ExpertFlyer

Using EF to look at the EK seat map, to review award/upgrade availability, setting seat and fare alerts.
http://www.expertflyer.com/

ExpertFlyer is an extremely valuable tool for the road warrior. You can sign up for a free account, which allows a capped amount of travel searches or for a nominal fee, you can sign up for a paid account, which provides unlimited search query.

What is EF?
An online tool which shows:

• Flight availability for over 400-airlines
• Award and upgrade availability for select airlines
• Real-time seat maps for over 100 airlines featuring SeatGuru® seat reviews
• Published fare information complete with rules, restrictions and Around the World fares
• Flight Inventory & Seat Alerts™
• Flight status
• Mobile edition for up-to-the-minute information

This section will walk you through how to search for an upgrade award on EK as well as award travel (ie mileage ticket)

When looking for a Business Saver Award and upgrade (from Y to J), EK books these into fare class D.

A Business Flex award is fare class C

Step 1
Login to EF

Step 2
Choose Upgrades & Awards from the menu on the left

Step 3
Input the desired city pairs, in this case I'm searching for award/upgrade availability between DXB and JFK departing the 5th April 2011 and returning 12th April, 2011



You will then be presented with the search results and seat availability. Like this:



I can clearly see that there are 7 seats available on the A380 service ex DXB - which can be redeemed as flight awards and/or upgrades.

If I scroll down, I am presented with the return availability. Again, I can see that there are plenty of seats available. Always a good sign!



What EF allows you to do is arm yourself with all the data you need so you can either then make the award booking on EK.com or you can call the Skywards desk directly and instead of waiting for the agent to find you seats, you simply tell them the dates you want, knowing that the availability should be there.