I am trying to book an international multicity itinerary with 3 destinations on bomb and want a B fare. I am trying to do this using the YB upgrade dropdown. But it keeps giving me a mix of B and M fares. Can I do this online or do I have to call?

I often get this and it is nuisance.

Sometimes you can fix it by adding more routing points to your itinerary or changing from price preference to schedule preference.

Quite often B fares allow less stops than M fares or have no stops at a certain transfer point (say fares SIN-US with dual stops in Japan), so M (or then Y) fares could be the only way to accommodate the stop. So be sure you are within the rules and the MPM before trying too hard.

I found exactly this and it drives me up the wall. As does the fact that the website simply ignores any non-stop versus 1-stop/2-stop preferences, as well as the preferred departure time etc. etc.. Really this is not difficult programming.

I also found that searching by price on a LHR-LAX-IAD-LHR itinerary quite happily returned a B-fare, but searching by schedule changed some (or all) of the legs to S fares. It seemed pretty random.

I have this problem A LOT with LAX-LHR (with potential stops in between). I do LAX-LHR-LAX once a month and it's been at least 6 months since I've been able to get a B fare RT on this route to come up on .bomb. Putting [DEN|ORD|IAD] in the middle sometimes helps but sometimes not.

Not that I've minded the few extra miles doing it via DEN (and I once even ended up on the new-config 777 which was nice) or ORD (and getting a much improved sleep on the 767 new C).

But the couple times I've needed to do the non-stop, yes, I definitely had to call to get it done.

I understand.

I force a B fare all the time out of SIN and if the website gives me grief, I either call the local UA office and get them to do it or call the 1K desk in the US, have them hold the itinerary and then either call up the SIN office or go there in person to pay for the ticket.

I book a fair few mutil city, multi continent B fares and tick the "refundable" fare box.

I do NOT check the YB upgrade box and that usually (oddly) gives B fares but if I also tick the YB upgrade box I often get MH fares.

This may be a silly question, but why do you want to force a B fare? (I've seen some people talk about how they do this regularly)

I understand the reason might be refundable, but its not quite clear to me why you'd pay such a high cost for the higher fare class ...

The reason for me is simple. I want to ensure the best possible chance my upgrade will clear using a SWU.

The majority of my UA flights are from SIN to SFO/LAX/JFK.

True, I can book a cheaper W fare online (or over the phone), but my experience has been that a B fare is approx US$500 dearer when I ticket from SIN.

Trust me, that $500 starts to look cheap when you're half way between Hong Kong and SFO, unable to sleep because you're stuck in E+ and your upgrade failed to clear.

With 1K status, and a B fare, plus some planning on ensuring the departure date has the best loads, you'll give yourself the best chance of clearing.

At least that's been my experience. My SWU's have all cleared between 7-10 days prior...and no sweating it out at the gate.

In addition, lets say I end up paying US$2200 for a B fare round trip between Asia and the East Coast of the US and my SWU's clear both directions. Where else can I fly Business Class for that amount of money?

Refundable, better upgrade chance, EQM, RDM

Not all B fares are refundable. Personally, I have taken to booking a lot more Z fares these days because the B fares I find usually have $150 cx fees - and are often slightly higher than Z.

Good point. I wish that were true on my routes.