I just discovered these two great sites and I've got two questions:

First, any other website that does that kind of thing? (i.e. find me prices for different flights on the same route and show me how many seats left in each class). Which one's best?

Second, assuming I find a great price this way, how should I go about booking the ticket? On the Internet I can't just provide a class or fare basis. What do you do to book a specific fare?

I usually spend a couple of hours on the Internet when looking for airline tickets but this might just be the best thing so far!

I'd love to get some input on any or all systems available.

ExpertFlyer is the only site AFAIK that lets you see HIDDEN classes for things like awards and upgrades.

If you only want to see fares buckets that correspond to PAID fares, then there are multiple places to look that up.

If you need to search for (or even get email notifications) of elusive award inventory opening up, there's nothing except ExpertFlyer. (I have need of seeing those hidden classes, so I haven't even looked at anything but Expert Flyer. Before EF, I used Smile's Availalibility Tool, but that service was shut down about a year ago.)

As for booking, it depends a lot on the ailrine. With AA, you have to call (there's no way to pick specific fare classes online). AA.com always tries to give you the lowest fare, and if you want a fare that's higher (say, because it's needed to qualify for status faster or to qualify for some promo), you have to either wait until the lower fare buckets are sold out or call. The bummer is that AA charges you to call, even if you call to do book a fare you can't book online (that earns them more money)!

I have no idea how it works at most other airlines (except that at Southwest you see all fare types in a grid, and at Alaska in some cases something similar too).

There used to be a European travel agency site about two years ago where you could book any fare, because they showed all fares and the actual fare codes. Lots of FTers paid a little extra to book there. But FT was not the site's primary audience, and they found that everyone ELSE was confused by the fare codes, and took that ability away to "simplify" it for the general public. Since then, I've not heard of a third-party booking site that lets you purchase any available fare, just various sites that let you see them in various ways, including http://dps1.travelocity.com/lognlogi...tr_module=FARE at Travelocity (tho bookmark it, it's hard to find from the main Travelocity site!).

Thanks for the link. I looked at it but it's all a bit cryptic. A friend wants to come over to the U.S. with a stop-over before LAX. Looking it up was a little hard (/annoying) as i had to go through all the rules of each fare.

Do you have any other free sites that offer availability with buckets? If that doesn't do it I might give Expertflyer a try.

For that, you can use one of the other Tools/Services listed at http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?p=2726821 under "Availability Tools", including KVS Tool Lite ...

thanks just reading the above post helped me out on my next question I was going to post.