How to book variable cabins
 

Wife and I would like to fly Newark to Sicily next April, connecting to Catania inbound, connecting from Palermo outbound. Premium Plus and Business fares are astronomical. PP is $5,000 per person round trip. Looked at seating, virtually no one on any of planes at this time. If I look instead at non-stops to/from Rome Fiumicino, the PP is $2,600 per person round trip. Obviously, $5,000 - $2,600 = $2,400 for a one hour flight to Sicily is absurd. Is my request for PP causing the crazy airfares? Is there a way to request PP on the Rome Fiumicino flights and cattle class for the connecting flights, without having to exit security, get baggage, then check baggage outside?

No.

Maybe?

Airfare is calculated on an origin / destination basis, not by adding up the individual legs. There's more competition to Rome, so the fares are lower.

If you buy the tickets separately, you lose EC.261 protection, but UA might be willing to check through to an ITA-operated flight, and ITA might be willing to check through on the return. It might depend upon if ITA has officially joined *A by then or not.

Note that you're not getting any sort of PE cabin on the short flights whether it's purchased as a single ticket or not.

Have you tried multi-city?

Take note that airfares also price out O-D, so the fact FCO without the connections is much cheaper may be less about the cabin itself, and more that they charge more to destinations with less competition. It could also just be the connections book into a high fare class regardless.

id try using multi-city (XXX-FCO, FCO-YYY, ZZZ-FCO, FCO-XXX) and see how that prices. If it’s still high, consider booking the nonstop to FCO as you want it, and simply book the ‘connection’ separately. You’ll want to give yourself extra time to account for the fact if it’s not on a single ticket, you’re not protected, but UA can generally check through bags to *A carriers, even on separate tickets so no need to go back and claim bags at FCO, etc.

It is with multi-city that I get the astronomical airfares. There are many ways of connecting, Fiumicino, Munich, Frankfurt, Brussels, Zurich, but the "reasonable" flight times get the crazy numbers, i.e., $5,000 per person PP roundtrip.

Multi-city doesn't really do what people seem to think here. It will still try to merge segments onto EWR-CTA and PMO-EWR fares as UA doesn't sell FCO-CTA and PMO-FCO standalone revenue fares itself (only ITA does). As noted upthread, fares are sold on an O&D, not additive, basis. It looks like if you are willing to consider other connections on LH through MUC or FRA, there might be inventory in cheaper fare classes than flying UA through FCO (knowing dates would be helpful) as I definitely see cheaper Premium Plus fares on these routes than the price you listed. But if you really want to fly UA to/from FCO, you would need to by trips on separate tickets.

"You would need to buy trips on separate tickets".
UA will book ITA using multi-city but with a consequence of astronomical airfares.
Outside of FlyerTalk, it was recommended to make separate reservations, EWR to FCO on United, FCO to CTA and PMO to FCO on ITA, then beseech baggage check at EWR and return to check baggage through to final destination.

a good TA might be able to book this on the same ticket. Also try google flights

What is likely happening is that premium plus on united is mapping into a premium fare class on whatever the connecting carrier is, so you're paying for a Y (full Y) or first fare on those airlines. This is a common problem with booking connecting flights on *A carriers and PP.

You need to look at the Fare Rules on united.com to see the actual fare construction. It's not actually booking separate EWR-FCO and FCO-CTA fares or PMO-FCO and FCO-EWR fares when you use multi-city. As you can see below, you still end up with EWR-CTA and PMO-EWR fares when using multi-city. While UA will book FCO-CTA and PMO-FCO segments as part of US-EU fares, they won't sell those segments on standalone ITA fares on it's website. While the ITA segments below are booking into ITA economy Q class on ITA flights below, they are not actually being priced separately. They are still priced as part of a single atomic UA fare in each direction of travel (in case below, an A fare outbound and an O fare on the return). R fares are the cheapest Premium Economy fares, followed by A, and O.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...852c15674d.png
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...284d511b2e.png


These are the cheapest R fares possible (roughly $1950 roundtrip with taxes) for April travel and require a 7 day minimum stay. They also require mid-week travel (R fares that are valid for weekend travel are slightly higher).

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...02e3a638a4.png
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...e040b609a6.png

Book the economy class tickets, then upgrade the segment you want to PP?

This is the other option but you won't know what price will be until after booking. However, you have 24 hours to cancel for refund if seat upgrade pricing is not competitive.

"Book the economy class tickets, then upgrade the segment you want to PP?"
I did that last April, economy to Munich [on United] connect to Catania [on Lufthansa], then PP United return from Fiumicino. But the upgrade from econ to PP on the flight to Munich was and remained astronomical, so we were stuck in econ for the overnight flight, not pleasant.

How much schedule flexibility do you have? Would you be willing to purchase flights on LH website as LH coded flights and fares? While UA and LH coordinate and duplicate most TATL fare filings with each other, they do not duplicate fare class availability on every single individual flight and there can often be differences. In the example itin below, UA only has A inventory availability on both outbound and return UA operated flights. Meanwhile, LH currently has N class availability on these exact same UA flights in both directions (LH N class is the equivalent of UA R class). You can see LH N class has same pricing as UA R class for cheapest fares below (from EF). These R/N fares are around $500 cheaper each-way than the UA A fares (and LH E fares which are the equivalent of UA A fares) which saves you roughly $1000 on a roundtrip basis.

The EF pricing below are base fares (no taxes or carrier-imposed surcharges) when purchased on a roundtrip basis (these are for EWR-CTA, but EWR-PMO has same pricing). You need to divide by two to get the fare price on an each-way basis. You still need to purchase fares as a roundtrip (or open-jaw) to qualify for them (with a 7 day minimum stay -- the 5th position in fare basis code), but they can be mixed and matched with other roundtrip fares. The 4th position in fare basis code represents the advance purchase requirement -- 9=90 days, 5=50 days, 8=28 days, 4=14 days, 7=7 days, 0=0 days.
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...ae5214e025.png

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...a63343ce2c.png

You can see from below that the UA website is pricing both outbound and return flights as A fares as they only have UA A class availability.
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...5b887c2a85.png

Potentially dumb question around connecting in FCO to a domestic flight; do you need to clear customs and potentially security anyway?

This is a rare scenario in Schengen, but last time I made an I/D connection in Norway (SFO-CPH-SVG-BGO), we cleared customs at SVG and had to re-clear security and re-check baggage anyway.

Does a round-trip search for either EWR-CTA or EWR-PMO make any difference in fare? This means that you may connect some European cities other than Rome.