FlyingRobot

I'm in the process of planning out about 10 trips for June-Dec this year and have noticed that for every international route I look at, United is 2x (or more) the price of American or Delta for direct fights and sometimes up to 3x the price when there is a single stop on the way in discount business class. All from LAX. Destinations like St. Thomas (not technically international?), London, Sydney, Tokyo, Geneva, Rio.

Additionally, everything is waitlisted for PlusPoint upgrades (no skip waitlist), and when I look at points pricing it is 200k-300k points EACH WAY for LAX-IAD-STT or LAX-IAH-STT... which seems crazy for 737 seats on a plane that is completely empty. Additionally, zero availability in saver fares (IN) or PZ that I could use a GS.

It is starting to feel like United cranked the dial a little too hard this year. As a GS, I'm really trying to stay loyal to United, but this pricing is making it really hard to justify.

wakesetter93

United is almost 2x AA on many of the domestic routes I'm looking at over the next 6-8 months. Going to have to make some decisions as to whether status requalification or price is more important to me. Looking at Montrose, CO in July and AA AUS-DFW-MTJ is $537 while UA AUS-DEN-MTJ is $1,058 for similar flight times.

Roger Lococco

Am I misremembering United Saver awards in Business from the United States to Asia as being 60k miles round trip in the past?

Last year I did some searches with flexible dates and it was often 650k points one way.

nomad420

Saw similar pricing same period so feel much the same way about UA. I have pretty much decided my loyalty to UA is waning fast. Moving slowly back to more AS and Delta flights to some of the destinations I fly. I haven't seen a skip the waitlist offer in almost a year. The points/pesos now are definitely now showing less and less value or at least it is extremely difficult to find value in them.

Eneka

I'm only seeing 70k r/t in Economy from IAD-TPE. Business was like 300k+ r/t

jsloan

Why?

As a general rule, UA simply is not interested in selling discount seats 6+ months ahead of departure. There's always time to offer a sale later, but if they start out with a low price and then demand comes in hotter than expected, they can't recoup that revenue.

If you know a market well, you can sometimes find a good deal well in advance, generally as a consequence of something else UA is doing. Otherwise, just monitor things and see how they look.

There are only two cases when it would make even the slightest bit of sense to book months in advance: (a) if upgrade space is available or (b) if a saver award is available. Outside of those two reasons, or maybe holiday travel, I don't even start looking for flights until ~3 months prior to departure for international and ~6 weeks prior for domestic. I do keep an eye on the Premium Fare Deals forum, though.

It depends upon how far you remember, I guess. 🤷‍♂️ 60K round trip sounds like a value from the early 90s, maybe? 60K each way is more recent, but depending upon the part of Asia you're talking about, the last chart went from ~70K to ~110K each way.

mahasamatman

That's an urban myth. In my experience, I almost always get better prices booking early. I monitor prices, and see price drops less than 5% of the time.

With no more change fees, there's little to no reason to take the risk unless you have cash flow problems.

jsloan

And in my experience, I almost never get better prices booking early, to the point where I've mostly stopped looking. And clearly OP is seeing the same thing -- as are the number of other people who post something similar every couple of weeks. Whatever routes you're flying, keep flying them. But it's certainly not an "urban myth" that the sweet spot for pricing is somewhere between ~3 months and ~3 weeks prior to departure. UA does everything it can to make it difficult to predict that, of course, but it's a good starting point.

I don't choose to loan UA money at 0% interest in fear of some future price increase.

dkc715

Remember to price using the multi-segment feature. I have found that in many cases I can substantially cut the fare. And book one-ways so you can re-ticket if the fare drops. Rarely does a RT save anything domestically.

FlyingRobot

"Saver" awards all but vanished when United switch to dynamic pricing on the points. Seems loosely based on $ cost of the flight now, although I do see some deals last minute.

HNLbasedFlyer

That just tells me UA isn't terribly interested in selling seats that far out unless someone want to pay a lot of money - or - UA wants the flexibility to change the schedule that far out.

JimInOhio

That begs the question why AA and DL apparently see the issue from a very different standpoint if their J fares are showing half of what UA wants.

evol

We all see the world so differently, I beg to differ. I'm with jsloan, I feel like the urban myth is that booking 6-9 months out serves any purpose at all (unless as jsloan stated award space or PZ available) To the OP who wants to buy tickets way out, should go ahead and purchase and monitor for a price drop, or book refundable.

As far as the price difference between competition, kina depends on where we all are based right? IMO, in HNL UA stays very competitive (i'm sure someone can disagree with me here YMMV.)

And to agree on the subject of no change fees, then yes buy now and alter your trip when you find IME Refundable fares are more affordable than they used to be, as of very recently (?), so i've been making use of them, even if I change to a NONREF once I have the trip locked in and then collect some refund.

FlyingRobot

Based on what? Have they announced as much or are you guessing based on something? In the 20+ years I've been flying United, booking way in advance was always the best way to get low fares and Saver awards. It used to be that going to ExpertFlyer and looking up rate codes would return all sorts of 21+, 30+, and 60+ rate codes. I still see 50+% price variance on AA and DL, but UA only has about 5-10% variance for advance purchase fares.

Kacee

If another full service carrier offers better fares, I say book it! Chances are the product will be better than what UA offers, too. Shed the shackles of UA status and get off the hamster wheel!
Agree that UA is likely holding off on discounting, and that we may indeed see cheaper fares later, but OP mentioned flights as early as June, and I don't think it's too early at all to be checking prices for international itineraries four to five months out. Fares for European summer travel never really dropped last year. In fact, I would advise anyone who sees a good fare for Europe or Asia through September or October to grab it right now. That does not mean I advocate buying an overpriced UA ticket, however, quite the opposite.
Not a myth at all. There's quite a bit of data on this question. Surveys have shown the best time to buy domestic tix is about 60 days out. International it's a bit longer, and tends to vary by region, but for Asia and Europe it's about 120 days out.

I certainly don't agree that OP should be tying up large amounts of money on overpriced UA itineraries. That's called "UA wins" since it's going to keep the money regardless where fare prices go, and will likely provide a disincentive for OP to book a cheaper ticket on a better carrier.