Originally Posted by
BobbySteel
Is EF still doing any sort of ongoing product development?
Yes we do, as we posted on Thursday we just released new features:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/23171474-post917.html
Thank you for your feedback and suggestions. As we note below you do have some of this functionality today however we will consider your feedback for future enhancements.
1) Main site: for AA award searches, when booking I often like to see loads as well as check upgrade award availability. It's a pain to have to run a query for loads, then an entirely separate one to check award status. It'd be much easier if the award check also ran a parallel check to show loads in the same page, so I could see 'C0' and also the underlying 'J7I7R7...' data. Alternately, offer a prepopulated link to get this data with a single click rather than going through a brand new query form.
You can do this today by adding up to 3 regular fare classes as the "Other" classes in the Award search.
2) Mobile: the mobile site is nicely efficient, but comes at the downside of reduced functionality. Often if manually searching for award space on AA, the lack of granular hourly choices (and lack of filter for codeshares) means I can't pull up a particular flight. For example, often I'll try searching for upgrade availability on a popular route like JFK-LHR and not be able to pull up the exact flight I want (i.e., the top 5 or so results are either earlier AA flights plus BA codeshares). At a minimum, the award search should filter out codeshares since those aren't applicable for upgrades anyways. And codeshares should be filtered out on award searches.
The Exclude Codeshare option is more complicated to add to the mobile site vs the full website. You can still use the time of day filter to make sure your flight shows. If you need further help with a specific example please email us.
3) General: persistent search fields! If I'm searching regularly, I'd love to see some sort of ability to save common settings. Even inside the same session, it'd be nice to prepopulate the forms with last-used data, not to mention across multiple sessions. I use the "Refine" link extensively but sometimes if I go down a seat query, I have to start from scratch to go back.
As noted by
cmn.jcs you can set preferences for departing airport and airlines(s), as well as date/time formats on the My Account page. You shouldn't have to start from scratch to go back, you can open a refined search in a new browser tab by right clicking on the Refine Query link and selecting to open in a new tab.
4) Dates: the system is US-centric, so the date picker is set to default to yesterday when I'm searching from the UK in the morning. Surely it's easy to poll for location or time zone of browser to adjust. Or just let me set default time as a system setting.
Our servers change to the next day at 6AM London time. You can adjust the date and time formats to European format from the My Account page.