Ridiculously uncompetitive airfares?
May 20, 2020, 11:26 am
#76
Join Date: May 2016
Location: SLC
Programs: United Gold, Hilton Silver, Hertz President's Circle
Posts: 768
Interesting to me is the difference in price for booking a partner flight on United vs directly through the partner. I booked two business-class tickets AKL-HNL for November through Air New Zealand for about $1450 apiece. The same flight booked on united.com is $3637 apiece - more than double the price. Is this common?
May 20, 2020, 11:30 am
#77
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: HNL
Programs: UA GS4MM, MR LT Plat, Hilton Gold
Posts: 6,447
Specific to Hawaii flights - I'm not sure what UA can do in the short term. They've consolidated passenger from 4-5 flights at HNL into a single red eye and presumably moved the outer island flights into connections with HA onto that single flight. Ultimately, practically none of those passengers will really take that flight but people aren't proactively cancelling/rescheduling (perhaps hoping for a quarantine lift) - but what if people did take that flight but were selling seats anyway - then you'd be looking into massive overbooking payouts.
May 20, 2020, 11:33 am
#78
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Seattle, WA
Programs: HHonors Diamond
Posts: 731
Rates seem higher now than before
I was looking at June rates for flying rt PDX/SFO in Z and the fares seem to be significantly higher now than they were pre-pandemic. And to make matters worse, no longer are flights on the A320/321. Seems crazy for charging more than $800 for a Z fare on this route.
May 20, 2020, 12:09 pm
#79
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Austin, TX
Posts: 21,400
Interesting to me is the difference in price for booking a partner flight on United vs directly through the partner. I booked two business-class tickets AKL-HNL for November through Air New Zealand for about $1450 apiece. The same flight booked on united.com is $3637 apiece - more than double the price. Is this common?
May 20, 2020, 12:32 pm
#80
Join Date: Jul 2015
Location: San Francisco
Programs: UA MM Plat, UA 1MM, Hilton Lifetime Gold, Marriott Gold, Hertz Gold, CLEAR, AS MVP Gold
Posts: 3,618
Another example of some crazy pricing for sure and this is a flight I typically take with UA but per others I'll be using Kayak and fly any other alternative that works. I had a similar experience with pricing a SFO - CLE flight.
May 20, 2020, 7:00 pm
#81
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Join Date: Apr 2013
Location: PHX
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Z fares are differential priced based on the underlying Y inventory. When you see uncompetitive UA fares right now, it's typically because they're only selling expensive inventory due to not enough capacity on that particular flight. Very common out of SFO right now. (Though you can certainly find empty flights, too.)
May 20, 2020, 10:06 pm
#82
Join Date: Oct 2009
Programs: UA 1K, Hilton ♦ , Hyatt Carbonado, Wyndham ♦, Marriott PE, "Stinking Bum" elsewhere.
Posts: 4,998
So, it turned-out that there were only 5 waitlisted pax and the middles were mostly open. F had 2 open seats. Masks were worn upon boarding but almost invariably came down sometime during the flight. People are definitely dropping their guard after an hour or so of flight time. I kept my mask on the whole flight because I am flying so much lately that I am trying to minimize my possible exposure, but there were only a few of us on the flight who remained masked-up the whole flight.
May 21, 2020, 11:26 am
#83
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: EAU
Programs: UA 1K, CO Plat, NW Plat, Marriott Premiere Plat, SPG Plat, Priority Gold, Hilton Gold
Posts: 4,712
Yeah, I just booked $428 r.t. OGG-LAS for September. I think UA is happy to be competitive in future to get revenue now, while screwing over (even more so than usual) those who need to make reservations for flights in the nearer term and want to cling to UA for whatever reason.
I think the answer is to Kayak or WN.com or whatever for booking near-term travel....
I think the answer is to Kayak or WN.com or whatever for booking near-term travel....
I'd consider status matching to AA permanently but I still have a strong preference for the UA network and *A.
May 21, 2020, 3:03 pm
#84
Join Date: Jul 2015
Location: San Francisco
Programs: UA MM Plat, UA 1MM, Hilton Lifetime Gold, Marriott Gold, Hertz Gold, CLEAR, AS MVP Gold
Posts: 3,618
So, it turned-out that there were only 5 waitlisted pax and the middles were mostly open. F had 2 open seats. Masks were worn upon boarding but almost invariably came down sometime during the flight. People are definitely dropping their guard after an hour or so of flight time. I kept my mask on the whole flight because I am flying so much lately that I am trying to minimize my possible exposure, but there were only a few of us on the flight who remained masked-up the whole flight.
May 27, 2020, 10:27 am
#85
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Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Honolulu Harbor
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Posts: 15,019
I still don't understand what UA is doing.
Roundtrips, on a certain pairs of dates mid-late June:
LAX-LAS: DL $186 n.s., UA $1444 via SFO.
Houston-LAS: AA $306 via DFW, WN $198 n.s. out of HOU, UA $872 n.s.
UA just doesn't want passengers who look at (and will take) options....
Roundtrips, on a certain pairs of dates mid-late June:
LAX-LAS: DL $186 n.s., UA $1444 via SFO.
Houston-LAS: AA $306 via DFW, WN $198 n.s. out of HOU, UA $872 n.s.
UA just doesn't want passengers who look at (and will take) options....
May 27, 2020, 12:24 pm
#86
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I still don't understand why people look at a particular flight pair and assume that a VP at United sat down and said "yup, we want to charge $1,444 for all our LAX-LAS pax... that's our new quarterly plan". LAX-SFO-LAS sounds like close to full Y.
Anything that's pricing that high is because there is probably a single-digit number of seats left for sale (or an inventory block to focus on SFO-LAX and SFO-LAS) and, while they are happy to sell a LAX-LAS ticket for just $106, they don't necessarily want to overbook their flights for such a paltry sum.
Anything that's pricing that high is because there is probably a single-digit number of seats left for sale (or an inventory block to focus on SFO-LAX and SFO-LAS) and, while they are happy to sell a LAX-LAS ticket for just $106, they don't necessarily want to overbook their flights for such a paltry sum.
May 27, 2020, 12:33 pm
#87
Join Date: Jun 2014
Programs: UA MM
Posts: 4,123
I still don't understand why people look at a particular flight pair and assume that a VP at United sat down and said "yup, we want to charge $1,444 for all our LAX-LAS pax... that's our new quarterly plan". LAX-SFO-LAS sounds like close to full Y.
Anything that's pricing that high is because there is probably a single-digit number of seats left for sale (or an inventory block to focus on SFO-LAX and SFO-LAS) and, while they are happy to sell a LAX-LAS ticket for just $106, they don't necessarily want to overbook their flights for such a paltry sum.
Anything that's pricing that high is because there is probably a single-digit number of seats left for sale (or an inventory block to focus on SFO-LAX and SFO-LAS) and, while they are happy to sell a LAX-LAS ticket for just $106, they don't necessarily want to overbook their flights for such a paltry sum.
May 27, 2020, 12:41 pm
#88
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I think a better question is when has LAX-SFO or SFO-LAS ever cost $361 (one-way)? The answer is not particularly often, but I'm sure someone has paid that before. And equivalently for selling those segments for hub flow over SFO to other destinations. What's the opportunity cost for someone who can no longer fly LAX-SFO-Asia because there are no LAX-SFO seats, especially in terms of customer loss versus dollars on that flight? Given that UA doesn't even fly LAX-LAS right now, I can't imagine they even care how much they charge for it; if someone decides to spend all day connecting in SFO that's just a random fluke.
May 27, 2020, 12:56 pm
#89
Join Date: Jun 2014
Programs: UA MM
Posts: 4,123
I think a better question is when has LAX-SFO or SFO-LAS ever cost $361 (one-way)? The answer is not particularly often, but I'm sure someone has paid that before. And equivalently for selling those segments for hub flow over SFO to other destinations. What's the opportunity cost for someone who can no longer fly LAX-SFO-Asia because there are no LAX-SFO seats, especially in terms of customer loss versus dollars on that flight? Given that UA doesn't even fly LAX-LAS right now, I can't imagine they even care how much they charge for it; if someone decides to spend all day connecting in SFO that's just a random fluke.
