There is an option to deactivate a nominee. As I understand it, it is not possible to change a nominee even if you deactivate and it is also not possible for nominees to request upgrades for themselves (must be requested by member). What am I missing? What is the purpose of this deactivate function?

So that you can click it accidentally...

The satisfaction of removing your spouse if you're going through a divorce?

I still don't see the point of it. You wouldn't have to remove your spouse, just don't do any upgrades them. Or, could you upgrade them, deactivate them, get your credits back, hope their original fare class is no longer available and they have to pay fare difference to get their original seat back?

people change their minds or could want to remove someone's who no longer a SO?

but they need to wait until the next calender year to nominate a replacement

You cannot change your mind. Once you appoint a nominee, you cannot change it. Here is exactly what it says on AC website.

"Once you have completed your list of eUpgrade Nominees, you will not be able to change it. However, you will be able to deactivate a nominee if you no longer wish for them to use your eUpgrade Credits, and reactivate them if you change your mind later. Please note that deactivating an eUpgrade Nominee does not enable you to add an additional nominee."

It goes on to say

"As an eUpgrade account owner, you will always be responsible for requesting an upgrade for your eUpgrade Nominees. The eUpgrade Nominees themselves cannot request upgrades using your eUpgrade Credits."

If you no longer wish for someone to use your credits, just don't request any upgrades for them! No need for deactivating. All this does it confuse people. I would love to hear from AC the rationale behind introducing this function.

The only possible usefulness would be if you could use it cancel an upgrade request that you already made. It's not clear if this is the case. What is the procedure for cancelling an confirmed upgrade or a wait listed upgrade? Would the nominee or the sponsor have to make the request?

i never said changing your minds meant changing nominees...

maybe in the future if upgrading does not have to be done by the top tier member but can be done by the nominee, deactivating them would be a useful feature, i agree based on the current implementation it's pretty useless

pretty useless? I would say it's completely 100% without use. Totally useless. You can get the same functionality simply by doing nothing.

I bet if they didn't have it they would get complaints from people who wanted it. The purpose of the button is probably primarily to give the CS people an answer when people ask how to remove a nominee so they don't have to explain why they can just do nothing.

Only use I can see is if you had your girlfriend nominated, broke up with her, then
your new girlfriend sees the ex's name and asks why are you still upgrading her?

Or, if you're married, but u/g your mistress, but do not want a permanent
record available for your wife to see..., you can nominate her, upgrade her,
then deactivate after the transaction is done.

^

Actually, sort of logical, makes good systems or general programming sense... if you can turn something on, allow the ability to turn it off too; if you can subscribe, allow unsubscribe...

Only makes sense if turning the function off is useful is some way. Turning off this function doesn't actually do anything.

keep in mind you can reactivate back your mistress, i haven't nominated anyone yet, but guessing deactivating will still keep the name there

Well, I�ve never clicked the button, but I assume it does do something, it deactivates a nominee.