I can not see any rational business decision for making this change. Unless they plan to discontinue release of confirmable upgrade space in advance using SWUs and rely solely on paid upgrades.

PM just sent. Also submitted query through web site.

The most charitable interpretation I can give this is that they want to hide the R that shows as available before the script to clear the wait list is run, which I'm sure leads to customer confusion and lots of call center time (even from FTers). I can come up with lots of less charitable interpretations.

I, too, use this on every trip, even to examine revenue availability. I felt the pmUA opt-in model worked very well. I'm unsure whether my disappointment is at this going away per se, or that UA felt that whatever mysterious problem this fixes was a higher priority than all the other technical issues that have made me feel like I was being patient for the last 6 months.

Complaining to the Dot over a topic which they do not regulate is a great way to lose any value they provide in the areas they do regulate. This sucks. No way around that at all. But it would be foolish to react in a way that makes things worse. And losing the wee bit of protection that the DoT offers would be worse.

Well, to be fair, for years DL claimed that offering an "NYC" code to search on (for flights to any of the greater New York City airports) "confused" customers, so you had to search each individual airport. I think they were afraid that people would unknowingly book a different departure and return airport.
DL's customers must have gotten smarter, because they added back the NYC functionality probably a couple of years ago.

And it was the same thing with JetBlue. When they fly from all of JFK/LGA/EWR to PBI/FLL, that's 6 individual searches you have to run, or 12 if you're trying to find the best options in each direction. And more if you'd consider HPN. But very recently it seems they added "NYC - All Airports" as well as "South Florida" (PBI/FLL) which makes it much easier.

This being said, I think "customer confusion" is taking a big back seat to the "undesired exposure," which probably references competitors having access to the award buckets.

As for ExpertFlyer, I think it makes it more useful in some ways, at least being able to see revenue buckets, as it appears like a bunch of people use the fare classes for SDC or IRROPs. That should certainly remain available, I don't think UA has any way to block that information, as it goes through the GDS.

"Premier Access" to united.com

Maybe they'll have an Annual Option

Looks like UA has declared war on overentitled elites.

I should also point out that the vaunted AA pulled all public availability into their elite upgrade inventory (X/R) a couple of months ago, so it's not like UA's opaqueness is unique. (Though you can still access instrument upgrade and award availability on AA via ExpertFlyer).

The one thing "I did like"
 

Now it is going away. I used this feature daily and thought it was a great feature of the UA web site. Change takes away my ability to self service. Did anyone look at the additional $$ required in agent hours when folks have no choice but to call to search inventory??:td::td::td:

Agree. Especially the "This sucks" part.

I'm not so sure this part is accurate. I've yet to see any GDS source which can handle things like the IN/XN/JN/ON/PN/FN/YN buckets which EF displays.

Three words.
 

Kay Vee Ess. Doesn't negate the lame excuse UA is using to remove functionality. Next move is removal of aircraft type from flight searches.

Email sent to Jeff Smisek.

:td: Yet another change that plain sucks! The list goes on.

They.Don't.Care.

It's now an airline that tries to attract novice flyers and entice them to buy as many add-ons to their tickets as possible :td::td::td::td:

This further reinforces my (only half joking) theory that UA has made a minority (maybe now majority?) investment in EF, as they sure are finding ways to stimulate demand for the service