Premium Economy (Plus) targeted to solo traveler?
 

Sorry if this has been discussed anywhere, I didn't see a thread.


Last week when booking transatlantic flights I noticed some very strange pricing on Premium Economy. For some flights, when booking a single traveler, Premium Economy was a certain price (and in some cases, a good deal less than regular economy, which is another question to begin with). When adding a second traveler to the search, the prices of Premium Economy jumped significantly (even on flights where it indicated something like "3 tickets left at this price". 3 tickets were at the price, but if I tried to book 2 of them, the price was significantly higher than just 1. And this was on multiple flights.

Here's some screen shots:

Solo traveler (a number of options with Premium Economy at $1269 with 3 tickets at that price) Note how much cheaper than regular economy. There were actually another few flights available at that price that are not on the screen.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...602ce4c1e8.jpg

Here is the same search with a second passenger. Note the 5:25 - 11:55 flight (top one above, second one below) shows the same "3 tickets available at this price" in both cases. But adding a second person to the search jumps the price of Premium Economy over $700 per ticket. The price of regular economy is the same for both.


https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...ddaf25eaf9.jpg



For completeness, here's a screen shot showing return flights after selecting an outbound flight for solo travel (where you can see at least one option with 4 tickets remaining)


https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...0a37457ac8.jpg

Could just be a display/pricing issue until you get to the very end on all of them. Some inventory quirk where it will just error out.

Yes, from time to time, there have been inventory / pricing anomalies where PP is cheaper the regular economy. Some are real, some disappear as you complete the rest of the flight search (such as return leg).

I successfully booked a PP for less than economy on a open jaw routing. In my experience, these case are related to some routing / inventory edge conditions.

I thought it was odd that it was so much cheaper than economy, but even odder that the pricing went away adding a second passenger to the itinerary, despite saying 3 or 4 tickets remaining at that price.

It was open jaw, so that may have had something to do with it as well.

The price stayed when looking at return flights, but I did not click all the way though to try to ticket it, so it may have errored out trying to finalize the booking.

Is it possible that the PP fare being considered is dual inventory and requires also a certain coach fare class in which only one seat is available, but due to an IT mistake, the "three available" means three in the PP fare class without a check of coach fare class availability? I started to call this an IT glitch but it's more of a misunderstanding of the logic behind fare class availability.

This is indeed how "x seats available" works, but without cities I can't give a specific example.

It's both -- UA's IT should be written to understand how its own fare classes work. :)

Senor, por favor, no! It is better for us if UA does not write code that understands how its own fare classes work. LOL!

LOL. If this were the pricing module, not the display module, I'd agree. :)