UA Digital Insider

Hi everyone,

I’m back with an update on the beta website, and to share our plan going forward to fully introduce the new united.com

The new platform we built for united.com has already been incorporated into our mobile app for flight booking and now the website is ready to move forward. This week, we will start to shift more traffic on united.com to the new website. Both the new and existing sites will run in parallel for a few weeks, so don’t be surprised if you come across both. However, if you would like to start using our new homepage and booking path immediately, you can do so by using united.com/ual (make sure any previous United session cookies are cleared). Your feedback here is still important to us, so we’ll continue to prominently display the “Site Feedback” button, in green on the right-side of every page.

Beta was a new approach for us as an organization, and as many of you know, it is an extremely valuable step in refining a product prior to launch. Over the past few months, we have read and processed through thousands of pieces of feedback, and delivered hundreds of bug fixes and functional improvements based directly off what you and many other customers have told us.

Here’s a small snippet of items we’ve added to the site directly based off of your feedback:

…with even more still to come, like retaining advanced search settings when you edit in the middle of a search

As we fully rollout the new united.com homepage and booking path, you’ll start seeing a consistent look and feel to other webpages across the site. We’ve promised more than a new look, so there’s still more to come as we shift our attention to rebuilding other sections of the website. We’ll continue to update you with those major projects along the way, but they may or may not use a dedicated beta site so I’ll be re-naming this handle from UA Beta Insider to UA Digital Insider to keep pace with the many faceted digital projects we have in the hopper.

See you online & up in the air!
Krista
UA Digital Insider

PsiFighter37

Please fix the bug on the mobile app that does not bring in EWR as a departure location for NYC generically. Not sure if that pertains to the website as well, but if it's based on the same tech, I figured I would mention it here.

zrs70

Do others have a problem when using UAL.com on their iPhones (when trying to access the full site, not the iPhone app) - that the mobile site comes up in very small font (without the ability to "zoom" it larger?)

I understand the issue about defaulting to the mobile app. That's not what I am addressing.... It's that for some reason, the mobile app comes up in very small type - and it's difficult to press any link.

ctownflyer

1. Why can't you fix the award calendar on the beta site to only show dates with nonstop saver award availability like the legacy site can do?

2. Why isn't there a separate Economy Saver Award and Economy Standard Award column like there is for business and first class?

skimple

For anyone using Greasemonkey - I suggest turning it off before using the new site. Went into a weird loop. Haven't had a chance to fiddle around and see why.

sbm12

That's my Expert Mode+ script. It was working before but definitely looks to be messed up now. I'm taking a look.

ETA: Pull v7.2.0 from the Chrome store or the direct download link; it fixes the loop bug.

bmwe92fan

Any idea where the option went to select the class of service is for each segment of the multi-city search? I find the new tool virtually impossible to use properly when I fly to Europe in BF/GF and return in Y and upgrade with a GPU. For a flight in September I can book on the old site a roundtrip to HEL from my home for $4.7k - over in D, Back in U. After 30 minutes of trying to duplicate this itinerary and fare classes I give up - best price in the new tool is $7.2k - FOR THE SAME FLIGHTS.

EDIT - the issue seams to be that in the new tool it doesn't assemble fares in the same way as the old tool - and the fare classes end up being bumped up to full J / full Y on the new tool as it assembles the fare basis, versus the old tool that finds a way to get a D / U...

ft4lyf

I am concerned this kind of functionality will go away with the "new" site. The current "old" site is very useful for types of searches you describe.

goodeats21

Bummed to see this getting rolled out.

I will have to spend some more time poking around, but the little bit I have experienced of the new site left me underwhelmed.

HelloItsMe

+1

jaymar01

Dan's Deals is not a fan of the "upgraded" United.com site.

http://www.dansdeals.com/archives/71554

1P

So far, it seems to be a new-look front cover with a lot of the underlying site still the existing one unchanged. Once you go down more than a level or two, it's all very familiar-looking.

johnden

A few thoughts:

1) Looks better. The old site was 2000ish.

2) More or less the same as the old.

3) Harder to find saver Y, which is a good thing. Too many CC junkies with miles to burn. Better to obscure it and save some inventory through less redemptions. Also an easier prelude to dynamic pricing.

4) Less travel agent features for ticket building. I suspect this is a fair trade off, most people are buying a simple RT and will Be confused by too many options. Less likely to have bugs too. With more flyers being less experienced, and this trend likely to continue, seems a prudent move. Simplicity in this case is a better product overall.

Richard Chen

Does this new site have dynamic award pricing?

Not expecting an answer as UA Insider rarely posts past OP & is disallowed from revealing its details or existence, so we'll take the presumed yes.

Silver Fox

Same as Deltas?