Possibly, but it may have required more time, and they will fix it next week.

I don't know whats going on behind the scene, maybe they've been in an escalated battle with screen scrapes and did this as a last resort to get it 'solved' by end of week?

Adding a randomness that is required to actually stop screen scrapes is more than just adding a captcha or re-c, not to mention those are proven to be very annoying and customers don't get them right and think it is their fault, sometimes they are just unreadable gibberish! It really isn't the long term answer, as it can be defeated with the simple types, very easily the best system is a multi faceted approach that requires multiple small steps that aren't easily duplicated. They could also make a custom image verification system using their own library of images, logos and logic.

Someone care to start a poll on when this "more robust and useful" information for expert travelers is going to be made available? I'd set the over/under at December 31, 2015, the day after Internet becomes available on United flights.

My travel agent, a very large consolidator for UA, lost the ability to see R/ON (formerly O and X respectively on pmUA) and it was driving her nuts. I told her about EF and she subscribed. So the new UA doesn't even give this information to their best consolidators.

I don't think ijgordon is defending this change, and neither am I. Just like the "we won't be able to get into a partner lounge with stickers" and many other sky is falling threads in the last 9 months, this one was blown slightly out of proportion. I blame UA Insider for not communicating this better in the original post and causing 25+ pages of speculation before the change went into effect. Even with expert mode or fare bucket visibility on UA.com I still kept my subscription to EF. There are a lot of benefits to it separate from expert mode. Yes, it will take much longer to search for upgrade availability, but you still can. Anyone who thinks this is a way for them to expand TODs is just ignorant.

They clearly want no one to have it easily. This isn't about infrequent travelers being confused, it's about making it harder to see R and the award buckets. But you still can.

If you just want award inventory the united site shows it just fine; not sure why you'd go through milewise or anyone else just for that unless they are showing it in a different way than what UA shows directly.

For the other inventory buckets, I highly doubt they are published into any of the GDS resources out there. Most airlines make a point of not actively publishing award inventory to the public.

1) I'm on UA.COM now and I cannot find any way to search for flights that have R space available. Now, the only option I've got is to choose a flight blindly, even if the flight leaving a few hours later has R space, I can't see it.

2) As has been stated many times before here, anyone who books a ticket or calls to inquire will jump the queue while the 1K is sitting on the waitlist that never clears.

In this race to the bottom, I expect them to cut the web, cut the phones, cut travel agents, and force everyone to drive to the airport to book tickets in cash. Just watch. That's where we'll end up in 12 months.

A friend's colleague is planning a winter vacation and wants to use GPUs and also wants a W fare, can't find that on 1 website and he doesn't want to sit there and use EF to find each flight w/ W and then search UA for R, so he's planning on a 3 to 4 hour call where he looks at every single routing IAD/EWR to each European city for W+R space over a 3 week period. I'm sure he could do that award search but they are unsure if it will be 2 or 4 going and he doesn't want to search both, so he's pissed and that's what he's doing to respond to this.

Seth's grease monkey tool is gone. KVS is gone and I spoke too soon.
EF is not showing United at all as an option for awards or upgrades.

Click advanced search. There is a box you can check that says "MileagePlus Upgrade Award". The results page will show which flights have R availability.


They'll never have a good answer for this, but the only thing they can say is the data scrapers can send out alerts to people to "jump the line." But it's a circular argument because the person requesting an upgrade at that time can stumble into the same thing.

"Expert Mode" Changes
 

My favorite posts in this thread (and I've read them all) are the ones from people who are going to call the "premier" line daily to check for inventory. In my recent experience, the premier line routes to the ICC 9/10 times anyway.

Do you really think that UA would be bothered by hiring a few more ICC reps at what I am sure are minimal wages compared to those in the USA, and

Who on earth has the sort of time to waste on the phone, talking to clueless agents daily, to see if upgrade space is available?

Just do the smart thing and move your business to an airline where things work like they are supposed to, and they don't play any of these ridiculous games!

Next year my wife and I both 1k will cash out our 1.3 million miles on award travel and then switch to American.

That makes sense. This information has value to many of us. There is no intrinsic reason it should or must be free. In my case I book travel for a couple dozen family members and the availability of that information has allowed me to upgrade the senior citizens in the family (and others) on a regular basis this past year. I would pay UA or EF or whomever a reasonable fee for continued access and a good interface. In my case, the united.com club that was brought over from PMCO ($5 credit per ticket booked) has already netted me about $200 this year, so giving some of it back for the info I need would still be worth it on balance.

What I can't stand is the lack of integrity United repeatedly shows in lying about why they do things. It started when they tried to chisel down the distances flown between city pairs and has continued since. At some point, you spend money (or not) on a company's product because you admire (or not) that company. Little to find that is admirable about UA these days.

Maybe, but they live in a different world!!!

Ah damn, forgot it expanded...apparently SN is part of it now too. So can't even punish UA by booking OALs.

http://atwonline.com/airline-finance...plus-plus-1117

I think this is wrong. I logged onto EF today to see that UA upgrade data is now officially gone.