$2 Coach Fares And $39 In First (Merged topics)

[jimcfs]

And it looks like freshman english class is out........... B)

[post="262868"][/post]​

My database class is not exempt however.

I mentioned the Saturday incident in my DB class this morning. Many relevent issues to my course here... it's easy to screw up data, hard to fix it once screwed up, how screwups affect the business and customers. According to some US folks that some of the folks who took advantage of the fares yesterday talked to, some US folks got canned over this. Can someone confirm or deny this? Was this a true mistake or was this perhaps a disgruntle employee looking to get even with US about something? I guess in short, what really happened on Saturday? I'm looking at this as an educational opportunity, so if someone wants to PM me something instead of posting it, I'd appreciate it.

 

[jimcfs]

You may be able to answer another question I have. Why did it take so long for the orbitz and other web sites so long to pull the fare buckets? I always thought they were pulling from the buckets that US maintained. People were still booking tickets using this sites at 10-11:00 PM Saturday night.

[post="262872"][/post]​

It was well after midnight ET Saturday night (more like 12:15 or 12:20 AM) before the fares went bye-bye on Orbitz. They still showed on Travelocity's Dream Maps on Sunday morning, but you couldn't try to book them if you clicked on them (i.e. it told you "the fare had changed since they last updated the maps").

 

[longing4piedmont]

It was well after midnight ET Saturday night (more like 12:15 or 12:20 AM) before the fares went bye-bye on Orbitz.  They still showed on Travelocity's Dream Maps on Sunday morning, but you couldn't try to book them if you clicked on them (i.e. it told you "the fare had changed since they last updated the maps").

[post="262879"][/post]​

Some us had to get up and go to work on Sunday morning at 5:00 AM and could not stay up all night celebrating ones impending birthday. All I can say for you is it is good thing cell phones don't work in WV until 8:00 on Sunday mornings or I would have been the first to wish you a Happy Birthday

 

[avek00]

You, I and many others here know that this is not the truth.

[post="262874"][/post]​

What you and others don't have are copies of all of the emails sent between myself and Randy Petersen on this very issue.

But in any event, it's all water under the bridge now...

____________________________________________________

FFOCUS - Blind to the concerns of US Airways.

 

[longing4piedmont]

In any event, everyone here at USaviation can take a look at FlyerTalk and see who preaches about saving US while buying 10 $2 tickets (or even worse, 10 $80 First Class cross-country codeshare tickets) to make Chairman's Preferred/United 1K/Star Titanium. I commend you for not contributing to US' (and United's) financial woes in this instance, but unfortunately, many of your (former?) comrades were not so noble when the challenge arose.

[post="262871"][/post]​

You are not in any position to be passing judgment on any one who is a member of FFOCUS. You have no idea what these people have done, personal time they have spent on behalf of this airline, the money they have spent, etc.

You enjoy sitting in your dorm room casting stones on issues of which you have only read about. You do not fly US, in fact do not fly enough to be an elite on any airline. So until you have something to contribute here from personal knowledge, do not come here and impugn with insinuation those who are trying to make a difference.

I know these people. I know have they feel. I’ve seen what they are doing behind the scenes. So keep this up and we can go to the cornfield together, because your integrity will be challenged every time you do.

 

[ClueByFour]

1. Seeing as it would only take a message from US/DM to Mileage Plus to have UA automatically flag and scrutinize all US postings to/from the affected small cities, the technical part is not too difficult, even for a technically challenged airline.

[post="262842"][/post]​

Okay--you get the punchline: "not too difficult" for an airline that cannot automate the IT process of flagging and yanking $2 fares. You want to reconsider, or shall we continue down this road.

Tell you what--after you get done doing a gap analysis on a website that does over a million USD/day in sales and automating such process controls, let me know (I've been there and done that).

And so now, you think the impacted airline is going to be able to push such a request into a partner airline's GDS--bearing in mind that it took months to automate very simple procedures--like checking in? Further, what makes you think United cares enough to spend time and resources helping out?

It's a bit tougher than debiting your college ID for lunch at the cafeteria.

It's moot, BTW--US is claiming they will honor the fares.

Real world--it's different from what you are used to.

 

[avek00]

You do not fly US, in fact do not fly enough to be an elite on any airline. So until you have something to contribute here from personal knowledge

[post="262883"][/post]​

And you have no personal knowledge of my past and present Elite status, so you are pontificating on something you know absolutely nothing about.

Anyways, I'm familiar with the ad hominem attacks and tricks that FTers and FTer moderators love to pull, and surmise that they'd like to extend those antics to USaviation, so this is the end of this OT discussion within this thread as far as I'm concerned.

 

[whlinder]

You may be able to answer another question I have. Why did it take so long for the orbitz and other web sites so long to pull the fare buckets? I always thought they were pulling from the buckets that US maintained. People were still booking tickets using this sites at 10-11:00 PM Saturday night.

[post="262872"][/post]​

It is hard to know the exact answer to that. I always thought that the separate systems 'talked' to each other, but that there was a time lapse with inventory availability. Especially since US runs Sabre and Orbitz is Worldspan I think? Or are they Apollo? I know Expedia is Worldspan, and UA is Apollo. So US could zero out the inventory but Orbitz et. al. might not find out about it for an hour.

However, the fares should have refreshed by 10pm on Sat. night. Sounds to me like the GDS' had a problem loading them, it shouldn't take that long.

I mentioned the Saturday incident in my DB class this morning. Many relevent issues to my course here... it's easy to screw up data, hard to fix it once screwed up, how screwups affect the business and customers. According to some US folks that some of the folks who took advantage of the fares yesterday talked to, some US folks got canned over this. Can someone confirm or deny this? Was this a true mistake or was this perhaps a disgruntle employee looking to get even with US about something? I guess in short, what really happened on Saturday? I'm looking at this as an educational opportunity, so if someone wants to PM me something instead of posting it, I'd appreciate it.

[post="262875"][/post]​

The database that contains most of the fare and rule data for the airlines is one of the 5 largest in the world. It is very easy to screw up, but also is very easy to restore a mistake to what it was before it was changed.

I too would like to know if someone got canned. I would think so since all they had to do to prevent this was to double check their work, or they simply could have looked at the warning file that was generated.

It was well after midnight ET Saturday night (more like 12:15 or 12:20 AM) before the fares went bye-bye on Orbitz. They still showed on Travelocity's Dream Maps on Sunday morning, but you couldn't try to book them if you clicked on them (i.e. it told you "the fare had changed since they last updated the maps").

[post="262879"][/post]​

I am surprised Orbitz took so long. Wow. Dream Maps/Travelocity take forever to update fares in their listings, they are usually at least 12 hours behind in listing their fares, but they won't sell ones that have been changed/cancelled.

 

[avek00]

And so now, you think the impacted airline is going to be able to push such a request into a partner airline's GDS--bearing in mind that it took months to automate very simple procedures--like checking in? Further, what makes you think United cares enough to spend time and resources helping out?

It's a bit tougher than debiting your college ID for lunch at the cafeteria.

It's moot, BTW--US is claiming they will honor the fares.

[post="262884"][/post]​

1. Heck, DM can simply call up Mileage Plus to make the request - partner airlines restrict routes and fares for FF eligibility all the time. Depending on how much ticket info is sent via the tapes/datalink between US and MP, and the IT capabilities of MP, it's possible that MP might be able to go so far as to simply restrict or audit mileage credit for tickets issued to a given destination on a certain DATE, or at the very least, just to a certain destinaiton.

2. If United allows these tickets to earn FF credit, it is then on the hook. Given the extremely high breakage rate of FF miles, they might not (and to be fair, probably won't) find it worthwhile to do something, but don't kid yourself into thinking that there is absolutely zero cost to UA either.

3. Honoring the fare for transportation and granting FF credit are two entirely different things.

 

[TomBascom]

Is this a mountain or a molehill?

How many of these were actually sold?

 

[USFlyer]

My hunch is this is a molehill. The bulk of business travelers a) don't read flyertalk.com, B) don't make unnecessary trips just to renew status and c) would rather get home to their families faster in lieu of connecting 3-4 times to get from the west coast to the east coast. Those who post here and elsewhere are a subset and the damage was probably mostly limited to them and those who happened to be buying tickets Saturday morning.

Given this, I suspect it would cost more to undo the damage than to just let it go. Let's face it, they were published fares, offered for sale, etc. It's no different than going into a grocery store, seeing milk mispriced for 5 cents and buying it. If the grocer doesn't notice before you hand over money (consumate the deal), the milk is yours.

Now, should these earn FF and elite credit? I'm torn on that one. I honestly think US should not allow credit for these, but the resulting PR nightmare is also probably not worth it. Although, after speaking to a few co-workers, all of them think these should not count.

 

[avek00]

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the total number of tickets sold numbers somewhere in the thousands.

 

[longing4piedmont]

And you have no personal knowledge of my past and present Elite status, so you are pontificating on something you know absolutely nothing about.

Anyways, I'm familiar with the ad hominem attacks and tricks that FTers and FTer moderators love to pull, and surmise that they'd like to extend those antics to USaviation, so this is the end of this OT discussion within this thread as far as I'm concerned.

[post="262886"][/post]​

Would you like for me to do a search and post the evidence (by your own admission) of your elite status?

As the OP of the thread I assume I can take it anywhere I wish.

 

[longing4piedmont]

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the total number of tickets sold numbers somewhere in the thousands.

[post="262892"][/post]​

Really? And where does this "evidence" come from? English Class?

 

[PITbull]

You know what I think really sucks about this?

Not that tons and tons of people bought tickets in bad-faith, occupying perhaps thousands of seats and depriving an airline of thousands or even millions of dollars it desperately needs.  Money that might help keep this airline afloat and providing jobs for its tens of thousands of hard-working employees.  Oh, that sucks alright.  But I wouldn't feel nearly as bad if US had accidentally sold $2 CLT-LAX fares, or $39 PHL-FCO Envoy fares.

Instead, the vast majority of these fares seem to start or stop in LEB or ART.  Take ART, for example.  Three airports--ART, MSS, OGS--for three cities in upstate New York--Watertown, Massena, Ogdensburg--have to share a whopping 57 seats per day into Pittsburgh for all of their air service.  With the thousands of tickets apparently sold after this error, people with *real* business in those cities might find that all of the flights are sold out.  More likely, residents of those cities will find that, at the very least, all of the cheap fare buckets will be gone, and they will be faced by the prospect of mortgaging the house to buy a full Y-fare, or being deprived of their community's only air service.  Now that sucks.

Something to think about for all the people that bought 15 ART-SEA roundtrips to make Chairman's Preferred for $300.

[post="262798"][/post]​

Why make the pax feel bad about this. They hunt for tickets and find cheap ones...they buy'um up. Those who are responsible for this operational glitch need to be let go. Plane and simple. This may cost $100s of million of dollars, fuel and real lost revenue.

Unfriggen believable again. Who else does this ever happen to but U?????