Originally Posted by
beckoa
Thanks for maintaining the site!
I find it can be even faster then expertflyer with alerts...
It
can be, but not always.
Here is what ExpertFlyer has to say about that:
How often do Flight Alerts check for availability?
We have a proprietary algorithm that we will adjust as we learn more from the requests for Flight Alerts that our subscribers make. Suffice it to say, the polling frequency increases as the departure date and time approaches.
Luiz does something similar:
Flights are Refreshed/Updated in the following manner:
* DepartureDate is in over 21 days : Every 24 hours (once daily)
* DepartureDate is in between 14-21 days : Every 12 hours (twice daily)
* DepartureDate is in between 7-14 days : Every 6 hours
* DepartureDate is in between 4-7 days : Every 3 hours
* DepartureDate is in less than 4 days : Every hour
I'd guess they're both pretty much the same schedule--it's just that Luiz actually tells you what he does.
The problem is on flights far in the future (e.g. more than 21 days out), you're only getting U checked once a day. If ExpertFlyer checks at 11:35am and Luiz checks at 1:15pm, but AS opens up U at 12:20pm, Luiz will appear to catch it 23 hours before ExpertFlyer does. So it's not that Luiz is faster--it's that his timing just happened to work in that particular instance. If AS opens up U at 9am, ExpertFlyer will apear to beat Luiz by almost two hours.
Also, remember Luiz is simply scraping data off of the AS website, and the AS site has a bit of a lag with displaying U space (and breaks occasionally, as he indicated). ExpertFlyer is a dedicated server with direct access to a GDS with real-time availability and is more robust as a result.
Of course, you definitely can't beat Luiz's price... ^