[SHUT DOWN] Unofficial Advanced AC Reward Search Tool (cowtool)
 

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Like everyone else, I've been a little annoyed with the lack of search options under the new Aeroplan program. My typical desire is to find something like "west coast USA to Japan in F on a small date range". I can position to LAX or SEA easily, and I really only care about the long-haul segment.

I threw this together in about an hour on Saturday, and then spent another hour or so tweaking it and getting it onto AWS.

https://acrewardsearcher.cowtool.com/

Any feedback is appreciated.

Looks great.
Would like to see non-stop options too (maybe with a flag). E.g., I'm starting from Perth and want to get back to Vancouver. Don't really mind which route I take, but being able to look at various flights out of PER connecting to say YYC and SEA as well as YVR would be useful as positioning is easy then.

Thanks for doing this! More tools are always useful! :tu:

I tried variations of this: https://api.ft.canadiancow.com/ac-re...lines=UA,SK,OS

But kept getting: {"message": "Endpoint request timed out"}

I'm guessing it's the date range that really pushed things too far. I trimmed the search to: https://api.ft.canadiancow.com/ac-re...lines=UA,SK,OS

But it still timed out.

Then I tried this: https://api.ft.canadiancow.com/ac-re...,J&airlines=UA

And it still timed out.

Not wanting to give up easily, I tried this: https://api.ft.canadiancow.com/ac-re...=J&airlines=UA

And it timed out.

I don't particularly mind typing all that stuff into the URL; it's no worse really than using advanced routing in ITA. Yes an interface would be nice but for now, it's not a priority for me. In terms of general usefulness (forget the fact I just went 0 for 4!), I'd say it's important to be able to search a variety of origins. Flying from East Coast, I would always consider ORD, EWR, JFK, IAD as my standard airports in addition to occasionally searching YYZ, YUL.

Thanks again for your work on this!

Airports and dates are the only things that matter for being "too much" right now.

Your first is 4 * 3 * 2, which is 24, which is well over the 6-7 limit I mentioned :p

Your last is 2 * 2 * 1, which is 4, which should work. It did work for me.

Also, I just deployed a broken form, so uh, don't use the form yet :)

Edit: Fixed the form

I've made a few improvements. You should be able to search close to 30 origin/destination/date combinations now. It also displays the price, since it was pointed out to me that YVR-YYZ on AC can cost a wide range of points :)

First of all, this is amazing. I owe you a round of drinks at the next DO for sure.

Second - if there were a way to set "search I-space only", or set a maximum acceptable cost , that would be enormous. For example, if I could set as a search condition "show me any date that there's J space YVR-SYD in the first half of March, where the cost per seat is below 200,000".

Is that crazy?

Not crazy at all. When I first hacked this out, I was only thinking of partner F, so "price" was never an issue.

I could filter by I/P/Z/etc for AC, but I could just as easily filter by price, which sounds like it's more what you care about.

Stuff like that is pretty trivial to add. I'm drinking some bubbly in SJD right now, but when I might get in the pool with my laptop and add that feature in a few minutes.

Nice tool, Cow. Kudos as always.

I presume the "cabin" option truly means cabin, and not fare class? AKA, "J" means "any business class seat"? If it's really just cabin, then that entry field might be better served as four checkboxes (F, J, PY, Y)

It would be great if there were some output sort options. Sort by points might even be the default, but I could imagine sort by date - and heck, even sort by plane might be useful (to easily find the lie-flat options)

Yes, cabin.

And yes, that does sound like a better option for the input.

Right now, it should sort by date, then origin, then destination, then cabin. I'm sure I could add some simple js to allow you to sort the results client-side.

Never let me be the one to come between a man and his beverage.

Part of this is me thinking about times I'm trying to book AC metal with partner points (like an ANA RTW) but it's also nice to be able to filter the days that are priced so high there may as well not be availability.

Okay, so now you can filter by maximum price, and you can choose cabins with a much more intuitive set of checkboxes.

My laptop is running out of power though, and I'm not sure it's a good idea to plug it in while I'm in the pool.

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Would the result be beef stew, or steak sous vide?

You're already figuratively killing yourself for the community's benefit here, let's skip the part where you do it literally.

That might make for some extra well-done cow!
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One other question - is the pricing the "no status, no credit card" price? Presuming so, but always worth checking those things!