Originally Posted by FlyingBeanCounter

Maybe. I honestly do not know.

The real issue here is that we all remember the glory days of flying. No dollar requirements just flying around. Remember how easy upgrades were? Those were the days.

Now we all beg for whatever we can get. Adjusting our expectations is much better approach. Now I am just happy if the airline actually flies on time and I get the seat I was promised.

The UA lounges are almost bearable though, The DL lounges remind me of "lord of the flies". At least with UA it is still somewhat controlled.

Originally Posted by jsloan

I mean, probably not, because few people buy the unrestricted B fares that you're taking about. But if what they want to do is get rid of the entitlement for instant upgrade on the differential B fares, they should just remove B from the equation entirely and require a Y purchase (or M, for 1Ks). But even that suffers from a bit of confusion, because I suspect that on many routes, the majority of Y fare purchases are YCA government fares, and with the negotiated discount, those may not be the super-expensive flights either.

And OP's POV isn't unreasonable here, because the differential B fare is usually between the economy fare and the differential first class fare, and it makes sense that it would function as a Premier member discount for first class.

So you may be correct about what they're trying to do, but they haven't yet done it, and it's blatantly unfair for UA to offer an interface to find B fares, publish information about B fares being instantly upgradable, provide a button that says "confirm now," and then go back and say "ha-ha, just kidding." That's why a DOT complaint would be in order -- but IMO, just for the flights where it showed that the upgrade was available at booking and then in actuality it was not.

As for passengers getting rebooked into non-B seats during IRROPS -- I could 100% see that happening, as not only are these fares relatively new, but also there is quite a bit of UA IT that falls back to the rule that's not 10+ years out of date of using the first character of the fare basis as the fare class. So I could easily see agents getting confused here.

Originally Posted by ani90

So true. I am yet to experience an airline that is better than United when it comes to transparency of fare class, fare basis and fare rules. I just came off a booking fiasco with Lufthansa and at no point during booking could I see the actual fare class or fare rules for the refundable and changable 'business flex' ticket I was buying. When I eventually got a receipt I found I paid for a P fare and still with no means of seeing the fare rules.


Unfortunately buying discounted business doesn't solve this problem as you found when you made that day of travel change. Either one has to be very aware of fare class and basis permutations and booking and rebooking rules and implications or one has to be very cautious in making changes after clinching what one considers a bargain fare.

You are not alone. I too have been 1K for several years and had not grasped this either till reading the responses to this thread.

Originally Posted by SPN Lifer

Numerous passengers have also not closely followed or remembered the UA change in practice that the first character of the fare basis code is not automatically the fare class.

Originally Posted by LaserSailor

The discussion about how the days of making 1k on $2000 spend and how UA could not go to a revenue based status system because they would lose all their high value flyers are archived on these very pages

Originally Posted by bisherk

I think that's because most of us just took it for granted that the published fare class on our tickets is all that we needed to know, now many of us because of this thread understand that just like mice looking for our cheese in the maze we need to travel further into our booking to and peel layers back to understand what the hell we bought. God forbid we make it simple for our clients and remove all confusion.

Originally Posted by bmwe92fan

It's infuriating - isn't it? Try searching with Y,M only -- when I do that my Y only returns a very expensive "B" fare basis -- and when I search for M I do get an M... I was using ORD-NYC as city pairs for my test....

I guess now you know what to look for though!

Originally Posted by LaserSailor

Revenue management is what made air travel affordable. Most are too young to appreciate this. There is no consututional right to fly from NY to CA for $200 nor to fly in J for a bunch of worthless company points at any level

�points are good for that lifetime aspirational J trip but the day o rethinking you will get into J with accumulated miles for annual flying�..are over

Originally Posted by bisherk

The weird thing aloso is based on this my b fare is an l basis, i'm guessing but when they downgraded my ticket last week they put it in T class. So even though I'm getting an education on fare class and fare basis here, the stars aren't aligning just yet.

Originally Posted by jsloan

They probably just dropped you into the lowest non-zero bucket, or perhaps the lowest non-zero bucket equal to or greater than the one they erroneously computed as your ticketed class. It used to be that they would routinely book people into Y during IRROPS, for maximum flexibility, but that practice has mostly been abolished. (Presumably, it was abolished because it opened up the ability to use an instant upgrade to get into F -- which, in this case, would actually have been justified).

Originally Posted by zombietooth

Yeah, I am just like you. If I am upgraded, I am grateful and wouldn't complain. If I am paying cash, I am far less forgiving. However, I never ask for compensation. I only ask that UA get me to my destination on the same business day-a duty that UA has lately been poor at fulfilling.

Originally Posted by LaserSailor

with current loads I position all my people night before for meetings. I function better in morning anyway so overnight the night before and home same day is easier and better on me , too. I do have a couple of night owl managers who don’t like it so they position in the morning first flight out