A Fix for the New "Elevated" Award Booking Engine
 

As most of you have probably experienced by now, the new "Elevated" Cathay website has literally made award flight searches all but impossible.
I've put together a userscript that basically forces the website to accept the old booking engine parameters, and I've submitted it to greasyfork for anyone that's interested.

The main features are:

• Search for ANY routes, not just those with direct flights on CX and partners.
• Bring back support for searching multiple airports in the same city (e.g. TYO, LON)
• No need to choose the operating airline anymore when you search.
• Results no longer limited to the cabin class you choose, cabin class can be switched as you please on the results page.
• Start a new search directly on the results page, without returning to the search facade.

EDIT 2022-12-20: MEGA FEATURE UPDATE! New v3.0 released:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/cath...er-plugin.html

EDIT 2022-08-29: NEW FEATURE! Batch availability search!
Please see further down at post #15 for details.

EDIT 2022-09-01: Bug Fixes
Please upgrade to the latest version 2.3 for a bunch of bug fixes. Among them, the most important one is that economy seats on certain airlines were erroneously counted as premium economy. Also, the availability count was incorrect for connecting flights, as it showed the higher number of seats between the two flights, rather than the lower one. The batch search feature is now no longer hidden by default, and does not require the 9 clicks secret activation gesture.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...244ef6a518.png
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...f63ea7e065.png

For desktop, you will need to have the Tampermonkey or Greasemonkey browser extensions installed, then install this script:
https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/44...rch-fixer-2022

Once installed, login to your Cathay account, and go to the new flight award search page at
https://www.cathaypacific.com/cx/en_...ht-awards.html

There will be a new search box at the bottom, where you can enter your origin, destination, dates, and passengers.
The search box will work on both the search facade, and on the results page, which means you can switch route searches without going back and forth.
Hope you'll all find it useful.

P.S. If you want to install this on a mobile device, you'll need to install an app like Hyperweb or Stay 2 - Userscript manager that enables userscript extensions in mobile safari and chrome. It's a bit more complicated to get set up compared to desktop. If enough people are interested in that I'll make a step by step write-up.

Thanks for this. It works sometimes but then I also get this error a fair bit (see below). To be fair I also get this error many times, when searching with the new crappy CX interface
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...0a041beebf.png

Most of the time this error means your login session has timed out, which happens in a surprisingly short amount of time. The underlying API call requires that the logged in session be active. Unfortunately I can't see if the session is expired, so the only way to know for sure is when this page is loaded. I'll see if I can add a alert somewhere that reminds you to check your session status.

I figured it out - the airport codes are case sensitive! When inputted in caps I don't get the error :)

Good catch! I've added a fix that converts to uppercase before calling the API.

This is brilliant. Thank you jaytw !

-Dan

So I've managed to test out a comparatively easy-ish way to use this trick on an iPhone.
There are several tools out there that enable user scripts in Safari, but since userscripts are rather technical in nature, it can be a pretty daunting process for the non-technical crowd.
I've evaluated a few, and these are the most straightforward flows I could find:

Option 1: Completely free

1. Download "Stay 2 - Userscript manager" from the App Store.
2. Open the app, and add the script by clicking the + sign on the top right, and choose "Import from GreasyFork"
3. On GreasyFork, search for the "Cathay Award Search Fixed" script. (Inexplicably there is no search box on the landing page, so you will need to either press the Hamburger icon on the right to find it, or just click their logo to go to the search box on their homepage.)
4. Once you've found the script, click on "Install this script" and then "Create" on the top right. (If it shows you an alert showing that "you will need to install an extension manager" when you click install, just click "I already have a script manager")
5. Once installed, open Safari and login to Cathay. You need to do this before you start searching, or the searches will just error out.
6. Go to the award search page, if you have not been redirected already:
   https://www.cathaypacific.com/cx/zh_TW/book-a-trip/redeem-flights/redeem-flight-awards.html
7. Once on the page, press the "A A " icon on the left of the url bar, and press "Manage Extensions"
8. Turn on the toggle for "Stay", and press done.
9. The menu should have a new "Stay" option with its purple icon. Press it.
10. It should show a sheet at the bottom with a "Cathay Award Search Fixer" item. Press the "Play" button on the right of it.
11. Now your page should have a new "Unelevated Award Search" box!

I've noticed that Stay 2 is a bit more unreliable with keeping the script active on the page for some reason, especially after a page change to the results page. If the search box is missing, just refresh the page.

Option 2: The most painless, but not free. ($0.99/month)

1. Download "Gear Browser" from the App Store.
2. Open the app and search for "greasyfork"
3. On GreasyFork, search for "cathay", find the "Cathay Award Search Fixer" and press "Install Script".
4. At this point it will ask you to buy a subscription to "Gear Pro" to enable the userscripts feature. Be aware that this bills monthly, so remember to cancel it if you won't user it anymore.
5. Go to Cathay, login to your account, and go to the award search page:
   https://www.cathaypacific.com/cx/zh_TW/book-a-trip/redeem-flights/redeem-flight-awards.html

And that's it, the search box should be automatically loaded, no need to fiddle with any toggles.

I don't have an Android on hand to test, but greasyfork has a list of options on its homepage for mobile Android:

• Firefox: Greasemonkey, Tampermonkey, or Violentmonkey
• Maxthon: Violentmonkey
• Dolphin: Tampermonkey
• UC: Tampermonkey
• Kiwi: Tampermonkey or Violentmonkey
• XBrowser

You are AWESOME !

You are the best!!!

has the new website also come with new award routing rules? I'm trying to book a multi-city JFK-DOH-SYD in Biz & F respectively (on QR) and the cathay website shows availability (cross checked with BA) but it errors out after selecting the multi-city flights. The connection time in DOH is < 24 hours.

So as usual I start a chat with their agents and the agent says she cant see any availability at all! Is this the new normal? or case of HUCA? thanks!

PS: I have booked this same award multiple times in the past and it worked every single time (worked as in - the chat agent was able to book it for me)

still impossibe

Yeah, I’ve noticed the same. It seems in some instances the flights will be available to book separately segment by segment, but not as a single one-way. The system will throw an error saying "Redemption Class Y not valid on this flight" or something to that effect. It did not start with the new search engine though, I think I ran into this as far back as May. The agent sees the same on their end, availability only available separately. The same routing was available to book on some other dates as a transfer, so it does not look like a blanket award routing rule thing. Also, FWIW, it’s not restricted to the CX search engine either, as availability for the same flight would not show up as a transfer in BA either, only segment by segment. It's perplexing because back in the day, it was usually the other way around, where transfer routing was available, but booking separately was not.

I did not HUCA, and just bit the bullet and booked separately, so I can't speak as to whether a different agent may have helped.

For data point purposes, my particular case was a TSA-HND and HND-LHR flight all on JL with a 17 hour overnight connection.

An easy fix…
 

Just in case CX/ MPO are still monitoring this forum..

The answer to your IT woes is right here, on this thread.

you won’t have to invest in a call centre that can handle the complicated, yet correct itineraries the brain trust here will generate. You won’t get brickbats from people who know the game. You will just bring efficiency in.

Thank you, jaytw!

After trying multiple phone agents via:
- their HK number and US numbers,
- their WhatsApp chat/agent
- as well as a detailed email (with screenshots from the cathay website & ba website) to their memberservices @ asiamiles dot com customer service center,

and receiving nothing useful except the lame "we don't see the availability" & "the website isn't always realtime), I finally bit the bullet and booked my award via ba dot com avios (QR SYD-DOH-CDG in F). Yes that same exact award was indeed real and not phantom!!

So p1$$ed at the sheer incompetency of these folks at the moment esp since I have a bunch of miles with em and it looks like NOTHING is bookable via partners - not even non-stop awards. (yes I tried the above script)

I wonder if the DOT would have any provision to look into this issue if it may fall into false advertising or a bait and switch situation.

Just devastated at the thought of having so many miles lying unusable.

Hey fellow FTers! First of all, thanks to those of you who have bought me coffees, it is very kind of you guys :D

So, I've made a few updates to the tweak over the weekend, and oh boy, you're gonna like this one.
If you've already installed the script and want to update, go over to the greasyfork page and press the "Update to Version 2.1" button. Then, in Tampermonkey (or whichever user script manager you are using) click on "Update".

2.1 Changes:

• For starters, since I received feedback from a couple of users that it gets in the way of other UI elements on the page, the search box no longer floats on top of the page. Instead, it has now has its own little space on the page. The drawback is that if Cathay updates their website, the search box may fail to load, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.
• The origin and destination will now automatically switch to uppercase.
• The input boxes will select its content automatically when you click or tap on it so that you can start typing away immediately.
• The origin, destination and date, etc. is saved across the home and result pages

However, most importantly, I have snuck in a secret feature that I haven't made public on the greasyfork page.

You can now batch search award availability on multiple consecutive days for all cabins and all airlines AT THE SAME TIME.

To activate the hidden feature, you will need to click on or tap on the "Unelevated Award Search" text Nine (9) Times on the search results page.

A new button labeled "Batch Availability for 20 Days" will appear, as shown below. Once activated, it will stay activated for future launches.


https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...31bf4cad07.png

When you click on it, it will start search for award availability on the current route showing on the search page, for 20 days (actually 19) starting from the date entered in the "Date" field. It will show the available flights for every calendar date, with the flight numbers and corresponding availability in F, J, PY and Y. Non-stop flights will have a green background, while those with stops will be grey and show the layover city.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...151fb98526.png

You can click on the dates on the left to load the actual Cathay engine search results for that particular day, e.g. when you are ready to book a flight, or want to see further details of the flights.

Note that you cannot change your origin or destination for the batch search, only the date. It needs to be the same route as the one currently being searched, as the tweak uses checksums on the page to call the Cathay APIs. Each checksum is only valid for 20 API calls, including the one the page initially makes itself, so once they are used up, a further batch search will trigger a page refresh to get a new checksum. If you click on dates on Cathay's own date tabs in the website's original search results further down, you will also use up API calls, so the batch call may not always show 20 days.

Please use this responsibly and do not abuse it, lest Cathay take actions to shut down or further obfuscate those APIs.

If you find any bugs or have any feedback, you can fill in the bug report form here: https://forms.gle/zCUZzrajNscLzpsp8

Enjoy!

Excellent. You are a life saver! Coffee on the way! :D

Amazing stuff!! So helpful, especially the batch search :)

Didn’t work on my iOS devices, but worked famously on my Android Nightly+Tampermonkey. Four drinks on its way:


https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...c008ad227.jpeg
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...2667831a2.jpeg


https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...e93fde3b4.jpeg

I think CX IT is doing something to spike the supercharge search mode:


https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...9056c5bef.jpeg

Wow this batch search function is a game changer!

OK, got my home Chrome to work; which leads me to suspect, CX is doing some sort of quota on how much each device can search in a period of time.

[OK, this one may be user (my) error. Search once using the Unelevated search first, and then use the batch search. Seems to fix the nil return problem.]

Has anyone been successful in getting a connecting itinerary to ticket using this tool? Got as far as inputting passenger details for my trip but since when using the site's own multicity tool the same itinerary errored out with some sort of Y inventory error I was worried I'd be out my points and not actually ticket.

This sounds like CX is now using married segment logic for award inventory availability.

What was weird with my booking is that the UnElevated tool was able to get the segments to go together but I got the "Redemption Class Y" error when doing the multi-city. Makes me worry that the bookings won't actually work in the end when using the tool. For reference I was doing LAX-LHR-BUD next summer.

Ah, yes. I should make that more clear, or see if I can disable the batch button when the search was triggered by the website’s own search. The reason for this limitation is that the site uses the "flexible dates" search flag by default, and the unelevated one searches with it turned off. Since the unelevated search relies on checksums that the actual CX engine leaves on the page, a batch search using the altered parameters will not match the checksums and will fail.

If you can get to that page, it is unlikely there will be a problem.

To be frank, I’d be more surprised to see the multi-city tool not erroring out on most itineraries.

I have no certain answer for this, but my hypothesis is that it could be related to the way the segments are coded when using the multi-city tools. Keep in mind that the multicity is a leftover from the era when we could book actual stopovers using the tool. My guess is that they are still coded as a stopover and not a transfer, and some arcane ticketing rule is blocking those itineraries from being ticketed as stopovers.

By the way, I’ve released a tiny update to 2.1.2

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/44...rch-fixer-2022

This fixes a reported issue where the available seats for itineraries with stopovers would show the number of available seats on the segment that had more seats, rather than the one that had less.

Some poor dude saw J7 on a flight and was ecstatic that he could take his entire family on cross pacific business, only for it to disappear when he changed the search to 4 travelers. We don’t need disappointment like that!

Amazing tool, however when calling customer service to book, they do not see the availability. Tried 2 reps who spent a lot of time on several itineraries showing as available via this fix but they could never see them. It is for a ticket change and I must call. Has anyone been able to actually book online? I am worried about canceling to find myself unable to finalize the booking online if the call center can't see those tickets.

I suppose you may try using a different browser and searching CX's website through the native method without using this tool?
If the availability for the same route, date, and class still appears, then it is probably a typical CX style call center issue... Good luck!

Hey st3rv, can you give me some more details regarding your itinerary?
My assumption is that you are trying to change one leg of a multi-segment itinerary, and you can see availability for that one leg, but CX call centre can't see said same flight availability?
If that is the case, are you able to see the entire itinerary you want to change to change to using the new tool? Or only the leg you want to change?
e.g. If your original ticketed itinerary was SYD-HKG-LHR and you want to change the HKG-LHR leg, does the entire SYD-HKG-LHR as a transfer flight show as available? or just the HKG-LHR leg?

If you cannot see the entire SYD-HKG-LHR itinerary together as available (by searching SYD-LHR), but only the one leg separately, I would advise you not to cancel, because it is likely that you won't be able to rebook it as a transfer. If you can see it, then I would book it first before cancelling the old one, since you indicate you are OK with canceling, and your main concern is not being able to rebook.

I've run into a lot of issues myself ticketing multi-segment itineraries myself. For example, I have a pair of TSA-HND and HND-LHR tickets that were available to book separately, with a layover time well within the current 24 hour rules, but when I wanted to book them together as a transfer, the call centre said they could not see availability. The TPE-HND-LHR flight would have cost exactly the same as a HND-LHR, so that was a bummer.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...a1d147cfb3.png

I'm getting a lot of reports from testers that the same thing is happening a lot with oneworld multicarrier awards, i.e. the flights are all available to book separately, but not as transfers or as part of a larger itinerary. As tonyatflyertalk001 mentioned, if the same flight also shows up in the native CX engine as a one-way, it is a call centre issue, or more likely a ticketing rule issue. It looks like some sort of reverse married segment control, a divorced segment control, if you will, lmao. Can anyone who can see these backend details on amadeus find any clues as to what’s going on?

It is for a complete itinerary with one normal layover. The website won't even accept the airport codes using non direct flights. The fix shows availability. The native search finds it too when using the multi-city option but when trying to finalize it there's an error "Redemption class Y is not valid on this flight date". When using separate bookings, it works but it costs way more miles.

Is it worth adding to AsiaMiles now?
 

Thank you all for these postings and hacks. I have a more general topic: Is it going to be worth accumulating Asia Miles now, given that Cathay essentially disabled the ability to search for flights and use partner awards (their web site says to fill out a form to request a partner award)? As most of you probably know, American Express is currently offering a transfer bonus. This isn't especially useful if you can't book with the miles.

In the past, Asia Miles have been a great value with great flexibility, for example, in getting Qatar Q Suites through Doha, JAL biz. flights through HND, Finnair through HEL, etc. What is the likelihood that this will continue, given that they haven't taken the care to keep the partner search feature active?

Some good news after a scare
 

So first the scare. As I had never ticketed an infant before, I was unaware you couldn't do this online until I was putting in the birthdays on my connecting itinerary I found with the Unelevated search tool. I started to think I was out of luck after reading the earlier stories.
The good news, I used the chat feature in the award booking window and the agent was able to ticket it for me as a connecting itinerary. So maybe the agents have a fixed system now. Or at least the chat agents have a better one than phone agents. Or I just got lucky. But it looks like there is a feature on the agents side that works for connecting itineraries so hopefully this means the program still has some use going forward and the customer facing side will get full functionality soon.

I transferred about 200k from Amex to CX before the website "upgrade" to get the bonus. I was planning on transferring more before the bonus ends today but I am passing due to the debacle of a website for the moment. I assume (hope) it will get fixed but it may be a while, don't get me started on airlines and IT. Since my transfers were speculative in nature (no immediate plan to use) I'll wait for them to fix the website.

I have emptied my miles as I will not be surprised to see CX going up in smoke and finding out about it when its too late. I think relying on flights any further than next month is not a good idea these days.

Thanks to all of you who reported bugs!

Please upgrade to the latest version 2.3 for a bunch of bug fixes.
https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/44...rch-fixer-2022

New features:

• The batch search feature is now no longer hidden by default, without needing the 9-click secret activation gesture.
• Passengers and Date input boxes now default to numeric keyboards on mobile.
• Date will select day digits when clicked for faster entry on mobile.
• Invalid date detection to lower the chances of erroring out.
• Origin and destination strips whitespaces, and trims to 3 letters.
• Batch mode can now search for a new routing by refreshing the page automatically.
• Batch mode can continue searching automatically on the next page.

Bugs fixed:

• For certain airlines, the availability numbers for economy were mistakenly counted as premium economy.
• Availability count was incorrect for connecting flights, as it showed the higher number of seats between the two flights, rather than the lower one.
• Fix for the search box covering certain Cathay website UI elements.
• Fix for the search box not appearing consistently on the results page.

Feel free to post any other feature requests in this thread!

Thank you so much, this tool (particularly Batch Availability) was super useful for getting 3 QF J seats HND-SYD. Much better than the 'Elevated' booking tool, and the previous one too!

Can't get the script to work :(
 

I'm a newbie to this site and also to Javascripts. I am trying to use this awesome tool, but failing miserably. I've tried userscripts on Safari, and Greasemonkey on Firefox, but neither of them seem to launch the Unelevated Search screen when I log into the Cathay Aware Booking page.

Like I say, never used scripts before, so not sure if I'm following the instructions correctly - I've downloaded the userscripts and Greasemonkey extensions, and then copied and pasted the Greasyfork script in to Safari / Firefox as a new script, and enabled the script on the Cathay tab. But still no joy.

Edit: I do see something when launching the redemption page in Firefox saying 'Error loading chunks!' four times. Is this something to do with the script trying and failing to run?

Am I missing a step? Any advice greatly appreciated, as the new Cathay Elevated booking tool is an absolute disgrace!!!

Thanks

Simon

Chrome/Tampermonkey?

Ah! Nice, that seems to work. Not sure why the other two don't though.....

jaytw thank you, this is incredible. And the batch booking function is unreal! (also shows just how stingy Cathay are with their award seats these days.... :( ). Coffee on its way to you!