When 'A' and 'B' fares are actually 'H' fares

I think I know the answer to this but I wanted to check.

I've just booked a one way flight SEA-EWR-xxx. When searching on United.com the SEA-EWR flight shows up as First (A) and the EWR-xxx flight shows up as Economy (B). First class is not offered on EWR-xxx flight. When pulling up the fare rules it's actually an 'H' fare with fare code H2UPY1.

Question - will I earn the 150% PQM as United.com shows for the flights or will I earn 100% for booking an 'H' fare? I believe it's 150% but I wanted to double check. Note that the e-ticket receipt shows 'A' and 'B' as the booking classes.

What's interesting is when I select this fare I get the itinerary confirmation page with the upsell offer at top to "increase flexibility". It tells me I can increase flexibility to make the ticket refundable, include same day changes for free and earn extra PQM for $332 more. When I click on that offer it puts both flights into 'B' class and tells me that the SEA-EWR is available for instant upgrade.

Who needs a true 'B' fare when the 'H' fare actually books into A/B and I can earn the PQM for it? Oh, and my ticket that is booked as A/B is also refundable.

Thanks,
Rob

This is one of those cases where the fare class and the booking class aren't the same. You should earn as A and B, not as H.

In the case of irrops, your upgrade isn't guaranteed. If possible, you'll be accommodated in F...but this behaves differently than an "f" ticket.

While that was the UA policy (sortof...they eventually relented on it though most agents ignored the new rules) for H-Ups the CO policy was much more customer-friendly and is the policy which survived AFAIK.

It should earn as an A fare.

It wasn't unfriendly per se, you were (and presumably are still) subordinate to those on actual F fares. In the case of wx irrops, there are probably few open seats in front...the F ticket is important when trying to get one.

I had more than one occasion where the UA agents looked at the fare code rather than the booking code and refused to rebook into available F seats.

As for priority when things go pear-shaped, my experiences have been that being quick to the draw is more useful than full fare.

I guess I won't have the opportunity this time to figure it out. I've refunded the ticket as I found a DL ticket for half the cost. Sure, no purchased first class seat and no 150% PQM but half the cost is half the cost.

-RM

This is so broken.

At least in the old days, searching on ua.bomb for a first class ticket would sometimes show HUPs. It didn't warn you that "if you something goes wrong, you might not get F on the replacement flight", and it didn't offer to sell you a "guaranteed F seat" for $X more. The customer asked for first, and that's the fare UA quoted. UA should treat it like any other F ticket.

UPDATE: the CO website will show the booking code (A/F/P) -- the only way to see if you're getting an HUP/VUP/etc. is to look at the fare rules, which requires solving a CAPTCHA. IMHO, that level of opacity and inability to search for other options increases the burden on UA to honor these as "real" first tickets.

And, IME today, they do.