United hides cheapest flights from passengers affected by Coronavirus (opens in new tab)

Yes, fare classes is the likely explanation. One could say at a cursory glance "but look, they are both Basic Economy!" I would counter with https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly/booking/flight/fare-cla...

> Basic Economy tickets may be booked in various fare classes.

Author here. Didn't realize this blew up on HN...

We don't know the cause of the difference in price, but we're comparing two basic economy tickets here so if there's any fare difference, United should at least clarify to the user why...

United and other airlines are running ads [0] on how users can book w/ confidence and get free changes so IMO, it's just irresponsible to have things like this slip through the cracks-- intentional or not.

Overall, United has been consistently being anti-user with their policies related to coronavirus. For example, making users wait 12 months to get a cash refund [1] if your flight is delayed by them. Not a great look.

[0]: https://twitter.com/tejasmanohar/status/1239332916070473728

[1]: https://www.dansdeals.com/points-travel/airlines/united/unit...

I was able to replicate this scenario with another booking. Definitely not just a lone incident. United sucks.

Yeah, I'm not going to say United is some shining beacon of a company, but all I'm seeing here is that somebody representing a company that "book[s] a lot of travel" doesn't seem to understand how fare classes work. I'm not saying it's impossible that United is pulling a fast one here, but this blog post does not show sufficient evidence one way or another. If this showed up in my inbox as a bug report, I'd send it back to QA with a request for more information and reproduction steps.

(Former travel industry person who triaged way, way too many bug reports about fare differences when changing flights)

Yeah, this doesn't really pass the sniff test. Can we get details regarding the fare basis codes before/after?

Author here...

Might be misunderstanding, but United is letting you change the route (X to Y) and dates between flights-- that's not the problem. What's messed up here is that United is not showing you the best prices available on the market when you're actually changing your flight, and that's regardless of what route or type of flight you're changing to.

To summarize, one of our users bought a flight and when they went to change it, United showed us the "new flight's price" as something almost twice the actual online rate if you search on United.com or GFlights.

> Why should you be able to buy two flights from X to Y when you canceled only one?

Not all flights from X to Y are created equal. Some are direct, some connect. Some are at more convenient times. Some are on nicer aircraft. Some have more empty seats.

Because that's what they're worth. Live by the market, die by the market.

People should be asking that question on a lot of life's essentials, where the "provider" removed it from the market only to sell it back at a higher price having added no value.

Or the Americans for trying to corner the market on a potential vaccine in development.

In usa when a corporation does it, its legal. When individual does it, they get pinched.

I'm sorry, but that's blatantly false. The original itinerary is a one-way flight, not a round-trip.

I'll send the original receipt in a few minutes once I scrub all sensitive passenger information.

Which they won't see because United will be bankrupt by then.

I have a flight from SYD to NYC on May 2nd.

While there is no entry restrictions yet, I expect it to ramp up soon. When I come back to Australia, I'll be mandated to self-isolate for 14 days.

The Australian Government has warned to reconsider all air travel.

I'm looking to cancel this trip, however it looks like I'll only have the opportunity if reschedules this flight. Even if so, I won't get a refund for 12 months.

I'm not happy about this.

Yeah, lots of facts missing here. and the facts don't add up. I still think the original itinerary was a round trip - and the total fare being shown is a round trip fare. The author/CTO of the company this "blog" is on has yet to clarify.

If the facts are fudged, this is shameful. Airlines are still terrible companies, but this is shameful.

Being price gouged by airlines is nothing new, this is business as usual.

I think the extensive and permissive rebooking offers are COVID related.

It's quite simply not true that every future time slot costs more money.

Try putting those dates in Google Flights and I'm sure that your "$1000" flight is now... $700 or something.

They’re not going anywhere. They have EWR/SFO/DEN/ORD/IAD/LAX. I wonder what could cause many of the big companies today to go under, other than their whole product being obsoleted.

You now need to compare against the fare offer you receive if you try to change an existing booking made during the waiver period. If the two prices aren’t identical, something is wrong.