It kinda, sorta makes sense if you look it as booking services, not specific flights. In the "multi-city" itinerary, you're technically buying two separate services, transportation from BOS to EWR, and then transportation from EWR to LHR. The fact that there are only four hours between the...
Except it is not. The W fare is for BOS-LHR, not BOS-EWR+EWR-LHR.
Also, the UA price with the connection is $100 more than competitors in the nonstop market. Or $200 if you don't bother with the multi-city fare construction.
...two flights isn't really being taken into account. UA is pricing the first trip based on the market to go from BOS to EWR at that time on that day, and then again for EWR to LHR. On the one-way, the price is for service between BOS and LHR, and the price is set to compete against other...
...airlines' services for that, including non-stops on AA, BA, DL, and B6, so the price is set to compete in that market. It's counter-intuitive, but in a way it's just a more complex version of buying bread and meat vs. buying a sandwich that's already made. I've never seen an example like...
...this before, I have to admit, but the underlying "why" is the same "why" that leads to flights from a spoke to a hub costing more than a trip between two spokes that connect at the same hub - the pricing is based on the market between the two cities, not the underlying flights.
I've been around a while. I know how airline pricing works. This is not the same as pricing one segment versus a connection that includes that same segment. Also, United (and others) have been doing this for a long, long time. I wrote about it with AA and DL in 2014. blog.wandr.me/2014/06/amer...
Oh, I know you've been around a long time, I enjoy your writing. But you'd raised the question of why consumers think airlines are ripping them off, and I'm just saying to anyone else reading this why, to me at least, it isn't malicious, it's just how their pricing works. The one part I don't...
...understand, and would love to know the answer to, is why the one-way won't price on the "W" fare. Is it a conscious business decision on the part of UA not to offer that fare on a BOS-LHR purchase (or a wider suppression on some types of connections), or is it just a design flaw or a glitch?
My best guess is broken married segment logic in UA's systems.