Shannon,
Not sure what's more galling- you expecting us to believe your excuse for turning it off or that you're actually turning it off. I would have 10x the respect for you if you just told the truth and offered a reasonable explanation, good or bad. It's blindingly obvious that upper management wanted to de-value the certs. Anything else is BS. If United were a hospital, they would amputate your leg as a means to fix a broken ankle. You guys are both lazy and disengenuous, a fairly toxic combination for any business, much less an airline. I'm kicking myself for not immediately dropping UA for AA when I got the match. I'll never requalify for EXP now. Shame on me but shame on you for your insultingly stupid explanations.

(and I've been a pretty vocal defender of UA on here recently)

employees get the actual flight loads of all flights system wide.

You should charge $50/month

Shannon - why are you allowing yourself to be played? Going into the transition you were tops - and throughout 3/3 I thought the way you engaged with customers to understand system issues was outstanding.

We all know what has happened since 3/3 - but why would you allow your amazing skills to destroyed by remaining in a job where you have to spin this madness and somehow pretend to still support customers.

UA has become an airline where you have to fight for 5,000 AIr NZ miles when you fly the fare classes published on united.com - and even after 6 emails and months...still nothing. I think the philosophy is say no until customers just give up and take their spend away. There is no other explanation - we had top customer service, top on time performance and that has gone down the toilet overnight.

You see so much anger here because many of us run businesses - and we hate watching a once proud business that was on the up and up flushed down the toilet.

I saw the same thing. Logged into EF and found this:

Today United Airlines has decided to remove award and upgrade class inventory from various channels, affecting ExpertFlyer. As such, United will be removed from the list of airlines in the Award & Upgrade search tool until further notice. In addition, all Active Flight Alerts for United award or upgrade class codes will be put into the Expired state. Should the award and upgrade data become available at a later date, we will again activate those Flight Alerts.

However, all other United data will still be available on ExpertFlyer including:

Detailed regular fare class inventory via the Flight Availability search tool
Flight Alerts for regular fare inventory classes
Live Seat Maps and Seat Alerts
Fare Information searches and all related fare data
Flight Status, Flight Detail, Travel Information, and all other ExpertFlyer search tools.

Thank you for your understanding in this matter and continued support of ExpertFlyer.com

-The ExpertFlyer.com Team

THIS.
Why remove capability before a fix is in? Accountability=0

I'm thinking that Jeff and the board have secretly shorted the stock and are getting ready to cash in because no one in their right mind would be doing what they are doing.

Yah, I took the AA status match...but I do still care what happens.

Despite my hope that United will improve,
it seems that United is taking every
possible steps to push me away (won't elaborate).

It is time to leave United for good,
after 18 years of loyalty.

I see straw rapidly approaching my camels...

Destroy part of KVS and EF market?

Amazing how this gets "fixed" so quickly when there are many other pressing issues that deserve attention!

I think this is about much more than upgrades. It's about dynamic pricing.

Offer one person an L fare, another a W, and yet another a B fare as the cheapest. Don't let them see that cheaper fare buckets are available.

This is an unbelievably bad change, the worst since the merger.

It already takes me hours to plan a trip to Europe when I want to use a GPU because of: (1) extremely limited R inventory released in advance; (2) the W-fare minimum, meaning I can't just search for the cheapest and/or shortest flights, which is what most online search engines are optimized for; and (3) the need to avoid a substandard product (i.e. the unconverted 777s). I'm dreading all the extra time and frustration next time when I have to speak to an agent to check each of UA's 40+ transatlantic routes for R availability. I'm glad I've already used all my GPUs for the year. The online availability was invaluable to me just 2 days ago when, due to the LH strike, I had to find an alternate routing that preserved the upgrades for both me and my companion.

I am so jealous of all the people who can just switch to AA's more generous SWU system. Unfortunately, I live in a city where only *A makes sense (for example, we get just 3 American Eagle E145s to ORD per day, and that's it for oneworld)

I feel bad that Shannon has had to become a modern day "Baghdad Bob"

Why bother maintaining 1K any longer? Each technical and operational change United makes frustrates what should be its most valued customers. You "strain at a gnat and swallow a camel". How could a team of IT and operational decision makers take time to sit in a room to solve this "problem" and implement it at a time when (to the CEO's point in this month's "Hemispheres") all resources should be singularly focused on fixing the on time performance and maintaining functioning aircraft. That is the core issue. Those real problems are the ones seriously impacting the fundamental operations and financials of your company. How the Board of Directors have not replaced the entire leadership team or otherwise divided and sold the assets of the company and "called it a day" is honestly beyond my ability to comprehend.