Hi,
sorry if this has been covered before but...

does anyone use expert flyer? I have signed up for the free trial but even after watching the intro slide show etc. am still not 100% sure how it willl benefit me.

I wonder if people could share their experiences with expert flyer and emirates?

Thanks Ben

I use expertflyer all the time. I used to use KVS but that does not show D class availability. The good thing about expertflyer is that i can use it on my blackberry and iPhone too.
It does help a lot if you like to plan your flights around upgrade availability, etc.

Yes upgrade availability for sure is one thing, though you can see that on the EK site too (Saver redemption = upgrade availability).

I just signed up for it (beyond the trial period), because I was trying to get a flight sold out in the class my ticket is in. There's no way to see which fare buckets are available on EK, and seatcounter is under maintenance or something. I thought $5 is worth the $150 I would otherwise need to pay for a higher fare bucket. This of course makes sense if free changes are allowed - I've already made 3 in the process of getting a seat on the ideal day/ flight.

Also, you can see the actual seat map, so that's useful. I do think the basic version is very restrictive though, but with the little flying I do, the premium version doesn't make sense.

I'm not a subscriber but as said above I would use it to check upgrade availability. Although I can do this on the EK site it might be good to not have to check every other day and just wait on an email from Expert Flyer letting you know when one comes up. (I believe they offer this service).

Is expertflyer more accurate about flight class availability than KVS? KVS availability does not even provide an indication for "real" availability, in my experience.

Not sure how EK manages their inventory. I was looking at a flight that was zeroed out in B, K, U, Q etc. It suddenly had 7 seats available showing in each of these classes, and after I switched to the flight, they all went back to zero.

In my case it is different: I need a "U"-class seat, and KVS shows U-class at 0 with any of its methods. Then I call Emirates, and they find a U-class seat on that flight. May have something to do with the POS of the KVS search machine, but reliability with other airlines is much better than with EK.

Hi Folks,

Was checking for some tickets.. Expert flyer shows No tickets in Economy class and shows flight situation as P2 A2 J0 C0 I0 O0 Y0 E0 R0 W0 M0 B0 U0 K0 H0 Q0 L0 T0 V0 X0 .. whereas in EK site its possible to book the economy class tickets at a decent rate
Does this mean the expert flyer site is not the latest status ??

Abhi

Looks like a classic case of EK overbooking their flights.

Does this mean expertflyer shows the accurate status of the flight ??
I have no problems with EK overbooking since this means there is a lot more chance of me getting an upgrade hopefully

That's what I first thought but the poster said ".... its possible to book the economy class tickets at a decent rate."

Th "decent rate" would indicate that there are plenty of available seats on the flight, as if there were only a few these would be going for premium prices. If lots available then the EF information should reflect at least something and Emirates are not (yet) overbooking.

yes, this is what got me confused.. since rates are among the lowest from EK in this route.. In EK we cannot know the class unless booked but the fares are far from higher Y class fares which I am aware of.. infact its about Eur 100 or something more than the lowest Y class fares in this route

We have the latest information for Emirates, as we don't cache any availability data for any airline and Emirates participates at the highest level with the GDS we use (so the information is updated with every request). Can you tell us the specific flight/date you are having issues with? One thing it could be is a point of sale issue, if EK wanted to show more availability elsewhere in the world then it does in the US. What country EK website did you use? What if you used the US EK website?

The below flight data was for vienna - dubai for 29/10..
Checked it on the EK India site and the Austrian site and similar info..
I rechecked now and now while the EK site (both countries) show Economy seats available in the initial pages, while pricing it, it changes this particular leg to Business which was NOT the case in the morning IIRC..

It seems to be a problem with those country specific sites. The USA website correctly shows no Economy availability at the initial step in the booking path.