Originally Posted by
PVDtoDEL
It's not a mistake in the sense that UA made the intentional decision to make this change to the booking system.
It is a mistake in the sense that I think flyers are going to be more unhappy than UA expected them to be about these changes.
+1. This interpretation was my intent. Although I'm not confident that all the changes were "intentional" and fully understood up the management chain.
To oversimplify: I definitely think Oscar agreed with "Let's streamline the award booking system and eliminate some esoteric loopholes that 0.01% of our customers are using to cost us money". But I doubt that senior management -- or possibly anybody at UA -- specifically intended the degree to which this has screwed customers trying to book reasonable, legit awards. I don't think they appreciated how often the booking engine
doesn't discover sensible routings, and therefore how much the removal of
any construct-by-hand functionality cripples the system for certain awards.
Of course, I could be wrong -- but I'd like to try and get their attention, and find out.