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Star Alliance/Oneworld Award Planning with Award Nexus

Star Alliance/Oneworld Award Planning with Award Nexus

Old Aug 11, 2010, 10:16 pm
  #121  
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Join Date: Sep 2005
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Originally Posted by L4ibsch
I have an idea for a new feature: email alerts

How about being able to ask ANX to send me an email when an award on alliance X in class Y on date (range) Z becomes available? Would be nice to be able to restrict things like direct flights only, carrier, etc. ANX is getting that information from the searches of its users.
Some kind of scheduled search or alert is what I am looking at now, but there are some tricky non-technical factors I need to figure out first.
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Old Aug 11, 2010, 10:17 pm
  #122  
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Originally Posted by MKE-MR
I saw another unexpected result today. Searching for YYZ-MUC availability on two specific days using NH/CO/AC and +1 day. For day 1, I get results for MUC-YYZ, but for day 2, I get results for YYZ-MUC.

Actually, the problem seems to lie with the AC engine. The results in the wrong direction are showing up through AC, whereas the results in the right direction are showing up through NH and CO.
Thanks for the bug report. I saw the same kind of result mixing on another search the day before. Seems like the AC engine is using the old value from another search.

This will require some time to research.
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Old Aug 15, 2010, 2:03 am
  #123  
 
Join Date: May 2007
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Feature Request

Can you add the ability to perform a search again direcly from the recent searches screen?
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Old Aug 15, 2010, 4:01 am
  #124  
 
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System seems to have fallen over today for me. Searches just never end - or even start judging by the fact that points are not consumed.

Is there a way to terminate searches? When I look at recent searches everything I have tried today is "queued".

I tried logging out and logging back in but they are stille "queued". The first time I tried to log in I got a message in red saying I tried to do something I should not be doing. Worked fine the second time but searches still not working. I have tried some very simple ones and various methods with the same result every time.
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Old Aug 15, 2010, 4:09 am
  #125  
 
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Originally Posted by Cheetah_SA
System seems to have fallen over today for me. Searches just never end - or even start judging by the fact that points are not consumed.

Is there a way to terminate searches? When I look at recent searches everything I have tried today is "queued".

I tried logging out and logging back in but they are stille "queued". The first time I tried to log in I got a message in red saying I tried to do something I should not be doing. Worked fine the second time but searches still not working. I have tried some very simple ones and various methods with the same result every time.

Same boat here - have a search queued for 7400 seconds so far.
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Old Aug 15, 2010, 6:23 am
  #126  
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Last weekend, should have reported this, but I was extensively searching IAD-NRT and ORD-NRT, 2 pax in F, using the Star Alliance/NH engine.

Award Nexus was only returning UA results, so at first I assumed nothing was available on NH.

But tons of NH availability existed, which I found manually and booked. Not sure what the hiccup here was.
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Old Aug 15, 2010, 7:37 am
  #127  
 
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I thought I had reported this last night, but don't see my post anywhere, so could have forgotten to press the "submit" button in the 3AM fog.

Anyway, I tried to search for NRT-DEL (JL) and DEL-NRT (CX) but the search was going on forever and never returned any results.

Suggestions: (1) A "stop search" button when something is obviously wrong. (2) You can also automate this. For example if a search has taken 5X the estimated time, it can be terminated and automatically be reported to you as something to look into.

Agree with gsforfree that a record of recent searches and ability to repeat them with one click would be great.

Finally, why not put a link to Award Nexus in your signature?

Last edited by aktchi; Aug 15, 2010 at 7:43 am
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Old Aug 15, 2010, 7:44 am
  #128  
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Very sorry for the hiccup today.

I was doing some database maintenance, and afterward the backend didn't connect to the right database, thus the searches are not being performed.

I have just rectified the problem and the queued searches should be done in the next few minutes. Please login to your account and look under Recent Searches. You should see them finishing up (hint: if the view column is blank, then this is a search that you haven't reviewed yet).
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Old Aug 15, 2010, 7:59 am
  #129  
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Originally Posted by gsforfree
Can you add the ability to perform a search again direcly from the recent searches screen?
Originally Posted by aktchi
Agree with gsforfree that a record of recent searches and ability to repeat them with one click would be great.
I assume you know about the "edit" link and how you can initiate a search again with two clicks? Regardless, it is a good suggestion and I will see what I can do.

Originally Posted by aktchi
Suggestions: (1) A "stop search" button when something is obviously wrong. (2) You can also automate this. For example if a search has taken 5X the estimated time, it can be terminated and automatically be reported to you as something to look into.
So far, downtime is infrequent enough that I rather not complicate with the system with further self-check. I also check up on ANX often enough that, by the time an automated alert is sent, I would have already noticed it myself.

Of course, if this starts to happen regularly, I will have to do something about it.

Originally Posted by aktchi
Finally, why not put a link to Award Nexus in your signature?
I am still a little timid due to the server capacity limit. But I should be putting something up soon.
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Old Aug 15, 2010, 8:03 am
  #130  
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Originally Posted by gleff
Last weekend, should have reported this, but I was extensively searching IAD-NRT and ORD-NRT, 2 pax in F, using the Star Alliance/NH engine.

Award Nexus was only returning UA results, so at first I assumed nothing was available on NH.

But tons of NH availability existed, which I found manually and booked. Not sure what the hiccup here was.
This sounds like something that I should look into.

I do not see any use of NH in any of your recent IAD-NRT searches. Can you send me the links to the searches that you are referring to?
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Old Aug 15, 2010, 9:23 am
  #131  
 
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All up & running again as reported. ^

But I did get a repeat of the (rather stern in red) message "The change you wanted was rejected." the first attempt to log in again.
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Old Aug 15, 2010, 9:59 am
  #132  
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Originally Posted by Cheetah_SA
But I did get a repeat of the (rather stern in red) message "The change you wanted was rejected." the first attempt to log in again.
The error message is harmless. It is a security mechanism designed to thwart cross-site forgery, but for some reason it was triggered when you log in.

Did you clear you browser cookie, or opened up the login page, and waited a long time, before logging in again?

If you keep getting this message, please note and send me the exact sequence of events that you followed to login.
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Old Aug 15, 2010, 2:09 pm
  #133  
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Originally Posted by ckpeter
This sounds like something that I should look into.

I do not see any use of NH in any of your recent IAD-NRT searches. Can you send me the links to the searches that you are referring to?
Well, shoot, I didn't even realize that CO searches were an option, in my mind it was just AC and NH and so I checked the box that wasn't AC

So... the reason that NH awards weren't coming up is because CO doesn't support NH flights. Hah!

That'll teach me
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Old Aug 15, 2010, 2:42 pm
  #134  
 
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Originally Posted by ckpeter
The error message is harmless. It is a security mechanism designed to thwart cross-site forgery, but for some reason it was triggered when you log in.

Did you clear you browser cookie, or opened up the login page, and waited a long time, before logging in again?

If you keep getting this message, please note and send me the exact sequence of events that you followed to login.
On the first occasion it was a quick logout/login. The second time was a long interval (several hours) and cookies may have been cleared when I logged into a work vpn in the interim. Anyway, I'll monitor this and keep you posted if it happens again.
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Old Aug 15, 2010, 6:29 pm
  #135  
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Have been fiddling with Award Nexus for a week or two now, but just discovered this thread.

First of all, congratulations on constructing this excellent tool! It has already come in very handy in finding 2 RT CX F seats SFO-HKG and connecting J flights to and from CMB. Great stuff!

I have a few minor suggestions re explanatory info you might post on your site. They might be so minor that they're not working including there, but FWIW...

1. For *A awards, you might include mention of the fact that UA Starnet blocking results in the following: non-UA *A awards that appear available via, e.g., an NH search in reality are sometimes not available for redemption using UA miles.
2. It might be useful to suggest to folks that if they find a flight that appears available, if they call an airline they provide a CSR with the specific flight # and/or time rather than having him/her simply do a search for availability on a given date. I say this because of a specific experience I had with a generally competent, helpful AA CSR while booking the CX flights mentioned above. When I first asked her about availability on a given date that ANX was showing as available, she could not find it. But it turned out that she was simply working within unnecessarily limited time parameters, perhaps because she thought CX only had one SFO-HKG flight daily.
3. As indicated by other comments I've seen in skimming through parts of this thread, you might explain/clarify Route Builder a bit more. Until reading the thread, I didn't realize that: a) I could plug in more than one airport into the transit box or b) that the transit box also serves as a multiple origin/destination search box if you leave those one of those other two boxes empty. You might accordingly add this info to your Route Builder bullet points:
  • You may search for more than one transit point by entering multiple airport codes in the transit box
  • You may search for multiple origins or destinations by leaving their respective boxes empty and entering multiple airport codes in the transit box. The transit box thus becomes the de facto origin or destination box.

Or something to that effect...

Anyway, again, thanks for pulling this tool together!

Last edited by Thunderroad; Aug 15, 2010 at 6:58 pm
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