te36

Trying to figure out strategy to get best price SFO/HAM towards summer. UA Platinum. No pluspoints left. Only want FRA/MUC layover.
Also wonder about some quirkyness, So if anyone understands those, explanations welcome.
I) Business directly is $5200.

II) Booking PE for outbound shows $2900, and with return fligh $4100, but return on business is only $4200, plus miles and money, not sure what it is these days $300 ? i'll end up with $4500. Which is yeah, well ;-)

This PE option has a couple of weirdnesses i don't understand:
a) There is no PE class on the MUC/FRA-HAM leg on lufthansa, but its not mixed cabin, i guess they're booking business, but i can't figure out where this shows during booking.
b) This PE booking limits me to far fewer options, i guess because there is very little contigegent from UA on LH business. But there is seemingly no easy way to book explicit mixed (long haul PE, connecting flight ECO). Every time i tried with 4 legs it ended up with fares that wouldn't ticket online. And when i tried to book on the phone i dies from old age (last time i remember the agent took more than an hour to ask back and forth).

III) Economy gets me down to $1900, even refundable. But given how i dropped from 1k to platinum and given priority of PE to business upgrades, i have absolutely no idea how to determine if/how this is a safe upgrade. Of course the flights are all mid-week (i am flexible) and business now is all free, but once time progresses, this changes, and i'll easily drop down in the waitlist. So this is particularily where experience data would help to vet if / how one could best take this risk. I wish three where stats somewhere what the lowest price tickets where that still got upgrades on those type of fllights ;-)

Aussienarelle

Have you tried looking by using Google flights? It does allow you the option of booking through the airline but I often find flights that United does not show on their website, albeit UA itineraries.

And yes the change to showing no availability for PremiumPlus because LH does not have that class on the intra EU flights was an annoying change lat year as I used to be able to book such flights with the warning it was a mixed ticket.

Why UA change things that work to things that do not work is beyond me, but Google Flights has been a good work around and why UA wants to pay them a fee when i need to book through them when the UA website/app will not sell me such a ticket directly is beyond me and yet for all intents and purposes I booked through United with all the usual protections.

mduell

The only "safe" upgrade is the one that is available at booking time.

tods27

PE creates a lot of strange pricing. Sometimes it shows as more expensive than business. In this case, it looks like the flight you picked is really close to C pricing.

If you click on the flight details (browser version) before you select the flight, you can see that it is business.

Repooc17

Why only FRA or MUC for layover? Being LH mega operations mean LH (and by association, UA) usually has the upper hand in fare pricing; you'd trade fares for convenience in schedules.

$2K roundtrip J fare from eastern US, or $2.5K roundtrip J fare from western US are not difficult to come by when there is a fare sale. The downside is sometimes you may not be flying in your preferred carrier, preferred layover point, or preferred time. You may also need to be creative, such as positioning, or book your own onward travel, etc - aka being flexible for savings.

xliioper

LH fares currently start at $5K roundtrip for biz for mid-week departures and 7 day min stay. Absent new fare filings, you won't find dates lower than this. There are $2200 roundtrip LH/UA PE fares starting in August (outbound can actually be on/after July 8th, but inbound has to be on/after August 19th). SAS and TAP have roundtrip biz fares in the $3100 - $3600 range.

halls120

Here's my strategy for flying business to Europe. I first check UA's Mileage Plus upgrade availability, and if I can get a flight to that has business upgrade availability confirmable at purchase, I jump on it. Which I did recently, paying $3150 and 40000 miles for SEA-MUC, upgraded outbound and PP confirmed return, waitlisted for the UG. If I don't get the UG on the return, it will be the time in years that I've failed.

If no confirmable UA MP, I next look at LH group. I have bought Premium Economy several times with them, and have been able to use their bid upgrade process on both outbound and inbound, saving $1000-1500 off of the business fare. I've had the same kind of success on KL, AF, and BA even thought they don't have a "bid upgrade" mechanism. All three usually have attractive walk-up fares for upgrades to business. Occasionally one strikes out, which is why I now buy premium economy if I'm on my dime.

Kacee

The qualifier being that if there is no sale, the lowest fares from west coast are in the $4-5k range and that's what you may have to pay.

runningshoes

If you are flexible on connecting outside of Germany, Turkish shows a r/t in business for $3,400 for June 12-26 connecting in IST. (SFO-IST-HAM and back same).

mahasamatman

I find the cheapest option is to avoid UA/LH altogether and go with TK.

travelinmanS

If I’m paying myself I’ll look at all airlines. Usually there will be something under 3k round trip in biz from the west coast.

sannmann

I’d look at ZRH for a connection, as well. ZRH has lower airport taxes and the experience on LX is slightly better than LH.

Bluehen1

Just booked EWR-CDG in business for late June using the UA site (clicked through from Google Flights as previously suggested) for $2970 RT on a LH/AC itinerary. This was the cheapest I could find. Straight UA nonstops we’re $4200.

hirohito888

This post seems bit self-limiting. Based on the criteria SFO-FRA/MUC-HAM, there are only 5 possible routes available:
UA SFO-FRA-HAM, UA SFO-MUC-HAM
LH SFO-FRA-HAM, LH SFO-MUC-HAM
DE/LH SFO-FRA-HAM seasonal

Since OP didn't specify carrier, the current cheapest would be DE/LH SFO-FRA-HAM for around $3,900 in J. Even cheaper to buy separate DE SFO-FRA for around $3,000 in J and then LH FRA-HAM in Y for $155 or J for $455.

Kacee

Since DE is not a *A carrier or a UA partner, not sure whether that meets OP's very limited criteria.

The best way to find a good business class fare is to expand the list of acceptable carriers (though I personally don't include the discount carriers such as DE, nor am I interested in an IST connection when final destination is the continent).