Brostman

I was wondering if anyone has any experience with the Seat.aero app/website? Another FTer suggested I look at it in response to some advice I was seeking on some EK award redemptions. At first glance it looks like it would be useful particularly for checking award availablilty in the near term. Additionally, the free access version looks fairly intuitive, but it also looks like an evolving tool, and not necessarily as robust as some other sites. If you subscribe to the "Pro" version, you are suppose to get access to award availability out as far as the specific airline shows on their website. If you have any experience with Seats.aero (or have done any due diligence on it) would you share the pros and cons from your own perspective. Thanks

dlflyer00

I created Seats.aero and FlyerTalk was the first place I posted about it last year: LifeMiles availability finder

Always happy to answer any questions. We do support full calendar availability but only for routes with a green icon (shorter routes are excluded): https://seats.aero/emirates/routes

Brostman

I was using the Lufthansa First Class award finder page, and I see that LH seems to open up F awards to partner airlines when they get fairly close to departure date. I am looking for dates in Feb '24, but decided to experiment with booking some near term availability. When I click through the date/route I am interested, the system takes me to UA website, where I can see availability for F award (I also picked a date where your system was showing 5 seats available), but your system must pre-populate the search in UA for a single award. It looked like I could secure the one reward if I proceeded, but I need two seats. If I refresh the search from within the UA website, it comes back with only showing E/PE/Bus award availability. Is the only solution that I book one seat at a time?

thijsseh

I must have missed this when you first created this. Now that you have added EK it's great! Thanks for developing this!
Just a quick question about the'\pro' account: can one 'switch this on and off' on a monthly basis, a bit like one can do for Expert Flyer? I don't travel / upgrade enough to warrant having a subscription in the months I am far away from an aircraft, but would love to use the extra functionality on a 'per month' basis.

Brostman

I went back and read through this entire thread, and clearly they are many other FTers that support your development efforts, as do I. You have given award searches for the airlines/routes you cover the Steve Jobs touch... that is to say, you developed the user-faced portion of the interface against the search results with a user friendly and intuitive feel. Thank you for your efforts, and I look forward to utilizing it, particularly for my upcoming bucket list trip next Feb. It definitely will make filling the gaps in my flight schedule with award seats a bit easier.

dlflyer00

Yeah, when you click through to an airline, we default to only one seat. I am guessing that between when we last checked and when you clicked, some number of the seats were booked already. LH F especially moves quickly, so it's not uncommon for this to happen unfortunately. The site will refresh with the airline if the data is older than 3 hours and you click the "info" icon.

Yes, you're free to cancel and re-subscribe at your choice. You can just cancel immediately after signing up for a month and you will still have access until your month is over.

TravelerMSY

Great product! Thanks!

jamesyyz

Just technically and kindly ask how do you fetch the united award data? I try to reverse engineer the API by using chrome developer tool to check URL united.com/api/flight/FetchFlights, then found it's a POST not GET. Then I don't have a clue of next step, which parameter I need to choose. Appreciate your response.

DYKWIA

Asking the developer of a product how to bypass the product to save paying for it

pooks75

I literally just signed up for Seats.aero Pro (cost of $10/mo) after hemming and hawing for months b/ c I need to see 12 month/1 year availability for business awards flights next year 3/2025 on emirates (which they claim to search out that far) and I see that they only go out 11 months which doesn't help me at all. It won't allow search after Feb 7, 2025, although it states it is only showing 551 entries on the screen out of a total supposed 566 entries.

dlflyer00

My understanding is that EK only releases award seats 328 days in advance, so we wouldn’t search any farther than that: https://upgradedpoints.com/travel/ai...e-award-seats/

If it has changed we can always adjust it on our end though!

pooks75

Thanks for your follow-up! I've noticed myself that They now seem to be releasing award seats 360 days out, similar to Qatar which is 361. See/review the chart at the bottom of this article for up to date info: How Far in Advance Can You Book Airline Award Tickets? (awardwallet.com)

dlflyer00

Thanks, looks like you are correct. I've adjusted it on our side so it should start to pull in 360 days of availability from now on (will take a bit to fully update); it's showing on some routes already:

pooks75

Oh great. Wonderful; is there any way to see on your site how many award seats are available for any of the stated/given flights? Is it really true that only TWO business awards seats are released at a time per flight? ...then randomly released again during random times of the year?

pooks75

Also, when I pull up my account it still is only going to page 216 and 2/7/2025 (it says it is showing 5,376 of 5,391 entries); how to rectify this to advance further pages? The "Next" page button/icon is greyed out so I can't go any further. Please advise.