Just had a weird booking experience on united.com (yes, one of many since the merger). I went to book one of my routine SFO-DEN-LNK-DEN-SFO itineraries (I do that at least 6x/year, sometimes more, occasionally substituted with SFO-OMA-SFO on WN.)
Anyway, I looked at 11/18-12/2, found the usual flights, but before booking I always check a day or two before or after just to see what's available. (In this case only earlier, since later gets into Thanksgiving week.) For 11/17-12/1, something unusual popped up on the outbound: a different flight than I usually take, this one on a PMCO 738, and for the normal price ($640 R/T in this case, pretty normal for November) the SFO-DEN leg showed as booking into the F cabin, with a fare basis of "P". Huh? So I booked it, got to seat selection, and sure enough I was allowed to select 4B, a seat in F. The other 3 legs were unaffected.
I looked at the flight selection screen again in another browser window, and in fact two flights that day showed cheap nonrefundable economy fares booking into F. What's up with that? The lowest economy fare was $604, mine was $640, and others were up to $1050 (they oppress you for changing in ORD instead of DEN, which you don't want to do anyway).
Any idea what's going on here? Am I going to get an email claiming a mistake and canceling my F seat? Am I going to try to check in and get reassigned to a random E- seat? Or is this some marketing ploy? I don't have any current status or anything that would entitle me to a free upgrade, or even a free E+ seat. Ideas?
Anyway, I looked at 11/18-12/2, found the usual flights, but before booking I always check a day or two before or after just to see what's available. (In this case only earlier, since later gets into Thanksgiving week.) For 11/17-12/1, something unusual popped up on the outbound: a different flight than I usually take, this one on a PMCO 738, and for the normal price ($640 R/T in this case, pretty normal for November) the SFO-DEN leg showed as booking into the F cabin, with a fare basis of "P". Huh? So I booked it, got to seat selection, and sure enough I was allowed to select 4B, a seat in F. The other 3 legs were unaffected.
I looked at the flight selection screen again in another browser window, and in fact two flights that day showed cheap nonrefundable economy fares booking into F. What's up with that? The lowest economy fare was $604, mine was $640, and others were up to $1050 (they oppress you for changing in ORD instead of DEN, which you don't want to do anyway).
Any idea what's going on here? Am I going to get an email claiming a mistake and canceling my F seat? Am I going to try to check in and get reassigned to a random E- seat? Or is this some marketing ploy? I don't have any current status or anything that would entitle me to a free upgrade, or even a free E+ seat. Ideas?