Friendly Skies reported earlier today that United has asked Expert Flyer to stop displaying upgrade and award space beginning Friday, October 30, 2013. United responded this evening, blaming Expert Flyer for accessing space in an unauthorized manner and promising there would still be other avenues to check this space.
Currently, Expert Flyer provides an easy way to check upgrade and special elite-only award space across one week intervals between an origin and destination. Multiple connections are searched and in just seconds you can gauge whether a flight or routing will have any confirmed upgrade or award space available. Even better, Expert Flyer has an automated system that will send you an e-mail alert should space open at a later time on your desired flight.
All that will be history on Friday, with United placing the blame on Expert Flyer (bolding mine):
We recognize the importance and value to you of accessible and transparent information about United flights. It’s a meaningful part of your travel planning, and we are committed to providing useful information that is both accurate and preserves the integrity of United’s data and systems.
While we are committed to data transparency, Expert Flyer has been accessing united.com in an unauthorized fashion to retrieve UA availability. In addition, these activities have consumed significant united.com bandwidth that could otherwise be used by regular consumers. As a result, we had to take this action to protect the security and integrity of United’s systems.
Thank you for your understanding as to why we had to take this action. We continue to look at ways in which we can provide you with timely and useful information (some of which you will see in new releases of our own digital channels) as well as with partners that have authorized access to our data.
Aaron Goldberg
Sr. Manager – Customer Experience Planning
United Airlines
My hunch is that Expert Flyer would not pony up for access any longer, but this statement from United casts doubts on Expert Flyer’s claims that they did not screen scrape from united.com.
This is not the first time United has moved with an iron fist–United removed this info from united.com about a year ago only to bring it back quickly after much protest.
United claims Expert Flyer is pilfering significant bandwidth from “regular consumers” but I do not think bandwidth has anything to do with it. Furthermore, what is a regular customer? The only reason customers like me use Expert Flyer on a daily basis is because united.com makes it so incredibly difficult to search for upgrade space compared to the ease of Expert Flyer. Now, instead of “clogging” United’s bandwidth with upgrade search inquiries, customers will be clogging United’s telephone lines with requests for agents to do the work for them. I do not see that as a smart policy choice. But I also do not think that was United’s primary consideration in cutting Expert Flyer off.
The real reason for this change is that United’s upgrade system is broken. At about 24 hours before a flight, any unsold premium class seats convert to both upgrade (R) and award (I) or (O) class space, meaning anyone can call in an “jump the queue” on the upgrade waitlist to confirm an upgrade using miles, RPUs, or GPUs. I sense this has something to do with United’s systematic attempt to sell upgrades to customers checking in before upgrading elites, but the end result has become increasingly unsavory for those who play by the rules and wind up in coach due to line-jumpers (and lucrative for those who know that R will open and take advantage).
So SFOTurtle on Flyertalk sums up United’s true concern in a pithy way: “We’re tired of admitting that our upgrade waitlist system doesn’t function and people still are not being cleared automatically and our agents are having to spend countless hours manually processing upgrades that should have been done without any human involvement, so if we shut down one avenue of information that our top fliers used to determine that they were potentially getting screwed by not clearing a waitlisted upgrade when R space opens up, and covering up (albeit poorly) that our IT systems are so bad that this seemingly easy fix is irremediable, then perhaps a fair number of our most loyal customers whose upgrades should have cleared will never know they didn’t and perhaps they will just give up calling agents to have their upgrades cleared manually.”
So wry, but so true in my mind. This folks, is the real reason behind the policy change.
But United, be warned. txp provides a hypothetical phone call to see how snarled the call centers could soon become:
Hi, I am looking for upgrade space for an upcoming transatlantic travel. I have some flexibility with travel dates, and also I don’t mind connecting at one of your gateways if this can guarantee an upgrade. So, what I would like to do is check all possible TATL routes, one by one. My travel window is the five-day period from xx/xx/2014 to xx/yy/2014. Are you ready? Let’s get started.
First, could you please check IAH-FRA for these five days?
What about IAH-AMS, same five days?
What about EWR-CDG, same five days? What about EWR-AMS? And, EWR-FRA? Wait, there is a EWR-BRU also. Also, EWR-DUS could work.
OK, let’s try ORD now. Same gateways in Europe, one-by-one please, same five-day window.
Wait, I’m not done. Let’s try IAD, same gateways.
Just when you thought I would be done — let’s try DEN and the west coast also…
OK, now that I found upgrade space from EWR to DUS, let me book the domestic flight. What is available from IAH to EWR? What about AUS to EWR? And DFW to EWR?
OK, now, let’s try the return flight. Here is my five-day window for the return, and I would like to search for all trans-Atlantic flights from either FRA, AMS, BRU, LHR or CDG into any of your major US gateways.
And then, of course, I would want to check domestic upgrade availability as well…
* * *
One piece of good news is that at least for now, upgrade space can still be searched on united.com:
Expert mode/visibility in UA channels is unaffected by this.
The KVS search tool will also continue to offer searches for United upgrade and elite award space, though its ugly, Windows-only platform makes it a much less desirable tool than Expert Flyer.
But unless United is willing to develop its own method for allowing customers to rapidly check upgrade space and make purchasing decisions based on that, United will soon find that it has only made the matter worse. All those flyers who use Expert Flyer now to track award and upgrade space are not suddenly going to say, oh well–I guess I’ll just leave it to chance.
Not a chance…
While I’m not keen on this, this isn’t unprecedented. More and more airlines want these third parties for accessing their systems. It is completely possible that EF’s systems are probing UA.com constantly or too often and causing issues. With all the complaints on the number of people upset by this, it demonstrates how many people are using this functionality.
We also don’t know for sure that EF was legally accessing this data. They can claim all they want, but there’s no agreement that’s been seen and clearly, if there was a contract, it’s been violated somehow. Thus, I’m assuming there is no contract and likely never was a contract and if there was, it was somehow violated.
As for “jumping the queue”. I’m not sure how that is a broken upgrade system. If a customer is willing to burn an instrument, why shouldn’t they be able to? This was the case with United, pre-merger, this isn’t a new policy. You have always been able to use an instrument to trump someone on the list, you’re using a form of currency that’s worth more, so it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to do. That’s how currency works, the more you throw at something, the easier it becomes to attain what you want.
Fozz,
My point is that someone seeking an instrument or mileage-supported upgrade can jump 10 1Ks and everyone else on the waitlist who are also trying to use GPUs or miles because the system does not dynamically clear upgrade space. So, say you have been waitlisted for an upgrade for a month as a 1K on an M-fare from EWR-GRU and we hit 24 hours before departure. There are two unsold seats in business and like clockwork, those J/C seats suddenly also become R/I seats, meaning I can call in as someone with no status and grab those two seats with my points even though that should never be allowed, IMO, before you, as a 1K on an M-fare patiently waiting on the list are cleared. Heck, even if PN space opens at the last minute, it is not automatic and I can still jump a UGS by calling in to force clear an upgrade.
I do it all the time for my clients and therefore, in all honesty, I love the current system. It benefits anyone in the know to the disadvantage of those who trust the system to work. But I can understand why United might want to cut down on this practice.
I think the release of R/I space is somehow tied to selling upgrades, so I do not think the system will change anytime soon.
Perhaps I’m just lucky, with the exception of one instrument upgrade, i’ve not had any not clear less than 24 hours out. Some do clear at T-24, but in my experience the pending upgrades to clear as those seats are released. The one case where I didn’t clear was an IRROP, so it was too close to departure time for that.
The system does process upgrades at T-24 and honestly, more frequently than that. I’ve had tickets that get issued and a few minutes after the receipt I get an upgrade confirmation. There are anomalies as well, i’ve seen flights where upgrades don’t get processed, but that’s more specific to a particular flight and reservation, not a systematic failure.
“this statement from United casts doubts on Expert Flyer’s claims that they did not screen scrape from united.com.”
Of COURSE Expertflyer was screen scraping, at least the way those words are commonly understood.
“Windows-only platform makes [KVS Tool] a much less desirable tool than Expert Flyer.”
Well I don’t know about much less… 😉
While I do still wonder what the real reason(s) are, the simple fact is that the more difficult it is for me to get an upgrade after purchasing a UA economy ticket when R is not available at booking, the less likely I will buy that UA ticket in the first place, if I have other alternatives. And I am one of those that often purchased upgrades with miles or just cash rather than depend on elite status, since I never found that elite status got me many upgrades.
Fozz, you’re probably talking domestic flights…it’s much worse on international flights, where one really needs the R space. Not uncommon for the “waitlist to expire” at T-24, R space opens up, yet your waitlisted upgrade is not processed.
United – We’re Not Happy Until You’re Not Happy
While the bulk of my travel is domestic, I honestly can’t say I’ve had any issues with international upgrades. Maybe I’ve just been lucky.
Anyone know what the frequency of EF scrapes were? Do other scraping options do it less?
@Gary: Forgive me for now knowing what the heck screen scraping is! 😉
My experience is more like UA-NYC. You have to watch for the availability of R space on international flights like a hawk to get an upgrade. I have usually waitlisted with miles (despite my reservation showing being eligible for a CPU or GPU, which I consider to be an illusion), and then when finding R availability – often a week or two in advance, which is why I use EF – call to have them redeposited and then reused to upgrade immediately using the R (and sometimes upgrade with cash, since that usually gets cheaper at the same time). Only rarely have my international waitlisted upgrades gone through at T-24 or any other time without my calling in, switching to a TOD or HOD or upgrade with miles, or whatever was good at the time. The rare occasions it has worked have been domestic. But I don’t mind flying economy domestic, on international I consider it close to a necessity.
Which makes me wonder one other thing, which is whether this will make things work better domestically – people who can’t get an upgrade (other than coast to coast) not caring enough to switch airlines for this reason alone, while international flyers will become more picky about buying a UA ticket that does not upgrade at booking because of less likelihood of future upgrade.
THANK you Jeff!!!!!!!!! United always prides themselves on being the airline with the most award seat availability, and I think it was good of them to make it fairer to remove access from services that decreased award seat availability for the people who were going to use their miles directly thru UAL to get BusinessFirst and Global First and First seats with miles. Plus, due to the Ebola outbreak, both of these factors discourage paying for premium seats and from flying meaning on routes such as SFO-HKG (lots of elites!!!!!) 1Ks actually have a fighting chance at getting kicked up using the Priority Waitlist. Again, thanks a million, United!