1. Last night, I logged in to UA.COM to check for saver award availability on a route that I've been monitoring, using my iPad, not logged in. There was lots of saver availability in September but nothing at all in the next week.
2. Then, I logged in, and repeated the query. Suddenly, there was a bunch of new saver inventory showing up for the next few days. This shows that XN>X for "elites" (presumably those who are not over-entitled).
3. Then, I went to my laptop, and repeated the query, because I wanted to grab one of the flights. On my laptop, I was "logged in" according to CO's definition of being logged in, which means, you're logged in, they know who you are, they know your status, they know and show how many miles you have, but, despite that, you are really not logged in, even though you are logged in. In that state, on that machine, I saw a totally different set of availability results. It wasn't like case 1 where there was no availability nor was it like case 2 where there was lots of availability. It was showing some crappy availability that was better than nothing but not showing the saver award that I wanted to book.
4. Then, I physically logged out, and physically logged back in again, so that now I was really logged in. Not just CO-style logged in, but logged in to the point that I was actually logged in, according to some other definition of being logged in. I repeated the query and, this time, it showed the same results as case 2. And, I booked the ticket.
We all know that there is X for non-elites and XN for elites and that XN can be > X (unlike R which is never > RN), and it makes sense that XN would only be displayed when logged in as an "elite" who is not over-entitled. However, I was shocked to learn that there is a third intermediate state between these two states that shows you what looks like XN inventory but in fact is showing some subset of all truly available inventory.
2. Then, I logged in, and repeated the query. Suddenly, there was a bunch of new saver inventory showing up for the next few days. This shows that XN>X for "elites" (presumably those who are not over-entitled).
3. Then, I went to my laptop, and repeated the query, because I wanted to grab one of the flights. On my laptop, I was "logged in" according to CO's definition of being logged in, which means, you're logged in, they know who you are, they know your status, they know and show how many miles you have, but, despite that, you are really not logged in, even though you are logged in. In that state, on that machine, I saw a totally different set of availability results. It wasn't like case 1 where there was no availability nor was it like case 2 where there was lots of availability. It was showing some crappy availability that was better than nothing but not showing the saver award that I wanted to book.
4. Then, I physically logged out, and physically logged back in again, so that now I was really logged in. Not just CO-style logged in, but logged in to the point that I was actually logged in, according to some other definition of being logged in. I repeated the query and, this time, it showed the same results as case 2. And, I booked the ticket.
We all know that there is X for non-elites and XN for elites and that XN can be > X (unlike R which is never > RN), and it makes sense that XN would only be displayed when logged in as an "elite" who is not over-entitled. However, I was shocked to learn that there is a third intermediate state between these two states that shows you what looks like XN inventory but in fact is showing some subset of all truly available inventory.