I received an email today from expertflyer.com that implied one or more airlines are giving them hassles about EF's access to fare buckets and fare information, including (perhaps particularly--it was hard to tell from the email) the "hidden" award/upgrade buckets. The email went on to suggest that subscribers contact their favorite airline(s) to tell them how much they vaue EF's access to such data.

I will certainly be doing this, since I certainly do value this information. But I was curious, Does anyone know the story behind this? Is AA one of the airlines giving them a hard time? That would be quite a shame, as the AA.com interface to finding award seats is horrible, and the AA.com interface to finding upgrade seats or fare-bucket-specific seats (e.g. B) is.....um, nonexistant.

I was just reading the page on experflyer about this. I'm willing to bet that AA is not going out of their way to be helpful, but unsure if they are antagonizing expertflyer. I agree, though, that it is a necessary service, and until AA.com improves in terms of searching for specific info, AA should give expertflyer a break.

Just sent my letter to AA asking them to (continue to) support EF as they are not a competitor. Also asked what their policy was. I'll see what they say.

Cheers.

Excellent. It seems that airlines should love EF, since it reduces the workload on their telephone agents, thus reducing costs. There's no information available on EF that you can't get from airline personnel or from your favorite travel agent, so I don't really understand why airlines would object.

Suggestion for where to send such emails, etc., in the hope of maximum effectiveness?

I'm thinking about writing an honest-to-goodness actual letter.

I'm going to be severely bummed to have to worry about UGs without being able to see X!

no particular reason it should be AA. its codes have been available to the public in easySabre since 1990 or so. granted, it's been hit-or-miss since that died in 1999, but never totally unaccessible.

Aaah, because it undoes the shell game of award ticketing and upgrades??

Never discount the monetary value of closely held information.

To Our Subscribers:


We need your help.

In our effort to expand our service offering and better serve the frequent flyers of the major airlines and alliances, we need your help in expressing to your favorite airline(s) the value and importance you place in ExpertFlyer in helping you to manage your air travel. We know ExpertFlyer plays a unique role especially as it relates to seeing comprehensive fares and upgrade and award inventory.

Throughout ExpertFlyer's development and until now we have tried with very limited success to reach out to the airline Sales and Frequent Flyer departments to seek their permission to access certain flight inventory, resolve questions and issues that you have brought to our attention when using ExpertFlyer and explore ways with the airlines to better represent them and provide more information to you. As you know, we do not sell tickets and encourage you to purchase your airline tickets from the airlines directly or whatever source best suits your needs.

However, it has come to our attention that even today some airlines view us on an adversarial basis. Frankly, we find this quite puzzling. Ultimately, this poses a threat to our ability to continue to access certain information that we know you value and prevent us from providing additional services to you. We are under no illusions about the historical nature of the airline industry and its concern about openness of fares and inventories. But on balance, we strongly believe that ExpertFlyer provides a unique and valuable augmentation to their services by reducing their internal workload and providing their best customers with information in a clear and concise manner rarely, if ever, found on their own web sites. In short, our subscribers are the airlines' best and most valuable customers to whom ExpertFlyer strengthens that relationship by improving visibility of the airlines' own fare-based and award seats to their Elite customers.

How can you help us?

We urge you to contact the Frequent Flyer program's Customer Relations department of your choice by email or phone using the contact information associated with your status. Email is preferred as this gives them something to internally circulate and respond to. And, if you receive any responses, we would appreciate it if you can share them with us so we can get a better understanding of their reaction.

If you don't know whom to contact, below are the email address links and phone numbers of the Customer Service and Frequent Flyer program departments of the major alliance carriers. We would like you to call or email them and let them know the value you have found in ExpertFlyer in helping you to travel with them and to get the most out of their frequent flyer program both in accumulating and, where available, redeeming miles. Some suggested topics you may want to include:

* The value in having complete fare visibility to let you decide the best value for your specific travel requirements.
* The value in being able to know exactly what flights are available for mileage awards and upgrades in a clear and timely manner on those airlines that have made it available.
* The desire to see award and upgrade inventory on those airlines that have not made it available to you through ExpertFlyer.
* The value to you in saving you time and getting the information you need in planning your travel.
* The increased likelihood of traveling on a specific airline where award, upgrade, fare and route information is transparently available.
* The suggestion that they consider actively engaging in dialogue with ExpertFlyer to develop ways to enhance your travel experience and relationship with that airline to everyone's benefit.

At ExpertFlyer we appreciate your continued patronage. We are always working to improve your experience and expand the value of ExpertFlyer for you. Thank you for helping us with this effort.

Sincerely,
The ExpertFlyer Team


American Airlines
AAdvantage Customer Service
http://www.aa.com/apps/utility/contactAA/EmailACS.jhtml
Phone: 1-800-421-0600
Customer Relations:
http://www.aa.com/apps/utility/conta...elations.jhtml

British Airways
Customer Relations:
http://generic-uk-questions.custhelp...w_question.php
Phone: 0870 850 9 850 (from the UK)

Cathay Pacific
Customer Relations:
http://www.cathaypacific.com/intl/co...ns/0,,,00.html
Phone: (852) 2747-5563 (English), (852) 2747-5579 (Chinese)

Continental Airlines
OnePass Customer Service:
[email protected]
Phone: 1-713-952-1630
Customer Relations:
https://www.continental.com/contact/...stomercare.asp
Phone: 1-800-WE-CARE2 (1-800-932-2732)

Delta Airlines
SkyMiles Customer Service:
http://www.delta.com/emailus/servlet/EmailUs?cmd=go
Fax: 1-404-773-1945
Customer Relations:
http://www.delta.com/emailus/servlet/EmailUs?cmd=go
Phone: 1-404-715-2600

Lufthansa
Miles & More Customer Relations:
http://www.lufthansa.com/online/port...lufthansa?l=en
Fax: + 49 - (0)1805 - 838005

Northwest Airlines
Customer Relations:
https://www.nwa.com/talk/ttu.html
WorldPerks Phone: 1-800-447-3757

Singapore Airlines
KrisFlyer Customer Relations:
Phone: 1800 7898 188 (Singapore) Fax: (65) 6534 2809

United Airlines
Mileage Plus:
http://www.united.com/page/specialpa...Title=email+MP
Phone: 1-800-421-4655
Customer Relations:
http://www.united.com/page/specialpa...omer+relations
Phone: 1-877-228-1327

US Airways
Dividend Miles Customer Service:
[email protected]
Phone: 1-800-428-4322
Customer Relations:
http://www.usairways.com/customers/c...meraffairs.htm
Phone: 1-866-523-5333

Anything that reduces "breakage" (miles and upgrades which go unused - because the holder doesn't have enough for the flight they want, or which simply expire before someone uses them) increases the liability airlines have to accrue for future award redemption. Ergo, I'm sure they (major airlines, not just AA) don't like EF.

I think AA showed their feelings about EF when they yanked PNR access after, what, 1 week of EF's existence?

I agree that AA should embrace EF b/c it reduces workload for their staff and increases customer satisfaction by allowing pax to find UGs and award tix. However, as evidenced by many threads, AA often chooses to make decisions contrary to customer service (and the shareholders for that matter). The recent thread regarding AA's refusal to allow someone to change an international itinerary even though he would be changing from a completely full flight to a somewhat empty flight is a perfect example. AA would have benefitted from a) a change fee and fare difference, b) reselling that seat on the full flight, and c) customer good will. Instead, they will receive a) no change fee or fare difference, b) no opportunity to resell the seat, and c) driving a customer to a different airline for the cheapest way back to the US.

I sent an email to AA Customer Relations about EF, pursuant to their request. Coincidentally, I checked availability stats regarding a transatlantic flight (whose front cabin availability has fluctuated wildly during the past month from 7+ to 1 to 3 to none to 7+) and saw that there was good availability. Since the departure date is fast approaching, I called EXP and the agent told me that there were a few revenue seats available and that AA needed to sell these seats in order to break even, so I should just wait until 48 hours before departure time to ask about the eVIP upgrade.

In the past, EXP agents have never hesitated to give specific information as to seat availability, etc. I noticed a certain reticence, this time, in addition to the little reminder that AA needs to sell as many J seats as possible. I guess none of the airlines wants this information in the hands of the public...but don't travel agents have access to this information?

I think this action is slightly different than providing access to the hidden fare buckets. Sometimes sensitive information could be present in a PNR including billing and passport details. I am sure AA's legal department viewed open access to this information as a significant liability more than anything else. Unfortunately, PNRs have very limited security built into them, primarily because GDS subscribers were previously looked at as a trusted community. As such, there is really no way to determine that the requestor of a PNR is authorized to view it.

I'm not sure how EF is structured, but I doubt they are an ARC-accredited and bonded organization. Given that, I'm sure AA may have cause to trust them less than a typical agency. Also, since EF is not performing any ticketing/booking functions, AA probably felt there was no need to provide access to PNRs.

So, specifically in relation to this move, I can understand AA's motives.

However, I do agree that providing access to the award and upgrade inventories is something of value that poses little risk to AA. Heck, as martin33 pointed out earlier, it was available on easySabre for years, and of course available to any travel agent via the GDS.

Back in Economics 101 we learned about a concept called "information asymmetry". This is a situation where one of the parties to a transaction has more information than the other party to a transaction. The party with more information can often get a better deal. If the buyer holds more information than the seller, the buyer can sell his product at a higher price than he would receive if the buyer knew everything the seller knew. The more information the buyer has the cheaper he can buy the same product.

In the last few years the internet has lead to a vast diffusion of information that has lead to great "efficiencies" meaning buyers are getting better deals than they used to before all the information became available. The airline industry has dramatically experienced this levelling of the playing field with the rise of information sharing websites like FT and non-airline travel websites like Travelocity. Some of these websites give information for "free" and some like ExpertFlyer.com give such valuable information that people are prepared to pay lots of money to subscribe to their website in order to get more and better information than they get from the airlines (thus reducing the information asymmetry they face when dealing with airlines)

In the case of the airline industry, there has always been a huge information asymmetry in favor of the sellers of the seats-the airlines. Websites are tricky and never fully transparent in that they don't usually show all the availabilities, all the different fare buckets and all the different prices of ticketsfor the same seat in the same plane. Also, they don't show the "true" price of their products as these products are governed by a highly complex set of rules and added service fees/change fees etc that impact the final cost to the consumer. There is a deliberate creation of "fog" which leads to consumers "overpaying" for their tickets.

An example of the sort of asymmetry leading to consumers paying more than they needed to was about two weeks ago when for several days AA had a "unadvertised" sale on winter seats to France. In some markets prices were reduced to about $200 under the "list price" (and yes these fares were miles and status miles earning). The only catch was an 8 day minimum/30 day maximum which for many people would not be overly burdensome. AA.com did not trumpet this fare sale on the front page of its website or via emails, but the fare was purchaseable definitely on the AA.com website (albeit at the time cost of a laborious search). On the other hand the fare and availability of seats (and all the complex rules) was easily available to ExpertFlyer.com subscribers who ran a simple search. (I myself was just about to purchase a fare at the list price, but fortunately came across the discounted fare only by doing a double-check on Expertflyer before pressing the "buy ticket" button on AA.com)

It is possible that the airlines are more concerned with the "losses" generated by savvy flyers using ExpertFlyer.com to get cheaper tickets than the resources saved when flyers call in to the airlines armed with the knowlege of the best fares and the availability of those fares. The above posts and other threads point out correctly all the ways that ExpertFlyer.com helps the airlines sell their seat efficiently. But increased "efficiency" is only good when you sell the same product for a cheaper costIt is not so good when you sell the same product for a lower price...

As for sharing information about upgrade availability, at the end of the day airlines see upgraded seats as "very deeply discounted" first (or business) class seats and they prefer to sell premium seats at a high a price as possible. The passengers have differing perceptions of what upgrades mean to them. Some see them as a very nice courtesy or reward for being loyal elite customers but not inherently essential to their travel experience. Some see them as a necessity to the extent that they will pay full fare economy or buy more expensive tickets if they are concerned they won't get premium seats through upgrades when they have purchase cheaper available seats. Others share the airlines view that upgrades represent deeply discounted premium seats and these customers "play the game" of doing everything in their power to fly up front while paying back of the bus prices.

The airlines would be fairly indifferent to those in the first category (those who see upgrades as a pleasant bonus) getting extra information from ExpertFlyer.com. But I could see AA benefiting from those in the latter two categories (those who "need" upgrades or those wanting to fly premium at the deepest of discounts) getting the least amount of information possible from third party websites...

As a very satisfied customer of ExpertFlyer.com I really hope that the airlines do not pull the plug and that ExpertFlyer.com does not become a victim of its own success. Regrettably we have seen this happen before to other great websites...

d e l e t e d

Depressing. The PNR comments thing was an obvious infringement on AA's proprietary info, but like most here, I feel the access to the info that expertflyer.com currently provides is extremely beneficial to BOTH AA and some of it's most loyal customers. IMHO, there's no question about that.

That having been said--and I'd give anything to be wrong about this-- I bet it's doomed.

Definitely send those e-mails.