Very disappointing. Like many others, I have frequently used fare bucket info to make a case to CSRs about flight availability they don't seem to be seeing. I also have used the info to determine when I might book a flight - just last week I took advantage of the $300 RT G fares SFO-OGG, but I needed more time to cement my hotel arrangements. Luckily, both flights showed G9, so I assumed I had more time. I realize that I could always book my tickets and then cancel within 24 hours, but that's quite a hassle.

I've also managed to book flights in multi-city mode when married segments limited availability in all fare buckets if booking standard one-ways or round-trips. This will be much harder for me to do. And, as others have clearly stated, I do make many booking decisions on the basis of upgrade opportunities and like to have some data regarding the possibility of making a same day change. I also use the fare buckets to see upgrade availability on the same flights (same day of week, but a week or two earlier) a few days before flight time to see how upgrades have historically been assigned. Now this all goes "poof."

I don't have many decent other carrier options out of SMF (UA's got service to all of its historic 5 hubs; AA and DL have much limited service) and I'm still optimistic about reaching MM status in 3-4 years, but one has to wonder how much worse things are going to get.

Shannon - not only is it not the most intuitive way, but for some reason it is set up to work only if one's billing address country is set to the U.S., so those of us who do not live in the U.S. have to either keep switching our settings back and forth or use a different browser just for checking upgrade availability, further adding to the frustration. :mad:

:td::td: I too dislike this change. The fare bucket info was quite helpful.

I can do it & my billing address is set for the U.A.E. Are you sure your not doing something wrong?

When I tried to load it while using Chrome, I get a "Extensions, apps and user scripts can only be added from the Chrome Web Store."

Are you sure you're currently set to UAE? What does it say at the very top right of your screen?

When my billing address is set to Canada (or UAE for that matter, which I just tried to make sure), checking off the "Mileage Plus Upgrade Award" box on the advanced search gives the following error message:

If I switch the billing address to U.S., the search works.

Exactly. The ability to assess the full field of information is what allows me to make educated "guestimates" on which flights, routes, and dates to purchase, and what class of service to purchase, when the goal is to obtain the upgrade at time or purchase or have a reasonable chance of clearing the waitlist later.

When accusations are made against UA here, and they don't expressly dispute specific accusations, does that silence speak volumes to you as well?

Or, does EF have the burden of proving itself innocent, while UA critics have the burden of proving UA guilty?

I think it is safe to conclude that ensuring that 1Ks can easily use GPUs is not a high-priority action item for UA's senior management team. I don't think that TODs are a big factor in this, but that's just an opiniorn.

I don't see this happening. I do see that as folks have figured out that there are annoyingly difficult ways of getting similar but less useful information out of the website, there are still folks claiming that there aren't any ways of getting the info that you need, and that this will result in a deluge of calls from the general populace to the call centers, resulting in the end of the world for senior management and redemption and validation for everyone here on FT. :)

But seriously, everyone here did originally think that there wasn't a way of seeing upgrade inventory, but now we've figured out a way. Thanks to those who figured this out! Everyone else should accept this and focus their complaints on legitimate issues - and there are a lot of them including how we need an improved way of seeing upgrade inventory and would appreciate having the revenue fare buckets back as well.

There is a W-Class Fare published, but there is no W-Class Availability.

So the website is working properly:

[KVS Availability Tool 7.0.5/Diamond - Sabre: Availability/FS/US]

Save it locally, open the Chrome extensions page and drag/drop it on to that page. Chrome changed their model to "add security" and it basically forces people to pay them to publish the script or use this workaround. I'm not particularly inclined to pay them.

And clicking the "more info" link on that page gives you a more detailed version of the story, including the steps to solve the issue.

Yes -- coming from Delta, anything is better than having it announced on FT by a random customer who happened to notice the change...

Wild guess and educated guess are day and night.

thanks!

yep, this change is bogus and inconvenient.
I too have had reps tell me there was no R space when I can see it online, then lo and behold, they suddenly see it.
Even last week I had a flight where RN=2 (then up to RN=4) from T-75 to T-30 without clearing, so the upgrade process is still broken.

I've been shifting to AA after ExecPlat status match and will only make Gold this year on UA after my one remaining UA flight (a TPAC).
Next year I might just do Gold on Aegean (only 20K miles) for the *A Gold benefits like lounge access (inc. domestic flights!), but mostly AA otherwise.