Originally Posted by ijgordon

Ok, I've read most of the reactions except the last few pages. I do think people are over-reacting.

1) You don't have to book "blindly" for an instrument upgrade. AFAIK the "request upgrade" check box is still there and it will show you if a flight is available for confirmed upgrade or not. Instead of being shown the # of seats, you'll get a "yes" or "no" answer.

2) Revenue bucket info is still available on KVS and ExpertFlyer. If you're really using this info ever day, $100/yr is worth it. Plus you get inventory and seat alerts. So you can still check availability for SDC (flight alerts are great for this too) and you can still try to gauge upgrade chances based on the CDJZ buckets (or whatever they are now). And FWIW, no other domestic airline shows (revenue) inventory buckets on their websites.

3) Yes, this somewhat closes the loophole/bug for when a wait list doesn't clear despite there being "R" inventory. That's probably a good thing - at least it's a fair thing. But you can still check for availability per #1 above, and you can still call in. So it's not completely closed.

So I challenge someone to spell out how this will *really* impact the information they are able to get. Perhaps it makes it a little more expensive or time consuming, but to claim it as the end of the world is just going too far IMHO.

And yes, I get how this impacts your views of UA management and what they think of their frequent fliers, but let's try to focus on this specific issue.