This is what I am finding also. One example would be BOS to VCE in April or May 2008. There are many more options on the Japanese site that will not come up on the NWA site. I do not have any status on NWA, if that makes any difference. It irks me that I will have to pay for a reservation that I should be able to book online.

The flight I want that the Japanese site shows as available is listed as NWA, not a partner.

I have been approached by a journalist working on a story about award availability. In preparation I have been following the saga of availability to EZE next month. The latest is that both the US and the NW sites say with respect to IAH-EZE (CO51):

WorldPerks Award Travel Reservations are not available for the dates selected because no Northwest Airlines or partner flights were found between Houston George Bush Intercontinental Airport and Buenos Aires Ministro Pistarini that matched your request. Check our service destinations and routes.


However the Delta site shows availability on CO 51 IAH-EZE at the normal Sky Saver price. A call to the NW elitye line today confirms there is plenty of availability at the normal (non-rule-busting) number of miles.

Based on this and my other recent postings I conclude that the NW sites are no longer to be trusted for award tickets. Perhaps NW Scoop would care to comment?

That's not a solution; that's very, very bad programming technique. I, for one, am glad NWA does not do something like this...

I just posted a sample itinerary on the dates you were looking for pulled up with the nwa.com award reservations. You didn't respond. Was I able to do something you couldn't? Is that not the extent of your problem? Really, I'm trying to help, but simply saying that it can't find awards now doesn't do much good, especially when people can find awards on the dates they supposedly can't.

I think you'd be misleading any "reporter" if you didn't include the fact that others were able to find awards for the itineraries you couldn't. Does that mean the site is perfect? No. But it also avoided the implicit suggestion that booking at NWA.com "can no longer be trusted" as well as other similar comments.

Bad says who? SchmutzigMSP and ... ? I find it very convenient when sites retain my last set of search parameters in their cookie.

Then you must also disapprove of the way your account summary login is also retained in a cookie. Fortunately (thanks to cookies) you don't have to log in every time for every little thing.

Folks...
A few things.

1. I have updated the master thread. I'm now using BLUE to represent bugs that have been reported since the "updated" website came online.

2. There are a bunch of people complaining about the award search on the new website (me included). I haven't captured all of the messages about the award search so if someone feels the main thread is missing some items that should be mentioned separately in the master thread, please PM me and I'll be happy to put them up.

3. Just a friendly reminder that this thread is not for discussion back & forth or for personal opinions. It is ONLY for posting bugs/issues/wishlist. If you want to start a separate thread and discuss something in there, please do so. Once in a while I ask a moderator to go through the thread and help delete unnecessary posts. By unnecessary, I mean any post that does not list a bug/issue/wishlist item or specificially corroborates the listed bug/issue/wishlist item (either confirming it or saying, "I don't have that problem. Here's what I did..."). Please help keep this thread succinct and on-topic by not posting unnecessary messages.

Thanks,
RM

I must not have done a very good job of explaining how session timeouts work, or I misinterpreted what you meant by storing things in a cookie.

Certain starting parameters -- departure city, for example -- are good to store in a cookie. But things like the entire search query, or the search query in progress (a.k.a. partial itineraries as you're building the trip) are horrible things to use cookies for. That's what I thought you were referring to. The "Session timeouts" I described earlier have nothing to do with the parameters stored in a cookie. Cookies are client-side, search sessions are all stored server-side.

Mike, you should know that I know what I'm talking about (at least I think you know my educational and work history). I'm not trying to argue for argument's sake. It seems that I simply may have misunderstood what you were suggesting they do.

I think we're pretty much in agreement -- I would retain all user-entered search criteria in the cookie, discarding what no longer relevant if the user initiates a different type of search. Repeatedly entering my E-Cert # & coupon info on one recent effort was a royal pain. Currently the resv. systems seems to retain nothing between sessions (& when performance goes south, you can have a succession of serial "sessions".)

Retention of at least some of the search criteria should be on the wish list.

Nope ....

Let me clarify: In order to eliminate the issue about the availability of flights from the US departure city to IAH, I focussed on finding availability on CO 51 IAH-EZE.As previously explained, I already knew there was lots of availability on this flight on 1/4/08. I then searched on the NW US site and got the message I posted. On the Japan site I sometimes found availability and sometimes I got the infamous message. When I emailed NWA I got a spectrum of replies, mostly of this ilk: "Since there is no NW code share serving IAH-EZE no flights are found" This applies I think to purchased tickets, not to award tickets.

Based on this and several weeks of finding availability on Japan site often but rarely on the US site, all the while knowing there actually was good availability, I believe it is accurate to say that one cannot rely on the NW site. That means one cannot accept the results shown as being correct. They may be sometimes, and they may not be at other times, but that fits my definition of not being able to rely on them. A telephone call is necessary.

Domestic seat asignments currently unavailable
 

Perhaps it's just a temporary glitch related to the changing of the year, but I'm unable at the moment to change my seat assignments on domestic segments. I can do it for the international portions of a reservation, but not domestic.

Obviously this is not a bug, but it's a big issue for me. I am
researching a trip NRT-LAS-FRA-IAH-HNL-NRT. NW.com
will return an itinerary with an USAir flight LAX-LAS for a
total of $ 186.00 less than the exact same itinerary but
with the NW flight LAX-LAS. This is just plain ridiculous.
And I am not worried about the money issue, but firstly
I don't want to give up my WP miles and secondly and
more important I want to use my SWU which on NW's
suggested itinerary cannot be applied at all. Please note,
there are no connection time issues, but I see more and
more AA, UA or other carriers included in trips that could
very easily be flown on all NW metal.

There was a problem with the site around that time: Can't Check In Online.

New nwa.com Booking Engine has its own Mind !
 

I was looking for award ticket from Los Angeles to New York, and did not mind one of the three New York area airports. So, I plugged in LAX-NYC and opted for LOWEST price/mileage (hoping that I would get the lowest mile-ticket to one of these airports).

It gave me LAX-EWR for 50,000 miles ( all airlines were the same - NW,CO,DL,MX).....then I tried LAX-EWR, and it came back with 37,500 !.....then I tried LAX-JFK, and it came back with 37,500 !!.....then I tried LAX-LGA, and it came back with 25,000 !!! (I had expected that the NW engine would search and figure it out for me that going to LGA was the cheapest; and give me LAX-LGA as the first option)

I think, there are still BIG BUGS in the system, and can bite someone if one is in hurry or not so creatively thinking

Change/Cancellation
 

can't perform Change/Cancellation function for award e-ticket

message "Cannot redeposit mileage to your account, please call NW"

did not want to bother few folks working harder/busier over holiday; will call back tomorrow when they will have full staffing

When I search by "lowest price," the price of "direct" flights show up at the top of the screen even though they are NOT the lowest price. I have to scroll down to find lower flights. This is a real annoyance.

A couple more items for the bug and wish list
 

Reported via TTU:

- Bug Report Item: Search by Schedule/List Flights by Departure Time/click Select This Departure (doesn't matter which one), even though List Flights by Departure Time is still selected, the return flights displayed are not listed by departure time. Selecting another List Flights By option, then reselecting by Departure Time does not result in the correct ordering the flights. Nothing I've tried has allowed me to see return flights listed in departure time order.

- Wish List Item: Return date changes when I select a Depart date. This 7 day Return date auto-set "feature" just introduces extra clicks in the process when one wants to price different Depart dates but keep the same Return date. Why even have this "feature"? What percentage of the flying public book 7 day depart/return flights? My guess is < 50%. If true then this "feature" is an inconvenience to the majority of customers.

- Wish List Item: With the old booking engine, once I was logged in the flight summary page defaulted to my name for Enter Traveler(s) Details (IIRC, this happened via Express Booking selection). This no longer happens, nor is the Express Booking an option.