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Old Oct 5, 2019 | 11:48 pm
  #2100  
ExpertFlyer Voice
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Join Date: Jan 2005
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Originally Posted by jerseytom
Hey guys. First time using EF, tinkering around with the trial period before committing to a paid membership. For background - looking to snag an award ticket on ANA to Japan next November. That's a bit too far out to book tickets just yet, but I figured I'd try getting used to the tools at my disposal beforehand. Playing around with some "what if" scenarios with flights next years just to get my feet wet.

Very new to all of this, so maybe this is my not understanding how airlines work with awards, fare codes, etc. or maybe I'm not understanding ExpertFlyer.

First observation - if I search for reward tickets on the ANA website I can do so well into September 2020. If I try the same dates on ExpertFlyer it says it's too far in the future. Is there a reason for that? Says dates that far in the future aren't supported by the airline, but the airline's website seems to work...?
ExpertFlyer does not get ANA award data from the ANA website. Most reservation systems support up to ~335 days in advance only. We are looking for other data sources to see ANA 355 days into the future.

In any event, I tried some August dates to see what I could learn. I picked two arbitrary dates for outbound / return, and on ANA's website I can see that there is award inventory in business class, for both legs (non-stop flights NH11/NH12 between ORD and NRT). If I try the same inquiry on ExpertFlyer it shows that there is indeed availability on the outbound, but not the return. Any reason why it wouldn't see the return leg?
ANA shows additional inventory to their own frequent flyers vs what they offer to partner airlines. We show the inventory from the Star Alliance partner point of view.
Finally, I figured I'd drill into the outbound flight fare inventory to see if I could learn how many reward tickets tend to be made available in early booking. From the previous EF query it tells me that business class reward tickets are an "I" fare. If I search on that flight, no "I" fare bucket shows up at all.
For some airlines a flight may not be shown if there is no award availability in any cabin for the flight. You can still create a Flight Alert for the flight from the results page of the Flight Availability search or via the Create New Flight Alert page. Also you can enter Y as an "Other Class" in the Award search to force all flights to show anyway.

If you have a question about a search in the future, please email us directly at [email protected]
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