Yes, they want you to spend another couple hundred $ because you can't anymore find the cheap flights on United.com by segment.
Of course it is pretty much fraud how United handles the situation and like all decent thieves they will attempt to clean up the tracks. An airline who is afraid of transparancy is not an airline I want to fly anymore. Several times this year did I use multi-segment after first confirming segment availability to come up with the best price. No more.

Your rationale for this doesn't even make sense. This information could easily be made available only through expert mode, as it was before the merger, thereby ensuring no 'confusion' on the part of general customers. It is particularly ludicrous to situate this announcement in an argument that United is committed to transparency. Now the only way for us to find flights where we can use our confirmed upgrades is by calling...which costs you more money and only serves to irritate us. Honestly, have you learned nothing from the AA status match and the siphoning off some of your top customers by competitors? Are you trying to drive us away?

I guess there's no need to repeat what everyone else is saying. But I will...

This is a HORRIBLE change. United's transparency is a flippin' joke. I too use this information for EVERY flight I book.

What's the use anymore? Is there going to be ANYTHING left to this airline that resembles the United we knew and loved? This is yet another move straight back to the way CO did things...If people thought the COdbaUA moniker was a joke, this firmly cements that it isn't.

Absolutely LOVE the timing of this. United makes public 'bad-for-customer' decisions at 5PM on a Friday, and 'good-for-customer' decisions during on Mondays. Can't remember the last time we had an announcement on a Monday. This is hilarious.

(Waiting until the usual suspects come to defend this decision...In three, two, one...)

my god, this is such a stupid decision that I thought it was a joke at first

Paging EXPERTFLYER VOICE,

Can you shed any light on this latest UA screw over? Will EF still have access to UA booking classes?

That or the VP of Customer Experience is a sadist.

I am literally on the phone now canceling refundable tickets and booking on other airlines.

This is perhaps the single most customer unfriendly move I have seen from United. Other downgrades have at least made business sense, but this is pathetic.

Methinks YES.
After all, the CFO said as much already. Shannon is simply doing his bidding, IMO.
Dave

"Expert Mode" Changes
 

I may as well just settle for Premium Economy on other airlines since the ability to book upgrades/rewards just took a nosedive. Now it'll take longer to research a trip than the trip itself.

A logical move would be to provide an expert mode for each profile and allow the user to toggle between I know what I'm doing and I don't. By default, don't show this data to the average John Doe.

I matched to EXP and am looking forward to EK starting up in IAD this month. This has minimal impact on me but I wish the rest of you good luck.

Thanks United.

I will now spend hours every week on the phone asking agents to search for flights and connections with R/RN space to use my GPU's and miles to upgrade.

And I won't let them hang up till they've found exactly what I want.

A waste of $ for you guys - phone agents searching through weeeks of RN space when I could do it myself for free on .com

This is enough to push for to AA for sure.

So please tell us how we are supposed to see when R space is available??? Many of us have very little trust in UA now. Your kidding yourselves if you think ANYONE will now buy a W fare blindly

Wow. This is an incredibly poor decision. Please rethink this.

You do realize you are alienating your best customers, don't you?

Maybe not.......very sad.

EXACTLY!!

Will expertflyer still be available to those of us who want to be confused?

After further consideration, this is still breathtakingly stupid. Making the announcement on Friday afternoon (PR 101!) is also pretty sneaky. If this were a Monday early afternoon, the thread would be 25 pages long already, and there would be dozens of companion threads titled some variant of "why this is the last straw" or "Smiszek=[insert historical tyrant here]"