Whats Going On With Fares

[ITRADE]

Have been away on business so I haven't had a chance to view the daily, or in my case weekly, venom from the boards.

Anyhow, was checking my flights for new years, priced them out, and found that F class from BWI to SAN over new years is about $850 r/t.

Is US on some program to get premium flyers out of the woodwork or is this a new year's type of deal???

 

[USFlyer]

I've been wondering the same thing. Lately, I've been BOOKING F class tickets DCA-SEA for CHEAPER than what I used to pay for B class tickets. I request "coach with restrictions" through our corporate booking tool departing M or T and returning R or F. When the tickets price out, it seems booking in F PHL-SEA and SEA-PHL and M DCA-PHL and PHL-DCA is the cheapest option. It's crazy, but I love it. I've booked all my tickets for the next few weeks already.

(For the record, I typically paid ~$850 for B class tickets on all legs, yet I typically am paying ~$775 for mixed M/F class tickets now.)

If this is an experiment, I'm all for it. PHL-SEA is a long flight, and I can totally justify paying ~$775 to guarantee an F seat, especially since I'm making the trip almost every week. The other odd thing is when I call to upgrade, US upgrades the M class legs right away, outside of the 7 day window.

Another bizarre thing is this is valid on codeshares. The week of Thanksgiving I'm taking the redeye from SEA to PHL. But, alas, US has no redeye, so I'm flying UA all the way, connecting in SFO. I booked F on both SEA-SFO and SFO-PHL (yes, I'm flying UA SFO-PHL mainly so I can see what UA's F service is like).

 

[BoeingBoy]

After making much fun of America West's fare restructuring, Dave is apparently quietly tinkering with fares at U. Being an employee rather than a customer, I first saw something about it in Aviation Daily a week or so ago. Don't know if it is going to be permanent or not, but there's always hope that Dave can learn from others, even if he riducles them first.

 

[ringmaruf]

Yeah, they only made the announcement about cheap F fares in the LAS, CUN, MBJ, and FPO markets, but it appears they've quietly made them available to the other west coast markets. What's amazing to me is that they've made the cheap fares available from the hubs, something they haven't done when experimenting in the past.

 

[tadjr]

I've noticed quite a few markets other than the special ones on the website that they are offering this fare. Usually it is an AE71NR or something like that. Advance purchase nonrefundable rt in FC. Its slightly different in some markets, but I guess they are actually trying to get people to buy FC instead of having it all upgrades. Sorry guys, I know the upgrades are important, and there still are upgrades out there to have, but it's nice to see them TRY to get some people to pay for FC by offering some fares that are semi reasonable or at least palatable.

 

[ITRADE]

I've noticed quite a few markets other than the special ones on the website that they are offering this fare. Usually it is an AE71NR or something like that. Advance purchase nonrefundable rt in FC. Its slightly different in some markets, but I guess they are actually trying to get people to buy FC instead of having it all upgrades. Sorry guys, I know the upgrades are important, and there still are upgrades out there to have, but it's nice to see them TRY to get some people to pay for FC by offering some fares that are semi reasonable or at least palatable.

Its good to see them playing around with a few pricing strategies to increase revenues. If a couple upgradeable seats disappear, so be it.

Of course, since I've calculated that I will finally make US1 for this year, the upgrade issue shouldn't be too much of a problem.

 

[KCFlyer]

What a concept...a step to actually encourage folks to pay for first class seats. This is a great step for US...