Originally Posted by
TEDisgone
I searched BA and they do match what Expert Flyer shows but AA matches what Alaska shows. I don't have a QF account to see what they show but none of that really matters if I'm using Alaska points as my currency. So now my question is from what database is Alaska drawing on and how can we use that to track seats? I did try searching for my example route in EF using Alaska as the airline and it could pull up Economy seats but U (which is what Business on Qantas codes as but First Upgrade on Alaska) shows 0 so I don't know what special code to use to find either Business or First seats that seem to be available to Alaska and American but not other partners.
Originally Posted by
TEDisgone
I thought so too when I first discovered the discrepancy but then I booked it on Alaska and it ticketed. These are not phantoms.
I've recently had a similar experience when booking QF seats using AA miles. The availability to AA was different from that which was shown on EF. One possible cause was QF's use of married sector availability (obviously, that's not relevant to the example that you've given), but it also seemed possible that QF was making private inventory available to AA that was not being published to the GDS. It was also interesting that some inventory that was published to the GDS was not bookable by AA, which simply could not see it (actually, the AA agent said that she couldn't see the flight at all).
Because married sector games aren't relevant to your search, I would tend to suspect the latter possibility. That is also supported by the fact that for your date, what AA shows to me is matched by what QF shows to me, and what BA shows to me matches what EF shows.
And if that is the cause, then there is no alternative but to search the relevant airline websites yourself. If it's not published to the GDS, EF can't help.