Last edit by: Adam Smith
https://acrewardsearcher.cowtool.com/
Due to abuse, you must now first register (seelink at top the rest of this wiki) and sign in to use it. All access is logged (not what you're searching, but the complexity of the searches, and the number of searches). Abusers will be throttled or terminated. Continued abuse will lead to a more involved registration process, up to and including personal vetting by canadiancow.
Access to this cowtool for new users is temporarily disabled due to anticipated ("I'm going to make a big blog post") publicity and actual increases in usage. This is not free for me, and I am concerned what will happen if all the US major blogs pick it up.
If anyone "new" needs an account here, as long as you have 25 posts and your account is at least 3 months old, please register for a cowtool account, and then PM me (please include your email address) and I'll set you up with reward search access. And I will read your posts, so don't spam FT with crap please. If you have a genuine interest in travel, points, and so on, it really isn't hard to make 25 contributive posts to FlyerTalk and be eligible for access. If you do not meet this threshold, I am not making an exception for you. Not because you live in SFO like me, not because you're really excited, and not because of any personal issues. In fact, if you PM me with 15 posts, and I ignore it, and then you PM me with 30 posts a few weeks later, don't expect a response. Moderator note: the rules for access are very clear. Please don't post in this thread, or anywhere else, asking how you can get access. Those posts will be deleted.
Additionally, any Prince of Travel Platinum or Royal Platinum members may contact me over POT Discord for access.
Alerts
Basic price alerts are currently in available to all registered users. Full search/availability alerts are in...alpha.
Each account is limited to 4 alerts* for now.
A price alert is set on a specific itinerary that includes AC metal (this may be expanded as we begin to see EK dynamic pricing). The general idea is that you making a booking at price X, set an alert, and then if the price drops, you'll get an email, and can rebook the itinerary at a lower price and cancel the old, more expensive, booking. This really only works well if you're SE or booked a fare with no cancellation fee. All results with AC flights will show a "Price alert" link on the right. Clicking this will add one. You can view all your alerts in the alerts section, where you can delete them, or select two one-way alerts to merge into a round-trip alert, which will determine the current round-trip price and reset the alert level (since round-trip pricing is not the sum of the two one-ways).
The following is crossed out pending a potential opening of availability alerts, which would likely have similar restrictions.
If you have at least 2500 FT posts and would like access to the beta, send me a PM including the email you used to sign up for cowtool. There are currently no exceptions on the post count restriction. I am trying to slowly roll this out, and need an easy way to expand access, ideally to people who have contributed to FT a lot. The threshold will be decreased over time.
* Due to the fact that a round-trip alert requires making and then merging two alerts, the technical limit is 5, but I'm advertising it as 4.
Having Trouble? Hold "shift" and click the refresh button.
Feature Requests:
Bugs:
Due to abuse, you must now first register (see
Access to this cowtool for new users is temporarily disabled due to anticipated ("I'm going to make a big blog post") publicity and actual increases in usage. This is not free for me, and I am concerned what will happen if all the US major blogs pick it up.
If anyone "new" needs an account here, as long as you have 25 posts and your account is at least 3 months old, please register for a cowtool account, and then PM me (please include your email address) and I'll set you up with reward search access. And I will read your posts, so don't spam FT with crap please. If you have a genuine interest in travel, points, and so on, it really isn't hard to make 25 contributive posts to FlyerTalk and be eligible for access. If you do not meet this threshold, I am not making an exception for you. Not because you live in SFO like me, not because you're really excited, and not because of any personal issues. In fact, if you PM me with 15 posts, and I ignore it, and then you PM me with 30 posts a few weeks later, don't expect a response. Moderator note: the rules for access are very clear. Please don't post in this thread, or anywhere else, asking how you can get access. Those posts will be deleted.
Additionally, any Prince of Travel Platinum or Royal Platinum members may contact me over POT Discord for access.
Alerts
Basic price alerts are currently in available to all registered users. Full search/availability alerts are in...alpha.
Each account is limited to 4 alerts* for now.
A price alert is set on a specific itinerary that includes AC metal (this may be expanded as we begin to see EK dynamic pricing). The general idea is that you making a booking at price X, set an alert, and then if the price drops, you'll get an email, and can rebook the itinerary at a lower price and cancel the old, more expensive, booking. This really only works well if you're SE or booked a fare with no cancellation fee. All results with AC flights will show a "Price alert" link on the right. Clicking this will add one. You can view all your alerts in the alerts section, where you can delete them, or select two one-way alerts to merge into a round-trip alert, which will determine the current round-trip price and reset the alert level (since round-trip pricing is not the sum of the two one-ways).
The following is crossed out pending a potential opening of availability alerts, which would likely have similar restrictions.
* Due to the fact that a round-trip alert requires making and then merging two alerts, the technical limit is 5, but I'm advertising it as 4.
Having Trouble? Hold "shift" and click the refresh button.
Feature Requests:
- Allowing filtering/alerting by brand
- Option to launch AC.com in new tab should be saved to your account
- Show more information about stops, such as the time
- Finish and release alerts
- "Copy into round-trip alert" instead of "merge into" in case you want both
- Save filters to profile
- Historical prices
- Colored background gradiated by %age of mixed cabin. Solid green if 100%, fading to white as percentage drops...
- Option to enable a priority reward discount
- Populate filter checkboxes from deep links
- Lie-flat filter (maybe with lie-flat % filter as well?) - Unsure if this data is easily accessible
- +/- 1 or 2 days dropdown if entering a single value for date at top, grayed out if entering more than one date or range
- filter option to set latest arrival date & time (cow likes this)
Bugs:
- Reset password doesn't seem to work (though this has definitely gotten much better - if I made an account for you manually right after I started doing that, it may not work because I didn't understand the limitations, so I can help with that on one-off cases... it should work if it's a more recent creation)
Unofficial Advanced AC Reward Search Tool with Calendar (aka cowtool)
#46
A FlyerTalk Posting Legend
Original Poster
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: SFO
Programs: AC SE MM, UA Gold, Bonvoy Tit LT Sil, Hyatt Glob, HH Diamond, Accor Silver
Posts: 41,063
Since there's no PII in this, I'm going to add some logging later before I turn it back on. If it turns out there's any abuse, I'll add some throttling or authentication.
#49
Moderator, Air Canada; FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Feb 2015
Location: YYC
Programs: AC SE MM, DL PM, WS Silver, BA Bronze, Marriott Titanium, Hilton/Radisson Gold, Accor Silver
Posts: 14,927
#51
A FlyerTalk Posting Legend
Original Poster
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: SFO
Programs: AC SE MM, UA Gold, Bonvoy Tit LT Sil, Hyatt Glob, HH Diamond, Accor Silver
Posts: 41,063
Yeah, that's on AC's end, not mine.
In the Aeroplan booking engine bug report thread, people are seeing the same issue on the website.
I'll add a bit more verbose errors to this when I get to CUN or onboard my flight, but nothing I can really do here, since by the time AC times out, my tool's at the same timeout limit.
In the Aeroplan booking engine bug report thread, people are seeing the same issue on the website.
I'll add a bit more verbose errors to this when I get to CUN or onboard my flight, but nothing I can really do here, since by the time AC times out, my tool's at the same timeout limit.
#53
A FlyerTalk Posting Legend
Original Poster
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: SFO
Programs: AC SE MM, UA Gold, Bonvoy Tit LT Sil, Hyatt Glob, HH Diamond, Accor Silver
Posts: 41,063
#54
Join Date: May 2001
Location: YVR
Programs: AC SEMM
Posts: 1,995
Fantastic tool. Thank you for making it available for us.
just noticed this:
YYZ-BDA no results. YVR-BDA many results including connections through YYZ
https://api.ft.canadiancow.com/ac-re...nes=&maxPrice=
just noticed this:
YYZ-BDA no results. YVR-BDA many results including connections through YYZ
https://api.ft.canadiancow.com/ac-re...nes=&maxPrice=
#55
Join Date: May 2001
Location: YVR
Programs: AC SEMM
Posts: 1,995
Same with this search.
https://api.ft.canadiancow.com/ac-re...nes=&maxPrice=
YVR - PVG no results.
YYZ - PVG lots of results including YVR connection
https://api.ft.canadiancow.com/ac-re...nes=&maxPrice=
YVR - PVG no results.
YYZ - PVG lots of results including YVR connection
#56
A FlyerTalk Posting Legend
Original Poster
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: SFO
Programs: AC SE MM, UA Gold, Bonvoy Tit LT Sil, Hyatt Glob, HH Diamond, Accor Silver
Posts: 41,063
Does AC's site show results for both?
Were there any errors when you did it?
By the way, errors now have a 3 digit number beside them. 529 should be the one everyone's seen, but I'd be curious to see others. I really need to add some persistent logging.
Were there any errors when you did it?
By the way, errors now have a 3 digit number beside them. 529 should be the one everyone's seen, but I'd be curious to see others. I really need to add some persistent logging.
#59
A FlyerTalk Posting Legend
Original Poster
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: SFO
Programs: AC SE MM, UA Gold, Bonvoy Tit LT Sil, Hyatt Glob, HH Diamond, Accor Silver
Posts: 41,063
"error 200" is not something I ever thought I'd hear. "200" literally means "OK". So I'm going to need to look into that when I get on a flight with power (laptop is dead and phone is at 21%).
Maybe today, maybe tomorrow.
Maybe today, maybe tomorrow.
#60
Join Date: Oct 2013
Location: YOW
Programs: AC SE, FOTSG Platinum
Posts: 4,908
The YYZ/YVR thing is interesting though.