Its search capabilities are primitive (you often can find better availability searching segment-by-segment that you can telling the agent your origina and destination, simply because it doesn’t search many possible connections).

But most vexxing for frequent flyers is that the system filters availability. That is, a partner airline may be offering a seat for award redemption — but United’s system will still tell you it’s unavailable. The agent will usually blame the partner (“they aren’t offering any seats”) when that isn’t true at all. Instead, United doesn’t want to pay for the seat.

United is known to ‘filter out’ availability especially of Luftansa flights within Europe and Thai Airways premium class flights between Europe and Bangkok. But I never grasped just how extensive the filtering was on these routes until I started playing with an award from North American to Asia via the Atlantic (strange as it may seem, the distance is seven miles less for my destination and preferred routings than crossing the Atlantic.. availability supposedly better.. and offering a potentially better premium class experience).

Alas.

This morning I searched 53 dates in May and June using ANA’s award booking tool and found 51 flights on which Thai Airways was offering not just one but two award seats in First Class from London-Heathrow to Bangkok.

When I called United, I was told that there were no flights available with two first class awards during this period of time.

Then I asked United to check Franfurt-Bangkok. This is a tougher route, with only 9 flights showing two first class award seats available during this time. So unsurprisingly, United won’t book a single one.

Let’s be perfectly clear about what is going on here. United’s partners are offering award seats. United just won’t book them.

When pressed, United might say ‘different award inventory is made available to different partners’ but even that is a slight of hand — they’re really saying ‘different partners (ie, us – United) make different award inventory available to our members than other airlines make available to theirs.’

Lufthansa or Thai may well have inventory open in the “O” bucket (award first class). StarNet pretends it’s not there.

Shame on United — for refusing the offer seats your partners make available, and for claiming it’s your partners’ faults.

United is famous for aircraft swaps, unfortunately this has happened most recently with mainline A320s to TED (no first class) and before that it was downgrading regular 737s to old Shuttle aircraft that used to service the West Coast only. These aircraft swaps are disruptive, with different seating configurations. And ticketed first class passengers, in the TED example, go to an all-coach configuration. Not as big a deal on domestic routes as long-haul international.

But dropping 21 business class seats from the 747 has the potentially to be hugely disruptive. Either United will hold back most upgrades until the gate when it’s certain it’s running one of the old-style aircraft (bye bye advance upgrades) or it will be faced with significant at the gate downgrades (very unpleasant) when swapping out an old style aircraft with a newly confiugured one.

While I don’t ever bet on United’s savvy, I do think they’ll hold back upgrade availability… and then coach passengers looking to upgrade will be hoping for older aircraft once the renovations are underway because there will be much better upgrade chances.

Still, on some routes upgrades won’t be the issue. United will either be turning away paid business class, or potentially downgrading paid business passengers (though if first class seats haven’t been sold out, they’ll be managing the problem through operational upgrades).

A minor point, but a problem that United does at least have some time to work through.

United’s promo site is here.

Business class will feature:

• true lie-flat seats (not the angled-flat wedgie seats)

• some rear-facing seats in business class
  
• 15″ lcd video screens and video on demand

• iPod adapter and standard outlets for seat power

This will give United the best seats among US-based carriers. But they’re hardly world-leading. Virgin, Air New Zealand, Singapore, British Airways, and Cathay Pacific already offer similar business class seats. Those last three all offer first class as well, with products that will still surpass United’s (and we’re not even getting into the ‘soft product’ of food, service, and amenities – more about that below).

Along with the business class upgrades come far fewer seats — the 747 goes from 73 seats to 52, the 777 from 49 seats to 40, and the 767 from 32 to 26. That’s make international premium class awards and upgrades much harder to come by.

Not surprising, of course, if United is going to invest the money in the product they want a revenue premium for doing so.

There will be fewer first class seats, and on the 747 a whole bunch fewer economy-plus seats. They’ll be packing more sardines in the back.

While first class is improved as well, the difference in hardware between two cabins is reduced. Other airlines that upgrade their business class product while retaining 3 classes of service differentiate the front cabin not just with fewer seats and better hardware, but with meaningfully better service and meals. It’s just hard to imagine United doing this … with designer amenity kits and pajamas, with truly gourmet meals (including good Iranian caviar, lobster, etc) and fine wines (even Dom fails the test for first class champagne), and with attentive, anticipatory flight attendants. I’m actually surprised that United didn’t go two-cabin with this investment and cabin re-fit..

The promo video courtesy of YouTube:

Responding to complaints and pressure, United has relented and reversed course… sort of. Current Global Services, 1K, and Premier Executive members of Mileage Plus can register by August 15th so that their expiring 500 mile upgrades will continue to convert to miles — as long as the member retains at least Premier Executive status or resides outside of the 50 U.S. states.

General members and premiers are still out of luck, but at least United isn’t sticking it to their very best customers anymore (at least those who notice the offer).

Currently, if those upgrade certificates expire unused, they each convert to 500 frequent flyer miles.

June 1 this practice is no more.

I knew about the change back in January when it was posted on Flyertalk and didn’t see it as an especially big deal. It used to be that the old paper 500s converted just to 250 miles, and you had to mail them in to boot. Then when they went electronic it actually improved to the current 500 miles.

Now, with this new policy I really don’t get the logic of taking a paltry number of miles away from your best customers who really can’t use them. Makes no sense.

This is especially strange because the flyers with the most expriing 500 mile upgrades are those 100,000 mile flyers who do mostly international travel, many of whom are based out of the United States. Since the 500-milers can’t upgrade those transatlantic and transpacific flights, they just expire. It’s nice to have them turn into miles, an extra 20% mileage bonus in effect. Makes good sense, since this is in lieu of a benefit they can’t use. And long-haul travelers based outside the United States in particular would seem customers that are hard enough for United to attract and keep. Why take this away?

American used to offer conversion at 2500 miles apiece! Then it was reduced to 500. But conversion is still an option there as far as I know. And American’s 500-milers don’t expire at all, period.

United would allow ‘early conversion’ for years, if you had a stash of 500-milers they’d cancel ‘em out and deposit miles in your account in exchange. This was never a ‘formal’ option. So United is certainly within its rights to end it without notice. And that’s just what they’ve done — since Flyertalkers were apparently converting their 500-milers like crazy, United sent out a message to its agents saying ‘no mas!’.

Doing so just seems incredibly… petty.

Upgrade: Travel Better has more.

Good for folks who shop at these places anyway, it amounts to triple the usual miles on $1500 in grocery purchases over a month and a half.

Of course you need to be averaging $1000 a month in groceries — easy to do at stores like Whole Foods and the like, much tougher at Safeway!

And as usual, the following spending doesn’t count…

Liquor, Tobacco, Fuel, US Postage Stamps, Fluid Milk, Bus/Commuter Passes, Fishing/Game Licenses, Ski Tickets, Lottery Tickets, Gift Certificate sales, Pharmacy prescriptions, Safeway Club Savings, Safeway Store Coupons, and Sales Tax.

I still miss the days when same-day confirmed changes (not on the day of departure, but well in advance) were no cost to Premier Executive and 1K members. I could book an 8am flight and call up a week later, still long in advance of travel, and change it to a 2pm as long as the same fare class I had ticketed was available on the 2pm (and technically as long as the fare I had purchased wasn’t time or flight specific, but those rules were often ignored).

Still, fee waivers are good, and certainly appropriate for top tier elites.