Bringing United Expert Mode+ to the Beta Site


The new United.com beta site has been in production for many months now, including a stint in an open beta – accessible to anyone – since mid May. With all the differences in the site getting some of my tools updated to work properly with it has proven to be a challenge but, thanks to the help of a friendly reader, I’m happy to say that the Expert Mode+ browser extension is now updated and functional with the new code.

ua-expert-mode-beta
The Expert Mode+ extension expands all the details tabs and highlights award inventory. Green is good; red is bad.

The gist of the extension is simple: It will highlight the inventory bucket details for each flight, showing off the availability (or lack thereof) for award and upgrade options. This does require that the user is fully logged in to the United.com site when searching and also that they have set their profile to enable “Expert Mode” in their settings.

The new United site loads data differently than the old one so the process of expanding all the tabs and getting the information to highlight is a bit slower. But it does work. It also integrates with the fare box calendar widget at the top of the page so as you switch dates – even without resubmitting the whole search – the script will update the page, expanding all the inventory details and highlighting the inventory buckets for awards & upgrades.

Because of the way this one works (external dependency on jQuery) I can only get it working on Chrome right now. If someone knows how to tweak that so it works on Firefox and other extensible browsers without having the jQuery.min.js file embedded in the package feel free to share and I’ll give it a try. But I mostly use Chrome so that’s what I developed for.

I’ve been led to believe that the TamperMonkey/non-Chrome version available here also works. Please let me know if you find that to not be the case.

And, again, a huge thanks to CS for pointing me in the right direction; I had mostly given up on this one.

Related Posts:

Never miss another post: Sign up for email alerts and get only the content you want direct to your inbox.


Seth Miller

I'm Seth, also known as the Wandering Aramean. I was bit by the travel bug 30 years ago and there's no sign of a cure. I fly ~200,000 miles annually; these are my stories. You can connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

5 Comments

  1. Works great on Firefox. While I am not quite enamored with the new beta site (way too much scrolling and poor usage of screen space), Expert Mode + will make it more tolerable. Many thanks!

  2. The upgrade icons only show after I click on the Details link. They don’t show on the flight/price rows.

    I’m using Firefox 40.0.3.

    Any tips?

  3. I take that back. The upgrade icons I’m seeing are on “B” fares. I guess it’s not working at all. The seat counts for PN, RN, R, IN, I, XN, and X are not in different colors when > 0.

Comments are closed.