United Airlines Is Offering Super-Cheap Flights
United Airlines has been having a not-so-great month. First, video showed aviation officers violently dragging a doctor off a flight to make room for its staff members. And then, an adorably gigantic rabbit named Simon died while in the airline’s care. Those were two public-relations nightmares for the airline, but now they’re making major changes - and dropping prices, too.
According to the New York Times, United will now up its financial incentives for people to get bumped from overbooked flights; you can now get up to $10,000 in travel certificates if you volunteer. The airline is also changing its booking and boarding processes to make sure that people who have boarded flights never have to give up their seat, and starting a new team to deal with overbooked flights.
And at the same time, flights just so happen to be super cheap with United at the moment. Scott Keyes, who runs the website Scott’s Cheap Flights, told Travel + Leisure that there has been a “noticeable drop” in fares on United since the incident with Dr. David Dao. And he assumes that means that customers were steering clear of the airline. “I’m not privy to United’s internal numbers,” Keyes told the site, “but whatever drop in bookings they were seeing must have scared theme enough to slash prices.” According to CNNMoney, United’s profits did drop 69 percent in the first quarter, but that actually was better than expected, and only because of high fuel and labor costs.
But whatever the reason, United has killer deals on your next vacation right now. You can go to Trinidad and Tobago for as low as $274, down from $550. And if you want to go to Europe, flights from Boston to Sweden are $364, and flights to Paris are going for $433. Keyes is calling these “apology fares.”
To be fair, though lots of airlines are offering cheap flights overseas this year, especially this summer. The New York Times reports that American travelers can get “some of the best bargains in years” thanks to budget carriers forcing the competition to lower prices. And if you’re not running scared from United these days, you might get some of the best discounts out there through them. But book now, experts told the newspaper, because these deals are gone quickly.
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