LOL, so because their IT systems and training for agents suck, they discontinue a customer-centric policy?

I get that people have their downstream segments cancelled because UA's IT is crappy, and because agents don't put the protected flights in the right sequence (they should appear after all other segments).

The solution is to fix that, not to discontinue a customer service which helps pax out. And even though UA is loathe to invest in fixing IT issues that hurt customers, there are plenty of steps they could take as stopgaps:

• Better-train agents in irrops handling
• UI overlays that automatically handle inserting the protected flights in the right sequence for the GA during irrops
• Stop auto-cancelling itins so aggressively! It wouldn't hurt UA to wait a few days to cancel the itin for missed segments; lost revenue from hidden-city ticketing cannot be so substantial that they save enough by canning itins almost immediately over the problems that causes in any kind of irrops.