braslvr

While I have not bought any E-fares in several years, THIS year I've bought 2 and been tempted by others. CIC/RDD/ACV-SFO-LAX/SAN for less than $200 a.i. is a steal. Have also seen CIC/RDD/ACV-SFO-JFK/PHL/ORD/Others for sub $300. The deals are finally back for No. Cal regional airports, and have been markedly cheaper than any regular advance purchase fares.

PSUhorty

I don't ever recall seeing a fare from PIT in the e-fares. I quit opening the emails after about a year.

In retrospect, I'm sure there were others like me and it would have been a good idea to at least toss in a weekly e-fare from a city not usually found in the e-fares just to keep peoples' interest, not lose it.

itsme

I'm confused by those itineraries you mention. Is that an open jaws or a multi-segment one? I thought, or rather assumed, that they were non-stops A-B-A. Were you able to build more elaborate itineraries, perhaps for MR purposes?

msimons

For a couple years I'd often find something from SAN and take off for the weekend when had nothing else to do.
The offerings in the 18mos have degraded, or their price matched other available flights, so why bother ?

Then they added "same day return", and it had no offerings shortly thereafter.

Can't say I'll miss it when they had it unusable.

greggoak2

Like others, I remember years ago when the weekly e-fares WERE sometimes real deals. My partner and took three completely spontaneous trips to Europe from SFO on e-fares, prompted entirely by the cheapness of the fare. More recently, I've used them maybe twice in the past few years.

Certainly, someone (or some computer) at UA does complex math to determine the effectiveness of lower e-fares and the gradual increase in prices is likely rational. But as the customer, I can point to many instances when I WOULD have purchased an e-fare if it had been just a bit cheaper. Did those flights still leave with empty seats? Would the price point that would have attracted me been worth it for UA? I have no idea. But someone at UA probably has generated an impressive spreadsheet or PowerPoint on this.

As already noted, they are STILL generally cheaper than your usual last-minute fare, but rarely, if ever, cheaper than a 3-4 week advance purchase (with fewer restrictions).

msimons

Actually I haven't gotten todays email yet, just one on a sale ending soon.
And UA's website still shows weekend fares.

So its just over emailing people ? Doesn't make sense.
Would make more sense to get rid of weekends altogether.

mahasamatman

Funny, I got the mail but just deleted it as usual. I've always used it as just a reminder that my email is still working...

paytonc

The e-fares email could be completely automated (assuming IT is halfway competent, I know), so I have no idea why the blast emails would be stopped.

I doubt it -- if you look at all the fares available, you'll see that the prices are set roughly according to distance, with no relation to the usual fares in that market. It's been this way for about a year now, and the only remaining "deals" under this formula are for oddball, low-traffic, non-competitive city pairs with high fares. (Or, when it first launched, they didn't add a premium for Canada -- so ORD-YYZ/YOW was quite a steal relative to the usual price. They "fixed" that soon thereafter.)

mahasamatman

The entire world will be better off with fewer blast emails clogging the bitways.

luv2ctheworld

You'd think with lower loads in this environment, they'd actually offer some decent e-fares and send those emails out.

MBS MillionMiler

My wife takes advantage of e-fares frequently. She has family in the D.C. area, and MBS-IAD usually shows up at about $160.00 all-in. And taking creative routing like MBS-ORD-IND-IAD, IAD-EWR-ORD-MBS, she gets pretty good value for herself, a segment-achieved 1P that usually ends up with 51 or 52 segments/year.

Neither of us think that the elimination of the e-mail is a big deal, it's not like we'd get anything that the mail said, maybe best case it would prompt us to look, but it's always been, "Hubby's out of town, if the e-fare shows up, I'll go down, if not, no big deal".

ozstamps

Absurd cost cutting move.

Cost near nil to do such things, and even a few impluse bookings due to it is profit to them.

fairviewroad

Not sure what you mean. It was pretty easy to opt out of these.

mahasamatman

Just that a significant percentage of net traffic is bulk email.

fairviewroad

True, but I would differentiate between spam e-mails, which are unsolicited, and opt-in e-mails, which are presumably welcome by the recipients. The United E-fares are in the latter category.