A month ago United introduced Basic Economy fares on nearly all domestic flights other than Hawaii routes.
By preventing customers from reserving seats when they buy their tickets, and having them board last without full-sized carry on bags, they’re trying to make the travel experience miserable enough that customers will spend more money in order to avoid the restrictions.
Elites don’t get upgrades or economy plus seats on these fares, and customers don’t earn credit towards status either. (To be sure elite frequent flyers and co-brand credit card members do still get their priority boarding benefit, and since the carry on ban is handled by boarding group this allows them to bring a carry on in addition to a personal item as well.)
United’s CFO Andrew Levy explained that they wanted to put a choice in front of every customer and every purchase: “if there’s a single economy seat for sale, you can buy it as basic economy.” (He noted that later in the year we’d see Basic Economy expand to Hawaii flights and Latin America routes too.)
Even if there was just one seat left on the flight at full fare, customers would be shown a Basic Economy option and a buy up.
For instance, here on June 13 was an $819 Washington Dulles – Los Angeles ticket that wouldn’t allow a carry on bag or advance seat assignment.
This isn’t about competing with ultra low cost carriers like Spirit or Frontier. It’s about trying to upsell every passenger. They think they can get the walkup passenger to give them $844 rather than $819.
Put another way, this isn’t treating their highest-revenue customers well. It’s about squeezing them. This was intentional, and I contended it was stupid.
Zach Honig notes that United apparently belatedly agreed with me — they are no longer offering Basic Economy to customers buying the airline’s most expensive fares. When only full fare tickets are left, Basic Economy isn’t offered. In fact he explains,
A few days ago, basic economy would have been “available” on all of these flights — now you can only get it when deep-discounted economy is for sale. In this case, the basic economy “N” fare class is available on flights that have “T” deep-discount economy for sale, but not “W” class.
And indeed looking again at Washington Dulles – Los Angeles for travel today, where cheaper economy tickets are available Basic Economy is sold as an option to encourage customers to buy up. However where higher economy fares are what’s offered they’ve stopped trying to force customers to buy up further under threat of a miserable experience.
Zach considers this ‘very good news’ and ‘pro-consumer’. Fundamentally this is United learning that beating up on full fare passengers isn’t good business. They aren’t doing this to be generous with flyers, on the contrary they largely believe that consumers buy on price and plan to add more seats into existing planes because of it.
United is doing this because they began to fear they would lose lucrative ticket purchases if they continued.
And of course the entire Basic Economy enterprise rests on this: consumers have choices even at the same price point. Southwest, JetBlue, Alaska and to a certain extent even Delta (whose own Basic Economy fares still permit a full-sized carry on bag) offer more value than United and American Basic Economy. Basic economy posits that a large chunk of customers will buy up rather than suffer the restrictions. The risk is they might just buy up (or simply ‘buy’) with another airline who doesn’t make the travel experience quite as challenging.
United after all doesn’t even let Basic Economy customers not checking bags check in online.
Did United get a new CEO today? Lol
How many others quickly close the search Window? Why would anyone play this absurd game when there are far better terbarives beat the same price point?
Where are Monty Python.when we really need them, script already written? SNL is busy with Trump and his Trumpanzees.
**alternatives near the same price point.
Why do people still buy tickets on United
They’ll revert to the same old behavior when (not if) DL and AA start playing the same game. You can only avoid UA’s shitty behavior if there are alternatives.
Fundamentally, this is only a temporary situation in rolling out basic economy fares. In the meantime, if AA sells a ticket for $819 that’s economy, and UA sells one for $819 that’s basic economy, why would anyone buy the UA ticket? They’ve essentially put a priced on loyalty, and it’s $25/ticket, or w/e. It’s a dangerous game they play, but I don’t think it’s especially new.
If UnUnited does anything it will only be for its benefit and to increase its bottom line and stock price,period. The customers and employees (other then top execs) are all expenable and not to be taken into consideration when decisions are made
the only difference bet UnUnited and the LCCs are the LCCs tell you the truth, they tell you we will treat you like garbage and they do,While UnUnited says they will treat you like a King/Queen and end up treating you like the LCCs like garbage but you are paying them alot more $$$ for UAs treatment
Especially weird since online check-in save the airline money!
I confess – I bought a ticket in United last week. I know I said I would not do it ( if possible) but it was the difference between a 6:00 Am departure and an 8:15 Am departure. I needed the sleep and I took the plunge.
I swear I won’t make that mistake again. Sleep is way overrated compared to the United “customer experience”
It is sad. We get to a place in life where we are retired and can travel and the travel industry makes it more desirable to stay home. We don’t fly anymore. Between getting assaulted by TSA and treated like puppy poop by the airlines, we’d rather hitch-hike to where we’re going.
I do appreciate the “do not show basic economy” option in the United app..
What UA does not seem to understand is that sales may tank because kayak and other booking engines do not break out each fare class and do not have a “no BE” box to check. So when I see the UA price for BE, I skip it and find the next best fare for a regular economy product (or for WN). UA does not get a second shot because kayak shows the lowest price, and the next step is to premium economy (E+). I’m fine with BE so long as it’s limited to matching ULC fares. But if it simply becomes a “resort fee” charge then I might as well go with WN or better yet AS/VX where I am finding discounted economy fares = UA BE.
United’s what alters? Can you please do some basic editing before posting? I really loved your post about delta and their terrible Middle East airline video, but you undermine your credibility when you dont edit.
Also, I thought Oscar Muñoz was it’s CEO?
No food, no water, no legroom. no luggage on plane. It is all like a nightmare vision of airtravel. Enduring the increased congestion at airports, the full flights, the security delays and the intrusive ex rays of persons and luggage, all to ride in a cattle car through the air, is never a bargain at any price. United will have to give away it’s basic economy ordeal seats to get people to take them. The real LCCs have been doing this for years. Norwegian is offering ord to london tickets for 175 each way right now. Welcome to your basic economy world United.
What is up with you guys? Basic Economy is just another option to chose from nobody is making you buy it. I prefer to have more buying options rather than less but I doubt I would ever buy Basic Economy as it does not meet my travel preferences.
Things are pretty bad with United States Airlines when you can fly from Los Angeles to Bangkok for the same price as Los Angeles to Washington DC.
I guess it wasn’t clear when I booked BE because I never imagined you couldn’t take your purse, a small backpack and laptop case. I couldn’t check in online and thought it was a website error (it wasn’t). After waiting in line at check-in, they made me pay to check my small backpack. They wouldn’t even let me PAY to carry it on. My BE money was no good to them! Of course there was no way I was checking my unpadded laptop case so they forced me to awkwardly and forcefully shove it into my purse in front of everyone at LAX United security checkpoint. It split the seams of my purse but I had no choice! What was I supposed to do?? I’m sure they want you to be so frustrated you never purchase that fare in the future. Wrong! I’ll never fly United again after that public humiliation. It’s not something you forget!