I agree with the others; the changes to search are terrible. If this is the price for three letter searches, the price is too high.
I've got one question: Are changes like this evaluated and decided by actual users (Flyertalkers or some leadership group of Flyertalkers like the Talkboard) or are they decided solely by the technical staff?
All too often in many organizations, dramatic changes to the functionality of software are implemented by the technical staff without any real input by those who use it the most. I've seen this again and again.