Welcome to FT,
dl19
Originally Posted by
dl19
I have been digging around for days trying to understand how to find availability of the best fare basis in Expert Flyer.
An example: I looked for the lowest price fare basis for 12/23-12/31 ORD-NRT RT UA PE on Expert Flyer and find fare basis RLX47BNS but when I look on United's website I see fare basis RLX47BNS and RKX08JNV being used. How did I find when a specific fare basis is available on a certain day? Also I've read through the rules and seem to be following them all.
I think that the place that I would start looking for the answer to your question is
ITA.
For example, if you search for a round trip ORD-NRT, specifying extension code "F UA..RLX47BNS" in both directions, this will only return results on which that fare is being used to price both halves of the trip. If you're looking first to find dates on which the fare is valid, regardless of availability, switch the availability checker off (uncheck the box for "Only show flights and prices with available seats"). If you're a bit fed up of looking for specific dates, try using "See calendar of lowest fares", specifying (for example) 20 December and then a "6-10" night stay.
However, a quick look suggests that this will also return nothing using that specific fare in both directions. The reason is that as far as I can see your dates aren't permitted by the rules of RLX47BNS. That allows travel on Monday to Thursday only in both directions. In addition, around the time that you want to go, outbound travel must be from 25 December to 1 January, there is a minimum stay of 7 days, and inbound travel cannot be later than 31 December.
So you can't use RLX47BNS for outbound travel on 23 December. And if you use RLX47BNS for outbound travel on 25 December, then 31 December is too early to satisfy the minimum stay condition.
This is probably why you're being shown a different fare in one direction.
To bring this back to the topic of this thread, while EF is great for identifying fares that might be valid for your travel, it's not the best resource for checking the next logical step, the one that you're trying to check. That's why you need a different tool for this - and ITA is very good for this.