Need help on new seat availability tool
 

Hi. We are in the process of trying to develop a better useful replacement for all of the disappeared seat availability tools (Galileo, etc.). I'd like to get a comprehensive set of features that would be important to make the tool the most useful it could be. Please let me know what features you found the most important, and ones that you wish were included.

Thanks!

Being able to see award fare classes in Galileo for American Airlines was extremely valuable (Z, U, T).

Thanks for your efforts, flyaow! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/thumbsup.gif

For me, Galileo was almost perfect, so try to replicate it as much as possible. When I used your seat availablity interface earlier today, it worked fairly well, except that it refused to display any flights that were ostensibly sold out (e.g. AA's OGG-LAX redeye on 1/3/04), much less show the fare buckets for those flights. Personally, I'd still like to see those flights and their information even if is a bunch of zeros across the board. Also, if possible, it would be neat to allow specific searches by particular fare bucket availability. For example, if I could queue up all the flights between IAH and SFO with T fare seat availability on CO on a specific day, that would be excellent. So keep up the good work, and thanks for entertaining our suggestions!

[This message has been edited by cAAl (edited Nov 24, 2003).]

The two suggestions already cover what I'd like to see. Thanks!

The seat maps (e.g., of the type that used to be available on www.airtravel.tk from www.checkmytrip.com) were also extremely useful.

And thanks for your help in trying to fill this "void."

I completely agree with cAAl here. The one thing I didn't like about Aeroplan's Galileo access was that it seemed to display a limited number of non-stop flights only. So if I was looking at a city-pair with a lot of non-stops flights I sometimes couldn't see the late-afternoon or evening nonstops.

Maybe this could be fixed by adding the possibility to check not only for the date but for a specific time?

andy

Thank you very much for your efford!

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif

I liked the www.aeroplan.de tool exept it would have been usefull to really see ALL flights.

Other have already mentioned the importent facts.

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Viele Grüße

Oliver

Thanks indeed for your efforts http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif I miss Galileo terribly http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif

I'd like to see the segment and total distances displayed - always useful for mileage runs, or planning how best to requalify.

Also (and this is probably pushing it) I'd love to see alternative codes for the metal - a list of all the code shares on a given flight? Probably not easy, as this is a reservations based tool. But we can dream...

Best of luck with this project.

Hi all. Thanks for your comments so far!

Regarding davidl's comment about seatmaps, the amex tool ( flyaow.com/class.htm ) already can display seatmaps (although it is a pain to get them). You have to select the actual flight you want, and pretend you are going to book a ticket. At the final confirmation screen it gives you the option to "select seats" and that pulls up a seat map for the class of service you were "booking." It is definitely not a good method, but it does work for many flights.

I will take all of your comments, and any others that come and try to get this project completed. (In the process of securing data right now.) http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Cheers!


[This message has been edited by flyaow (edited Nov 25, 2003).]

Thanks. I hadn't known that.

I don't think it matters whether Galileo or Sabre is the source. What matters is ability to request specific fare classes... in particular those used for award classes (which may require "direct connect" feature).

On AA we want to see A, C, T, U, X, Z
On UA we want to see R, X, O, I, N, E
Don't know about DL, CO, NW or others.

UA never worked on aeroplan's Galileo tool, but is visible through UA web site if you try and book an award ticket in expert mode (only if availability for the award you want is not zero)

Thanks, DAK

One possible source of data is Sabre Web Services. see http://webservices.sabre.com
There would presumably be a charge to access the information.

DAK

Thanks for the tips on the various fare buckets that are important. I will feed that into the process. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Regarding the UAL availabilities we do have an "expert mode" United tool that doesn't require logging in or a password and is basically a front end to the UA ITN system. It is available at: flyaow.com/class.htm

Cheers!

More specifically (all flights to be available) - is there any way you can make it return BA flights (within the AMEX tool)?

Hi. Can you be a bit more specific about which flights are not being returned on BA?

Thanks!