EmailKid

You don't say what the difference between BE and non BE fare was, and while I feel for you, sounds to me like agent played it by UA's BE rules and offered (good) advice.

Though sounds like this belongs in BE experiences thread.

ermintrude

So I guess it's fair to say that the current normal range of the OW upfare differential from BE to regular economy is from $5 to $40 perhaps $45 (where not limited by high economy fare class - I forget what the limiting fare class is). However apparently outliers (mistakes?) are not uncommon.

Kacee

UA's experiment with these awful fares would fail if customers did not buy them.

LAXOGG

The real failure would be if customers booked away from UA.

Kacee

Kirby has already acknowledged that's happening, which led to UA tinkering with the fare structure.

Nor do I have much sympathy for those who buy these to save $20 then complain about the very predictable consequences.

zeer0

This was RT, so a $20 upcharge each way. Which I still think is ridiculous considering that BE is $55 each way.

bmr12

Got to witness what happened to a family who purchased BE fares this week. They boarded the flight and stood in the forward galley to ask the flight attendants for help as they didn't want the three year old to have to sit by himself. Lucky for them that at least two of their assigned seats were in E+ and one of those was a non-middle.

The flight attendants diligently went back into the economy cabin and shuffled things around so one adult could sit with the three year old and came back and informed the family. At that point, the approximately seven year old said "wait, I have to sit by myself?"

This whole thing is really a mess. For this family, I could see the economics of having to pay an extra $80 each way for the privilege of sitting together wasn't worth it, and they managed to get a partial solution for free (perhaps got a bit lucky). For United, it just creates the opportunity for more dissatisfied customers, both the family split apart as well as other customers asked/forced to re-arrange to accommodate.

belynch

Yup; seen this a handful of times too.
UA should set-up a notifier when you are purchasing more than 1 ticket at a time where the person must acknowledge that the group will not be accommodated together is selecting BE.

Further, if the person selects that one of the traveling members is identified in the booking process, it doesn't sell them BE.

The liability of asking a child to sit alone is too great in my opinion.

And isn't the intent here to get people to upfare to a non-BE ticket? This seems like a win-win.

jsloan

The social media backlash against this would be swift and intense. "United discriminates against families!" "United wanted to charge my family of four $160 extra to sit together!"

Perhaps this will be the issue that finally gets UA to throw in the towel on BE, but I'm not holding my breath.

ermintrude

OK. further back in this thread one chap mentioned that SAN-EWR was showing $40-$45 so maybe that's an outlier/mistake?

jsloan

If you do a search for SAN-EWR, you'll find that the upcharge on the nonstop is $25 each way. If you choose SAN-DEN-EWR, with a connection at DEN that's less than four hours, it's still $25. However, if you connect via SFO instead, the upcharge is $45.

The reason is that SAN-SFO-EWR is not a valid routing on a SAN-EWR fare, so the route prices with a fare break -- SAN-SFO + SFO-EWR. Therefore, the regular economy fare includes two upcharges; SAN-SFO and SFO-EWR. And, since you can't combine BE and regular economy on the same ticket, you don't have the option to select regular economy only on the transcon. If you want a seat assignment on SFO-EWR, you have to pay the regular economy upcharge for SAN-SFO as well.

I'm not certain whether or not this is an intended consequence, but it would absolutely have been possible for UA to write the rules in a way where this wouldn't happen. They've chosen not to do so.

JBord

Has he attributed the customer loss to BE though? It's not like there aren't other options available at $5-25 more per ticket at UA. I can certainly see some booking WN perhaps, but really enough that they can measure it?

I completely agree with the complaining part.

You could start that social media backlash now if you wanted, because that's exactly what they're doing, among other ridiculous things with this fare. It's all a matter of your perspective. However, I'd probably counter that point with, "Really? How much did you pay to check your carry-on? Perhaps the price is actually the same to sit together."

The whole concept + execution is still just so odd to me. It doesn't even work as a marketing gimmick if a buyer spends even 5 minutes thinking about it...other than some of those reported fare differences of $50-75 I guess.

When I think way back to my senior level business classes in college, this whole marketing ploy would make an interesting business case. Or perhaps a psychology case study.

Boraxo

Southwest already has the same policy (buy EBCI or you will board later and take whatever open seats remain) but doesn't seem to have encountered a backlash.

Of course it would be best to have full disclosure in both cases including an affirmative acknowledgement i.e. a popup box that requires passenger to confirm "I understand that I am purchasing a fare that will not provide advance seating assignments and I confirm that all passengers are over the age of 18." But of course that would defeat the purpose as some would cancel out and book another airline.

jsloan

The current system obfuscates that fact enough that people are getting to the gate -- and, in the case of this anecdote, on the plane -- before they realize what they've signed up for. Offering a seemingly low price and then refusing to sell it to a family would be much more obvious, and therefore more likely to generate backlash.

WineCountryUA

The family sitting issue will not be a long term issue. Last June 2016 Congress Thought it was to be done by July 2017 but have not heard an update.
DOT Rule on Family Seating (no recent posts)