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Old Dec 7, 2022, 8:22 am
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Multi-city pricing question

So I saw a PZ availability between LAX and EWR and EWR-CLT on the same day, with 2 hours layover at EWR. If I price it separately, the total comes to $350. But when I did a multi-city search, the fare comes to $530. Any advise? I am thinking of purchasing each leg separately, ask them to merge into one PNR and try to apply PP on those flights.
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Old Dec 7, 2022, 8:34 am
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Originally Posted by DFWFairy
So I saw a PZ availability between LAX and EWR and EWR-CLT on the same day, with 2 hours layover at EWR. If I price it separately, the total comes to $350. But when I did a multi-city search, the fare comes to $530. Any advise? I am thinking of purchasing each leg separately, ask them to merge into one PNR and try to apply PP on those flights.
You can't. You can buy it as two separate tickets and apply PlusPoints to each leg separately, or you can buy it for $530 and apply PlusPoints to the whole journey, but you can't "ask them to merge into one PNR." Well, you can ask, but it's a waste of time because what you want can't be accomplished.
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Old Dec 7, 2022, 9:09 am
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Originally Posted by DFWFairy
So I saw a PZ availability between LAX and EWR and EWR-CLT on the same day, with 2 hours layover at EWR. If I price it separately, the total comes to $350. But when I did a multi-city search, the fare comes to $530. Any advise? I am thinking of purchasing each leg separately, ask them to merge into one PNR and try to apply PP on those flights.
Asking the obvious question: have you checked all the search results for LAX-CLT to see if you can find the EWR connection you want that way? I see several LAX-EWR-CLT options listed on a quick try. Seems like pretty much every <4h-connection combination shows up for me.

And second, have you tried using google flights multi city? For example, https://www.google.com/travel/flight...CXuZuyj2yadLu7. You might run into trouble ticketing if that's the only way you can find your desired option, but still worth a try if you haven't.
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Old Dec 7, 2022, 11:03 am
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Originally Posted by fumje
Asking the obvious question: have you checked all the search results for LAX-CLT to see if you can find the EWR connection you want that way? I see several LAX-EWR-CLT options listed on a quick try. Seems like pretty much every <4h-connection combination shows up for me.
It's worth trying, but it'd be unusual for multi-city search to result in a higher price than the regular search.
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Old Dec 7, 2022, 11:26 am
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Originally Posted by jsloan
It's worth trying, but it'd be unusual for multi-city search to result in a higher price than the regular search.
That is true. I find, though, the website doesn't always do what I think it will, so I tend to try exhausting possibilities. It does pay off sometimes.
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Old Dec 7, 2022, 8:21 pm
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Originally Posted by jsloan
It's worth trying, but it'd be unusual for multi-city search to result in a higher price than the regular search.
huh? I haven’t tried on this route, but I used to see multi-city the same, less and more than the same flights on point-to-point searches all the time. I almost always look up this way, also, as UA.com often used to leave out many standard (<4 hour) connections on routes I used to fly. Really depends on married inventory and pricing on each individual segment.

There’s no logical reason why multi-city couldn’t be more than point-to-point pricing with a connection vs. it being lower.
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Old Dec 7, 2022, 8:29 pm
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Originally Posted by emcampbe
There’s no logical reason why multi-city couldn’t be more than point-to-point pricing with a connection vs. it being lower.
Of course there is. Multi-city search does not introduce a fare break. A through fare will still be valid even if you find the itinerary with multi-city search.

The only way this should happen is if the married inventory for CLT-(EWR)-LAX has a lower bucket available than CLT-EWR or EWR-LAX. That does happen, but it’s rare. So, as I said, it’s worth checking, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up. (And even then, the only reason the price is different in the first place is that UA does not apply married inventory when using multi-city search, and doesn’t revalidate after the flight selections are made).
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Old Dec 7, 2022, 8:54 pm
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Have you tried Google Flights and fiddling around with one-way and multi-city? It seems to find flight connections and prices that just don't seem to come up on their own using United.com. You can then click through the Google link to the United.com purchase page. It doesn't work with any corporate discount and doesn't allow all the fare types that show up in United flight search.
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Old Dec 7, 2022, 9:09 pm
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Just do a mutli-city search right on United.com. It'll probably price out at $350 for LAX-EWR/EWR-CLT as two separate legs on the SAME PNR. No need to call United and ask them to "merge" the PNRs (which they won't anyway). And since it's ticketed on the same PNR it should still just be 20 PPs for both legs.

I literally just did the same thing this week, although not a coach fare with PPs. I found a "Z" fare that worked for me but United.com wanted $756 for the flights if booked as through flights (xxx-EWR-DCA). Doing a mutli-city search gave me the $319 fare I was expecting. Same exact flights.

-RM
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Old Dec 8, 2022, 6:10 am
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Under current information technology (IT) programming, one Passenger Name Record (PNR) cannot be merged with another PNR, whether the same passenger on connecting itineraries, or two passengers on identical itineraries.

At best, a highly motivated and well-trained Reservations Sales Representative (RSR) can create a new PNR, which would have a different six-character Record Locator. But this will depend on whether the original flights are still available for sale in the same fare buckets (first letter of the fare basis codes) and meet all fare conditions and married inventory logic.
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