Boy I thought my job sucked, but I'd hate to be Shannon right now having to spin this nonsense.

That could have been easily solved by running a captcha for every 10 flight searches to see that information.

I know one thing this will do for me - it will cause me to make more calls tying up more agent time to ask for fare availability for multiple flights at once. That's going to make wait times miserable.

If they aren't able to give me that information, that's when bookings move elsewhere.

UA simply doesn't get it...

If memory serves, EF went through some kind of brouhaha with UA a couple years back, so I thought that they had an agreement worked out.

Shannon, one other question- Is this why the preview site has been redirecting to the main site recently?

I can only imagine United KNEW this change would have people up in arms. In my mind though, that should have been a red flag about this whole plan to begin with.

I guess there's no point in a preview / beta testing site anyway if you're intentionally going to break functionality...

The new feature is what is available on the preview site today. Now for each flight in your reservation you will know if your upgrade is waitlisted, confirmed or requested (depending on GPU, RPU, CPU, etc.). It still gives you absolutely no idea how many seats are available in first class inventory buckets.

I also don't buy the argument of screen scraping. Anyone can pay $99 for an ExpertFlyer subscription and get all the data they want for UA flights.

-RM

Shannon:

We'll no longer be able to see the precise number of seats available within the various buckets, or are you saying that we will not be able to see the buckets at all? (ie, if a pax wants to know if R class is available, the only way to do this is for us to call reservations).

Does the reduced visibility apply to revenue buckets or just award buckets?

Terrible.

Another step to earning the title: "Worst airline ever." Congrats.

Oh and expect call volumes and wait times to explode.

This makes me wonder about dynamic/targeted availability.

Showing all the buckets essentially means everybody gets the same "offer". Not showing all the buckets essentially means UA can manage who gets what.

Friday afternoon bad news dump

Shannon - Thank you for communicating the news, however awful it actually is. There have been whole threads on this forum dedicated to understanding how the allocation of fare buckets affects the availability of CPUs (obviously a concern for an elite traveler, and especially for lower level elites that want upgrades on popular routes). It is unfortunate that just when we are finally understanding the relationship (however ambiguous it still remains), the feature is being discontinued.

I will not speak for everyone, but personally, I use this information in planning which flights to take, when and to where. It affects in what city I might connect in, which flights to avoid if I need to make sure to get from point A to point B without hassle, and other concerns. Ultimately, if this removal just leads to less transparency than we already have, I am extremely disappointed and I think this is a tragic error. If it is removed and replaced with a better system (heaven forbid) that provides elite travelers with better clarity with respect to the information they are looking for (for me, upgrade availability), then I'm certainly in support. Based on recent history, I lean towards pessimism but I look forward to seeing if and how United doesn't turn this into a colossal error.

Somebody else made the astute claim that this is just a way to obscure CPU availability and make the purchase of TOD upgrades by elite and non-elite travelers much more popular. If that is the case, obviously, you should expect a huge backlash from the elite flyer community.

Best of luck with what will most likely be a cascading wave of irritation.

Shannon,
I have tolerated a lot of nonsense that your administration has perpetrated on expert flyers but this is beyond nonsense. That information is critical to sensibly planning and booking travel with UA - without it you are turning this process into a crapshoot. Do you guys ever intend to do anything that is actually customer friendly? I have been holding onto the apparently silly hope that as a GS it would continue to be worthwhile to book and travel UA but without the ability to actually do some real investigation of what you are willing to sell (and I am not talking cheap classes but rather M, B, Y and above as well as the upgrade classes) I just don't see how to sensibly book. Beyond that if you really had any intention of keeping transparency you would have exposed your "new" solution before destroying the old one. This airline is really beyond repair - and I have been one of your patient supporters through a lot of the threads here on FT. You and your bosses are truly nuts - just out of curiosity has someone offered a cash prize to the person who can destroy the airline most effieciently.

A seriously idiotic move. And I am afraid that your reasons for removing it hold no water. You are leading the race to the bottom.

Information wants to be free. This move is just regressive and simply inexcusable. That was the single best feature of the site.

If we call, will agents have visibility into specific fare buckets? Either way, would UA prefer that we clog the phones (which we will) instead of availing ourselves of self-service? How does this even help the company?