Originally Posted by
JohnAx
Done, I'll report any feedback. It may be a difficult problem for them - I first mentioned the PEK thing in a thread they had had an input to, so assume they scan FT and would have seen it. The problems aren't transient - I could easily reproduce the HKG-PEK error days later.
I also asked about the issue where if you leave the look up time at 5AM, an earlier flight won't be listed.
Well, EF sent a reply very quickly. Give them points for that.
Unfortunately they told me that the issue of flights or availability disappearing or changing when you enter an airline code is a "feature" that they know about. Ditto not showing flights earlier than 5 AM (or whatever starting time you change it to.) Neither is EF's fault, but the fault of whatever GDS they're drawing data from.
The email struck me as less than customer-friendly, and they seemed annoyed that the issue had been mentioned in a public forum. I understand that a whole lot of expensive programming would be needed to actually build a highly-accurate picture of airline fares and availability - just acquiring the data reliably from a variety of arcane airline computers that still talk in ALL CAPS is probably agony enough. But in the absence of that product, I think the site needs to be much more candid about its limitations. If they need to use a GDS that regularly misreports availability for some good reason, the customer needs to know that, and needs a button that skips that GDS.