jsloan

I think UA's strategy is to try to convince businesses not to purchase BE, rather than to allow individual employees to cough up the co-pay. Unfortunately, some people clearly get stuck in the middle.

zeer0

Which is exactly why I said this is a simple fare increase. United knows it can't compete with the LCC's on most routes, so why not screw everybody at once. The N fare is exactly the same as the previous lowest Y fare when there was no BE.
The result has been that those who have suffered most are not in fact regular passengers who don't benefit that much by buying up, but those with status. UA has basically implemented a $20-50 rt elite tax on all domestic routes.

ermintrude

What's the largest difference from BE to the lowest available Y fare-class anyone has seen OW when both BE and Y are offered (to be honest I'm not looking) - I've heard it's $25 on PS. Sorry if this has already been discussed.

skylane

$45 SAN-SFO-EWR. The fare breaks at SFO so you basically pay the BE tax twice ($20 SAN-SFO-EWR and $25 EWR-SFO). $232 v $277.

Non-stop BE tax SAN-EWR is $25.

emcampbe

On a search last night, saw a $100 BE fare on CVG-SFO for early Dec where the lowest regular was $225 (forget what fare class that was). I'm pretty sure that was an error, and sure enough, searching the same thing tonight yields the same BE fare, but a $125 BE fare.

IME, going rate for Tcon domestic flights appears to top out at $25.

jsloan

Someone posted an example a few days ago where there was a SEA-ORD RT BE fare listed of $680 with no corresponding regular economy fare. When I used ITA to price regular economy, it came back as $880. However, it appeared to be a mistake -- it was a broken fare and one or the other of the fare components had an error in the combination rules. I don't recall exactly how the fare broke down, but the effective upcharge would have been $100 each way. (The mistake didn't occur if the flight was priced as a one-way).

It looks like they're still struggling to get this to behave correctly, but I agree that $25 is the most I've seen recently for flights that don't appear to be obvious errors. (When they first launched nationwide, I feel like I remember some higher fare differences, but I may be mistaken).

Also -- keep in mind that if you book a round-trip and select BE on the outbound, it will still show you regular economy on the return, but the fare difference will be twice as high. That's because it'll actually convert the outbound to regular economy as well if you were to select it; you cannot book BE and non-BE on the same itinerary. So, I'm sure you'll see some reports of larger fares that will work out to be due to this.

findark

I've seen $60 or so before, the result of an N fare that doesn't have a match. But those were also likely mistakes.

ermintrude

That's somewhat interesting. The BE fare differences to economy on a couple of dates I looked at on SAN-EWR were $7-$45.....$45 through SFO as you say but I also saw $40 through ORD - I didn't spend long.

Miles Ahead

Does anyone know for sure? I was told by a CSR that they rebook you and you have no option to change - you take what you get - but I suspect she misunderstood and the policy is really once you accept a change, you can't change it again.

nycityny

The surcharge would likely be equal to or greater than the price difference between BE and the next lowest fare so why not just buy the next lowest fare? And if they allowed buy-ups I could see people playing roulette to see what seat they got and then buying up last minute for a better seat. Or if they ended up with a carry-on that was too big they would also buy-up. That would just create more work and hassle prior to departure for United and kind of defeat the benefit (expedited boarding) of not allowing large carry-ons at all for BE tickets.

segiddins

I'd be happy to pay the fare difference within 24H, but UA doesn't give us that option.

because it's other people buying tickets for me

nycityny

Oh. I wish I had that problem.

Kacee

I'm seeing errors in the BE pricing almost every time I run a search.

Not me. I hate it when clients insist on purchasing my tickets.

lincolnjkc

Ditto. I have one charity client and based on support from UA they *have* to book my travel (we're donating 100% of the services value, they're responsible for travel and expenses) and they always come up with itineraries that are not what I'd book... like an uber early nonstop when I'd prefer to sleep in a bit an take a stop, an "easier" airport rather than the airport closest to where I actually need to be)

Even for normal travel I *could* have an admin book the tickets but I'm picky/enough of a control freak that I'd much rather just do it myself.

Because UA doesn't want to encourage BE fares by anyone who may ever want any kind of flexibility. BE is targeted at the price-sensitive leisure travelers; if they were to start to allow any changes at all it starts to turn into a slippery slope and eroding revenue from those less-sensitive buyers buying into higher fare classes.

nycityny

Alas, nobody purchases my tickets but me and nobody pays for my tickets but me. I guess when someone else is paying there might be strings attached.