ermintrude

This is all about forcing pax into higher class economy fares (as many have said in the 600 posts). I really don't think UA expects many people to buy these BE fares or to significantly profit from charging for BE carry-ons. I'm guessing hardly anyone who's read this thread is going to buy a BE fare and if those fares aren't competitive with ULCCs it's just smoke and mirrors.
From the $150 million/yr (feel free to correct as I forget where I got this number from) UA expect to gain from rolling out BE I bet 90%+ comes from upfaring. I'd love to see the breakdown.

weero

Long term, piggy-backing the ultra-LCC concept onto the main legacy brand must be very detrimental for the brand perception. Other carriers such as SQ or LH have successfully segregate most of the LCC business onto semi-detached daughters.

Not doing that leads to the abysmal coach experience that UA offers these days with inedible food and the worst of the inexperienced wildlings being shoved into E+ once E- checked in full.

And while hard to imagine, this could make the UA coach experience even worse than it currently is. On the intl. longhaul, it could further diminish drink and food offerings (quantity, quality cannot be lowered anymore).

wolf72

Well explained.

I fly BA, Malaysia Airlines, Singapore Airlines most of the time and Royal Brunei if I am on a budget as well as Air Asia for connectivity purposes.

Air Asia are a LCC and the world's greatest LCC airliner the world has ever seen. 5 back to back consecutive number 1 ranking globally in the LCC category.

B_Rosenthal

U.S. major airlines feel like LCC carriers already...

gobluetwo

Good news (for me, anyway). Have confirmed with my company's global travel department that they will be excluding Basic Economy fares from our online booking tool, and that our corporate travel agency will also have policy in place to exclude these fares.

I'll just avoid ever booking these things for personal travel.

emcampbe

Nope. DOT regulartions will shortly require children to be seated with at least one parent/guardian. So in that case, the 3-year-old ain't sitting next to a stranger. I'm sure UA is coming up with a process to comply - how much of it might be holding some number of pairs of seats for this purpose until check in or the gate, or how much of it will be GA's having to move people, I don't know, but they'll need to do something.

Interestingly enough, last week, was waiting to board an AC flight at the barn at YYZ, and watched a mother, with a child, maybe about 2 in her stroller, yelling at an agent and calling her the B word because of a seating issue - not sure what it was exactly. Agent was actually very nice from what I saw - mom was not - agent actually prevented her from boarding unless she apologized, and it took her about 5 times saying this to actually do it. I really thought we were going to see supervisors and airport polce around. I really hope this doesn't occur frequently.

I disagree. Once you don't allow any changes whatsoever, even though I don't change tickets often (maybe once every two years or so), it doesn't matter, I'm not buying that type of ticket except in perhaps the rarest of circumstances. And it doesn't matter - the passenger who wants to change and can't doesn't care that they are getting MQMs. Since I don't fly them, MQMs on DL don't give me an advantage compared to a fare that doesn't earn them on UA. The biggest thing about UA is the lack of carry-on, so for most non-FFs, probably easily an added $25 for checked bag on every trip. I doubt many will figure that out until its actually time to check.

I think while UA is the first to implemement this kind of reduced carry-on allowance - I'd guess this is going to become more common when carriers can figure out the trick to implementing/enforcing it. Also, I think UA probably should have made this blanket on BE fares, not made an exception for elites.

DCEsquire

Any sense why? Also any idea about the fare differential between E- and E?

Also (anyone?) Is there going to be a change to the reward chart to differentiate between E and E-?

elCheapoDeluxe

I have definitely seen some ULCC fare matching. It becomes obvious when you have four nonstops on a route and the one whose time block most closely matches the ULCC is drastically less expensive than the rest. I think this is particularly true when the ULCC time block is already an inconvenient time so UA feels they will not be risking many business travelers switching to the drastically cheaper flight.

bizzarODog

I really really hope (but doubt) my company does the same. Otherwise this is my nightmare.

B_Rosenthal

it's like Apple only putting 16gb of memory in the base model of iPhones over the years... they make tons more money because it pushes people into buying more expensive(but identical) iPhones with more memory. at least they upped it to 32gb this year.

Vulcan

During the week of 12/11 (and maybe others), for EWR->TPA, UA is matching Spirit's $69 OW fare. In some days, all flights, on others some flights. I agree that this is the kind of fare that can become a BE fare.

jmanirish

I've seen some pretty draconian travel policies, and even those exclude these "basic" economy fares. Not because of sympathy for the travelers' comfort or FF benefits, but its because of the no change policy of them. While most companies are willing to "risk" associated with non-refundables; they don't want to get stuck with tickets that must be thrown away completely if travel plans change.

gobluetwo

My guess is that the biggest driver is inability to voluntarily change the ticket after the first 24 hours. That would be a huge negative for a company from a business travel perspective, particularly for a consultancy like mine where travel plans are often fluid.

SunLover

I booked EWR-RSW for $66 OW last week and saw fares as low as $59. They were pricing in the G bucket. There was a note during seat selection something like 'seats will be available for assignment if the fare permits' so UA is for sure getting ready for BE fares.


SL

B_Rosenthal

was talking about this my co-worker... she couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. other than the no-carry-on thing, she said it made no difference to her. mostly because she's only 5'1" and can be relatively comfortable even when stuck in any random seat, even a middle seat. that's the opposite of me... sitting in a window or middle seat feels worse than... well.. I don't know... I have not been in a window or middle seat for over 20 years.