WineCountryUA

This is easily done in the major 3rd party corporate travel agencies. It is up to the corporation / your employer to say include or not. It is done with DL's equivalent and has been reported many corporation have decided to not offer the UA Basic Economy.

It appears this will be a non-issue in major corporations. The small ones that have folks do their only booking will need to address this by policy. But with DL, UA and soon AA doing this, there is not place to run to for national air travel provider (other than WN which has it own pluses and minuses)

televisor

The answer I'm waiting for is - what routes is this going to be sold on? Routes that compete directly with the actual LCCs (not WN)? LCC with WN too? Only on directs, or on connecting itineraries? Where DL sell BE too? Etc.

xliioper

In reality, they are probably not going to do that. DL typically only has E fares filed corresponding to their lowest 2 or 3 buckets - T, X, and V. They have a large range of C+ fares, but E fares tend to be fairly restrictive and will often have 2 or 3 week advance purchase requirements.

Sykes

I have confirmed that Concur has the ability to present Basic Economy fares separately from regular economy fares, or exclude them from search results entirely (pushing you to regular economy fares). It is up to your corporate travel manager (possibly in concert with your travel management company) to decide whether or not they want their travelers to use Basic Economy fares and configure Concur accordingly.

Egencia (Expedia's corporate travel solution) tells me that they exclude Delta Basic Economy fares by default and plan to do so for United Basic Economy fares since neither are targeted to business travelers.

uastarflyer

They are innovating (via plagiarism) at the bottom of the price stack. lowball meet smallball

emcampbe

Just one reason I've never flown an LCC/ULCC.

Well not completely true, I've flown 6E in India, but a completely different market. I have looked to compare when flying domestic US and within EU, and quite frankly, when adding up everything, in the end, it seemed like the legacies actually end up cheaper much of the time. Or less hassle. In terms of going back to the WN talk, I looked when I was in Chicago, and never found them more than a few $ cheaper then UA, but given where I lived, leaving from MDW vs. ORD was also a hassle. All in all, it has never seemed worth it to me.

I could see the BE fares being worth it in very specific cases for some people. Of course, we don't know what the price difference between BE and other available lowest will end up being, but my guess is in most cases, people will probably do better on a non-BE fare.

This. Most people see the lowest price and just buy it, without thinking any further than that. Many buying BE will likely ignore any warnings, because this was $X cheaper, and just complain later, for example, when trying to make a change and finding out they can't, or finding out at the gate they can't bring their roller onboard.


So sounds like it could potentially be that the BE fares will be lowest available minus $X. So for example, on a given route, the BE fare each way would be, say, $20 less, than whatever the cheapest other lowest is, whether that's a K fare, or an H fare.

Sorry, while UA may be the first to add a no carry on rule, these kind of fares have been done for a long time by other carriers. For example, AC has had Tango fares with multiple restrictions (seat assignments, less mileage, etc.) for probably about 15 years. LH has their 'light' fares that doesn't allow any baggage allowance (even for *G) for at least a few. Many EU carriers don't have seat assignments (at least, not without a fee, some may not even allow you to buy them) for intra-EU flight, and some for international flights, too (note LH only allows free seat assignments on V fares or higher, even on long-haul). Many also have had tickets for which changes are not allowed.

UA isn't the first to introduce fares with additional restrictions, and they won't be the last.

Best guess is by boarding group, since BE fares will always be in the last group. Speculation sounds about right, since the carry on restriction doesn't apply to elites booking these fares, and they will also continue to receive the benefit of boarding with their elite group. My opinion is this shouldn't happen - everyone buying a BE fare should have the same carry on rules (I know I may get flamed for that).

username

Someone asked the question on our corporate travel forum and they said they are blocking it for DL now and will block it for UA

mduell

Yes.

No, anyone buying a K fare gets a K fare. But one person could buy a K fare at one price, and someone could later buy an N fare at the H-BN price (some differential below H when H is the lowest available) that is higher than the old K fare was.

The BE fare can be a differential to any coach fare, and books into the N booking class.

Because G would be sold out when they're offering T-BN as the BE fare.

dc89

Our corporate travel team just notified us that they're blocking Basic Economy fares in Concur ("This is NOT a business friendly fare").

JBord

Thanks. So the open question is if K is the lowest regular fare available, will the N fare be the same or lower? And if lower, how much, which I assume could vary by route/market? In order to make the money they say they will on this change, I have to think there won't be much of a difference. In my example, even if the K fare is $600, the N fare has to be $575 for UA to break even, assuming one checked bag on a domestic route. The bag is really the only "guaranteed" buy up they can count on.

cover point

It is. Unfortunately most companies are not right on top of things all the time and travel definitely may not be the highest priority for companies to change their policies.

The worry is that if by default the concur sites start showing these fares, it may take a year or more for some of these companies to "catchup" with the feedback.

On the point of DL, UA and AA all doing this, fair enough that there is no place to run to. But then if we are not getting miles for say 1/3 of our flights and that causes someone like me to miss out on PLat or 1K, then I would consider my loyalty not worth it. Today some of us go out of our way to focus on one airline (I had AA exec plat for many years and now was planning to go for 1K). There is less incentive to focus on one airline if the airline is not giving miles on these fares.

I think the not giving PQM/PQS on these fares is probably a mistake for UA. You want to give incentive to business travelers to fly united even if you may want to extract baggage fees etc. I would be fine if they have this fare with PQM but still charge me for Carry on.

emcampbe

You are missing the entire point.

UA does NOT want business flyers buying this fare, period. These are there to prod people to buy who wouldnt otherwise consider UA. So think of the once-a-year flyer, perhaps the family that does a once a year vacation, or a once a year visit to see grandma. Currently, they are flying, say, Frontier, Spirit or Allegiant. They want to try and reach out to these flyers. UA can say, for example, we have a fare that matches Spirit, plus better benefits (for example, you get a free snack and beverage on board). So these fares can fill the handful of empty seats on a given flight, and get them revenue they wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

These are not meant to be attractive to business flyers or FFs. That's why the no PQM, and no changes - most businesses realize they change tickets sometimes, and they'll come to the conclusion (if they don't see it initially, at some point), that the $20 (or whatever) savings on the base ticket won't make sense when one now has to check a bag (that's a loss of time, plus the savings will probably mostly dissipate) and when they need to make a change, they'll have to throw the ticket away and start from new. Or when their people arrive at their destination without rest because they had no way to avoid a middle seat in the back of the aircraft.

I rarely change tickets, but the savings would have to be quite big for me to consider one of these tickets - forget about the lack of PQM.

The point isn't to have current customers buying a lower fare, the idea is to get folks who would probably otherwise give the revenue to an LCC/ULCC to get it to UA instead.

TomMM

The decision is even easier for me as all of my domestic flights are just to get me to an INTL connection and other *A partners. So from the rules, BE fares don't apply.

findark

It will be lower, and yes it can vary by market. DL usually has a difference of between $15 and $40 depending on route length.

mduell

Yes, N will be some lower fare priced as a differential to the K fare.

I suspect the differentials will vary by market (perhaps just a simple function of distance), from maybe $9 to possibly $90 if they offer them on longhaul (like routes where Norwegian competes).