nsx

Right. In the CoC context, "purpose" means what you intended at the time of purchase. Otherwise the CoC would have said "The use of..."

sexykitten7

Well the CoC certainly requires intent to fly.

However, one could argue that 1) OP satisfied this requirement upon flying the OB segment or 2) OP had the intent to fly all ticket segments at the time of purchase.

Zorak

Or "the effect of".

Anyway regardless of how the CoC is parsed, I think we could agree that this has the effect of being throwaway even if it wasn't originally intended, and also that it's unlikely to have any repercussions as a one-off.

threeoh

It's not a red herring. The 'correct' CoC-approved thing to do if you have a $279 r/t ticket with a $300 change fee is to call, change your ticket to a one-way, pay the change fee, and pay the $2,000+ difference in fare.

The 'correct' CoC-approved thing to do with a BE ticket is totally unclear.

In both cases you can get away with no-showing once. But in one case it's clear what you're doing that instead of, and in the BE case it isn't at all clear what the alternative is.

dblumenhoff

Actually, there's a principle in contract law that when party A writes the contract and party B basically has no control over the writing of the contract, any ambiguity is read so as to be charitable to party B. So yes, if you have a legitimate read of United's CoC that disagrees with United, all other things being equal, yours is the one most likely to hold up in court.

That being said, given that the money we are talking about seems too small to go to court over, United has all the power and is most likely going to go with their own interpretation.

Collierkr

jsloan

Right, but you're asserting that UA could charge a passenger without them actually making a change, simply by no-showing.

I believe the general interpretation is that you must get some advantage from it, vis à vis the fare rules, for it to be a violation.

OP was hoping to get partial credit for the unused ticket.Not really. BE can't be changed or re-fared. If some other change needed to be made -- instead of changing to a one-way award -- OP's relative would have been looking at a $2300+ one-way fare on UA, or about a $900 fare on other carriers in the GDS. (French Bee isn't listed and might well be the cheapest). The other option, of course, would have been buying yet another throwaway return ticket -- SFO-CDG RT is currently running about $600 with 7 day advance purchase.

In general, BE only makes sense when the chance of a change is very small, especially TATL, where one-way, non-ULCC fares tend to be so exorbitant.

emcampbe

PVDtoDEL

Airlines audit for this type of behavior to incentivise travel agents not to do things like this: OTA booked me on a throw-away ticket!

I agree with the consensus above - this is textbook throwaway ticketing and contrary to the CoC terms; however, it is unlikely that UA will pursue OP for the fare difference if this is a first time infraction. I would not, however, recommend calling UA and telling them that you intend to throw away the return.

raehl311

Like everyone else, to OP's question, there is no way United is going to give you anything for a non-refundable ticket.

I generally disagree with the rest of the thread. Sure, according to the UA CoC, this might be throwaway ticketing.

But when you buy a BE ticket, United very specifically tells you that if you do not fly the ticket as booked, you lose all value of the ticket.

That's it. The second they try to charge anyone for not flying the return they are opening themselves up to a whole world of hurt. United has already provided the remedy to the purchaser that if they don't want to fly the 2nd leg, they lose the value of that leg. You can't say one thing very clearly in the booking process then bury something else in the contract of adhesion (CoC).

If that doesn't work with their fare pricing, the remedy for that is for them to make their fare pricing reasonable.


Now, end of the day, United can refuse to have you as a customer in the future, but that is the limit of their ability to penalize the passenger whose travel plans change and has to forfeit the ticket the airline refuses to let them change.

And end of THAT day, I doubt United really wants the publicity that might result from taking any action against a passenger who just didn't fly something they already paid for.

kilo