Jul 19, 21, 10:34 pm
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)
Jun 8, 21, 5:56 pm
#76
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: 41,062
Originally Posted by jerryhung
Thanks Cow, very well done. I've missed coming here or flying 
Few ideas
1. An example text besides the textbox is easier than a moving pop-up help or even a calendar dropdown for the date field
2. Can we add a Duration filter also? obviously don't want 40+ hours flight if I can find <17 hr flights
This worked well for me, now that Taiwan people are looking to fly to USA to get vaccines :P
https://api.ft.canadiancow.com/ac-re...7-31&airlines=
Few ideas
1. An example text besides the textbox is easier than a moving pop-up help or even a calendar dropdown for the date field
2. Can we add a Duration filter also? obviously don't want 40+ hours flight if I can find <17 hr flights
This worked well for me, now that Taiwan people are looking to fly to USA to get vaccines :P
https://api.ft.canadiancow.com/ac-re...7-31&airlines=
2. You can already sort by duration, but a filter would also be easy.
Jun 9, 21, 1:25 am
#79
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: 41,062
Originally Posted by jerryhung
1. An example text besides the textbox is easier than a moving pop-up help or even a calendar dropdown for the date field
As for the dates, I guess it depends what people want.
I'm personally often looking for something like "any Friday or Saturday in July", so a "range" doesn't work well for me. However your example was just a range. I'm not really sure how to make that work well with a calendar.
But I also don't really care if the UX is amazing. Move fast and break things, right? Hence why this exists, and a calendar on AC.com doesn't?
Originally Posted by jerryhung
If we search too much, soon Aeroplan may add a CAPTCHA to block us :P
Although they have never done that before so I don't expect it
Although they have never done that before so I don't expect it
Last edited by canadiancow; Jun 9, 21 at 1:35 am
Jun 10, 21, 5:56 am
#80
Join Date: Mar 2007
Posts: 4,734
Originally Posted by canadiancow
I've added the example text.
As for the dates, I guess it depends what people want.
I'm personally often looking for something like "any Friday or Saturday in July", so a "range" doesn't work well for me. However your example was just a range. I'm not really sure how to make that work well with a calendar.
But I also don't really care if the UX is amazing. Move fast and break things, right? Hence why this exists, and a calendar on AC.com doesn't?
I've had some concerns with this, but they seem fine with it being pretty open on their website, and I'm being careful not to harm them.
As for the dates, I guess it depends what people want.
I'm personally often looking for something like "any Friday or Saturday in July", so a "range" doesn't work well for me. However your example was just a range. I'm not really sure how to make that work well with a calendar.
But I also don't really care if the UX is amazing. Move fast and break things, right? Hence why this exists, and a calendar on AC.com doesn't?
I've had some concerns with this, but they seem fine with it being pretty open on their website, and I'm being careful not to harm them.
Date1 is the range START date. and if Date 2 is left empty, Date1 is also the end date
Date2 (if filled) is the range END date
Jun 10, 21, 12:33 pm
#81
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: 41,062
Originally Posted by jerryhung
For dates, I was thinking maybe replace with 2 calendar drop-downs for people to choose date. But yes, UX is not a big deal really, especially once we can bookmark the search
Date1 is the range START date. and if Date 2 is left empty, Date1 is also the end date
Date2 (if filled) is the range END date
Date1 is the range START date. and if Date 2 is left empty, Date1 is also the end date
Date2 (if filled) is the range END date
Jun 13, 21, 2:28 pm
#82
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: 41,062
Replying to this here...
bcnfish, it now has a checkbox in the filters section for if you're booking with a partner. It won't be perfect (it will show you AC+EY, for example), but it eliminates all the AC flights that can only be booked through Aeroplan.
Originally Posted by bcnfish
That's a great tool if you're booking with Aeroplan. However if you're booking with another program and just want to be able to see I/X availability it's not very helpful. @ExpertFlyer Voice used to work great, I used the notifications all the time. I wish they'd bring back AC, not sure why it was removed given that there is still I/X inventory released that's used for partners.
Jun 19, 21, 4:53 pm
#83
Join Date: Apr 2016
Posts: 504
Maybe this is too niche, but would it be possible to have a time filter (probably with a departure / arrival time filter, rather than just a range like morning, afternoon, evening)? My workaround was to copy out the results to Excel and filter it there.
The use case I have was that I was looking for a flight within a month long period, but wanted to find the cheapest flight for a morning departure. (Looking to book a 2 day trip somewhere, didn't care about dates, but wanted maximum time on the ground while minimizing cost). If it's too hard to implement, I'm fine with using Excel.
The use case I have was that I was looking for a flight within a month long period, but wanted to find the cheapest flight for a morning departure. (Looking to book a 2 day trip somewhere, didn't care about dates, but wanted maximum time on the ground while minimizing cost). If it's too hard to implement, I'm fine with using Excel.
Jun 19, 21, 5:02 pm
#84
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: 41,062
Originally Posted by zappy312
Maybe this is too niche, but would it be possible to have a time filter (probably with a departure / arrival time filter, rather than just a range like morning, afternoon, evening)? My workaround was to copy out the results to Excel and filter it there.
The use case I have was that I was looking for a flight within a month long period, but wanted to find the cheapest flight for a morning departure. (Looking to book a 2 day trip somewhere, didn't care about dates, but wanted maximum time on the ground while minimizing cost). If it's too hard to implement, I'm fine with using Excel.
The use case I have was that I was looking for a flight within a month long period, but wanted to find the cheapest flight for a morning departure. (Looking to book a 2 day trip somewhere, didn't care about dates, but wanted maximum time on the ground while minimizing cost). If it's too hard to implement, I'm fine with using Excel.
But what if you have multi-stop itinerary. Does that mean the FIRST flight needs to depart between 1200-1600, or EACH flight needs to depart in that range, or...
It's definitely something I'd find useful (I hate 6am flights), but I want to figure out exactly what we want before I build it.
Jun 19, 21, 6:28 pm
#85
Join Date: Apr 2018
Location: YYZ
Programs: AP50k, Bonvoy Gold
Posts: 65
This is amazing! Ever since AC updated their website, the award.flights plugin for chrome obviously stopped working. Happy to see something like this pop up AND have the cost in points included. Thank you!
Jun 19, 21, 7:24 pm
#86
Join Date: Apr 2016
Posts: 504
Originally Posted by canadiancow
If we only look at non-stops, that's trivial.
But what if you have multi-stop itinerary. Does that mean the FIRST flight needs to depart between 1200-1600, or EACH flight needs to depart in that range, or...
It's definitely something I'd find useful (I hate 6am flights), but I want to figure out exactly what we want before I build it.
But what if you have multi-stop itinerary. Does that mean the FIRST flight needs to depart between 1200-1600, or EACH flight needs to depart in that range, or...
It's definitely something I'd find useful (I hate 6am flights), but I want to figure out exactly what we want before I build it.
If someone has a use case for every flight, then that's fine since it would still cover what I'm looking for. (I guess looking for a longer layover along the journey, similar to my trip.)
Jun 20, 21, 3:51 pm
#87
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: 41,062
Originally Posted by zappy312
I just need starting time of the itinerary, similar to what ITA Matrix or Google Flights does.
If someone has a use case for every flight, then that's fine since it would still cover what I'm looking for. (I guess looking for a longer layover along the journey, similar to my trip.)
If someone has a use case for every flight, then that's fine since it would still cover what I'm looking for. (I guess looking for a longer layover along the journey, similar to my trip.)
Jun 21, 21, 10:19 pm
#89
Join Date: Mar 2007
Posts: 4,734
Q1 - what does this box do? I can't seem to notice any difference
I'm booking through Aeroplan (not a partner)
Q2 - I wonder if it's easy to generate a "filter/sort included URL"? so we don't have to re-do it every time. It can be done via a button or something?
I know right now the URL only contains the search parameters - date, origin/destination
e.g. https://api.ft.canadiancow.com/ac-re...7-31&airlines=
but say if I want to save the filter, like 50K points, Economy (Y), and order by Duration ASC (to find nonstop easily), is it hard to do?
Thanks Cow
I'm booking through Aeroplan (not a partner)
Q2 - I wonder if it's easy to generate a "filter/sort included URL"? so we don't have to re-do it every time. It can be done via a button or something?
I know right now the URL only contains the search parameters - date, origin/destination
e.g. https://api.ft.canadiancow.com/ac-re...7-31&airlines=
but say if I want to save the filter, like 50K points, Economy (Y), and order by Duration ASC (to find nonstop easily), is it hard to do?
Thanks Cow
Jun 22, 21, 12:24 am
#90
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: 41,062
Originally Posted by jerryhung
Q1 - what does this box do? I can't seem to notice any difference
I'm booking through Aeroplan (not a partner)
I'm booking through Aeroplan (not a partner)
Originally Posted by jerryhung
Q2 - I wonder if it's easy to generate a "filter/sort included URL"? so we don't have to re-do it every time. It can be done via a button or something?
I know right now the URL only contains the search parameters - date, origin/destination
e.g. https://api.ft.canadiancow.com/ac-re...7-31&airlines=
but say if I want to save the filter, like 50K points, Economy (Y), and order by Duration ASC (to find nonstop easily), is it hard to do?
I know right now the URL only contains the search parameters - date, origin/destination
e.g. https://api.ft.canadiancow.com/ac-re...7-31&airlines=
but say if I want to save the filter, like 50K points, Economy (Y), and order by Duration ASC (to find nonstop easily), is it hard to do?
