Help with Flight Pricing Please! LAX>NYC
 

Happy Sunday!!

I'm looking to fly from LAX to somewhere in New York on 1st October.

All other days allow me to book business on the 9:15am 787-10 flight for around £500 but my rigid date of 1st October is showing double that yet from looking at the loads, only 3 seats have been booked?

Is this price likely to drop from experience or should I book the Premium Economy and be done with it?

Not flown United before so any advice would be great.

Thank you in advance.

This far out, UA has no reason to sell the J / C seats in any discount bucket. People booking this far out tend to be inflexible and price insensitive. I would never book a domestic flight more than 90 days out other than for a major holiday, e.g. the day before Thanksgiving, or special event such as the Super Bowl.

Ignore the seat map. All it shows is that a seat has been selected not sold. Moreover, UA is predicting that it will sell those seats at a higher price and, if it does not, it will then drop the fare.

Don't forget that you also have other choices on this route, all including premium service, e.g. AA to JFK (with both F & J) and DL to JFK (J only). Finally, B6 offers MINT -- a J product -- on that route as well.

From what I can see, UA is releasing very little P inventory during that period, not just October 1.

It’s early to be buying for October. I’d just keep checking.

Thank you both for your help.

I will hold tight and keep an eye on the prices. It's just strange that its quite wide open at the cheaper price all around my dates. Just not the first and I'm not used to airlines dropping prices too often.

Any other tips would be welcomed.

Thanks

Airlines drop prices all the time. In fact, there’s an entire message board here on FlyerTalk just for Premium Fare Deals — good prices on PE/J/F inventory.

Basically, airlines sell their inventory based upon a projected demand curve. This far in advance, they’re not expecting to have sold many seats yet, so they’ll often keep fares high. If they sell a few high-priced fares, great! If not, they have plenty of time to offer discounts. (Heck, 10 months in advance, United’s schedule is basically notional anyway; they tend to firm it up about 90 days prior to departure).

Assuming they don’t actually sell a bunch of those high priced seats, they’ll start to discount them once their model suggests that they need to stimulate some demand. As suggested, in most cases, I don’t even look for domestic flights until about three months prior to departure. The best fares are usually available sometime between three months and three weeks before travel. If you specifically need to travel on October 1, I would set a price alert on Google Flights, and then I wouldn’t worry about it until June or later.

+1
I think the studies say on average 58-60 days out, which of course means in some instances it's more like three months.

I know United flies everywhere, but where is somewhere? ;)

Oh you really should try it. Short immigration and everything is premium with happy staff and smiles everywhere.

This is an important point for the OP if s/he is particularly seeking the 787-10. That aircraft currently only operates on LAX-EWR twice a day, and there is potential for the schedule to shift around between now and October, namely which flight(s) the 787 operates. Now, if OP were to book the 9:15am and later find that the flight is no longer operated by the 787 due to a schedule change, s/he would be eligible to change to a different flight operated by the 787 without paying change fees or fare difference (due to the change in seating configuration between the 787 and 757, the aircraft type that predominantly operates LAX-EWR). But by then s/he may have made other plans around the 9:15am departure. Another reason to hold off booking until ~3 months out.

It’s not strange at all. Why drop your trousers first in a negotiation?

Depends on how good looking she is?

Seriously though, looking at the next 3 months all prices seem very static for what I'm seeing at the end of the year so if theory serves correct I would have expected to see lower prices?

Unless I'm doing something completely wrong?

Airlines use fare buckets to control availability of particular fares on any given flights. The fare filings themselves are actually relatively static. There are also advance purchase requirements for the cheaper fares. UA has 5 fare classes for biz class, J/C/D/Z/P, with P being the cheapest. There are $709 P fares with a 30-day advance purchase requirement on this route (fare basis VAP30UPN). But because there is no P bucket inventory currently for your flight (the buckets are currently J9 C9 D9 Z9 P0), you can only purchase a $1259 Z fare for it . Actually, most flights on Oct 1 don't have any P bucket available (only the 12:15AM flight currently has it). What you are hoping for is that they will release inventory in that P bucket at some point for your flight so that you can purchase that $709 fare. Note that once you are within 30 days of the flight, that P fare will no longer be available for purchase (even if there is inventory in the P bucket) due to the 30-day advance purchase requirement. You can use Google Flights to set an alert for your flight and they will email you if P fare bucket availability opens up enabling you to purchase that $709 P fare. Just select the "Track prices" slider for your flight as shown below.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...a1b1af7625.png

Flying from west coast to east coast are generally quicker thanks to generous tailwind - normally under 5 hours of flying time. In the 78J (787-10) you are looking for, cruising speed is slightly faster than some of the other aircraft being used on this route, so it is quite normal to see flying time of a shade over 4 hours, if not quicker.

Beautifully explained! Thank you for taking the time to type that! All noted and alerts set.

Thats really interesting to know. So might not be so long after all!

It's comically early to be buying tickets for next October. No reason for UA to expect many bookings or do much discounting at this point.

I'd like to see any reputable study that narrows it down so specifically in the generic case.