Oneworld Explorer itinerary validator
 

I've finished the first release of my oneworld itinerary validator utility. The checker will validate (most) of the OWE rules and display if an itinerary is valid. The tool will also validate each segment of the routing to check if it is a valid OneWorld flight (this does not display the actual flight numbers A->B but only that a flight exists A->B).

The files are located at: http://jph.bytestacker.com/award.htm
Download award.htm, zones.js, flights.js and cities.js. Open award.htm in your browser. It should work on Mozilla and Internet Explorer, but requires Javascript support.

The utility also includes my beta FF award mileage calculator which calculates the # of FF miles required for different programs.

There will be a table with several rows. The first three rows are for the FF mileage calculator. Entering the city pairs you are interested in, then click submit to display the # of miles required between the cities (R/T works best right now, o/w and point-to-point still has issues).

The OWE itinerary validator will check the following:
* start/end zones
* no intercontinental backtracking
* # of segments per continent
* specific routing limitations (anchorage, hawaii, perth, transcon, etc)
* Transatlantic/Transpacific
* Max # of segments (20)
* # of entry/exit per continent
* Displays # of QF Status Credits earned, and # of miles per segment
* Validates that city pair segments exist in the timetable. [new]

It does not:
* check transit rules vv North America - South America, Europe - Africa/etc (planned)

When entering segments, use '-' to denote a flight segment, and use ',' to denote an open jaw.

LHR-JFK,BOS-SFO,LAX-HKG-LHR


Many thanks to Mark Bolton for providing webspace for this tool!

Ok.. that was easier than I thought.
I've now added actual flight checks to the utility, it will display an error if a city pair is not served by a Oneworld flight.
Eg. CDG-RIX will show an error

Download flights.js as well to get the flight segment data.

Enjoy!

Done! Thought I would try to do something useful with my first post...

Should be available at: http://www.markbolton.com/award/award.htm

Now if anyone fancies giving me some advice on planning a OWE trip ex-NRT next year, that would be much appreciated. :)

EDIT: Because of hosting on Linux, it is now case sensitive, hence I've changed the examples to upper case.

Great tool thanks! ^

Actually seems to have highlighted a problem with my itineraryt - I used my current DONE4 itin (ticket issued and started) as an example.

I have LHR-VCE-LHR in the itin - that seems not be a direct flight (any more?).

I am sure I looked this up as a BA flight before booking - was I mistaken or has VCE changed to only being serviced out of LGW?

The data I'm using is from the Oneworld Timetable, so according to that, you are correct, there is only LGW-VCE service, not LHR-VCE.

I've added yet another feature.. the ability to show all OWE destinations from/to an airport, this should be quite useful in OWE itinerary planning. Eg, you can see all destinations from LHR, or all destinations from KRT, sorted by distance. This should handle (most?) direct flights as well as nonstop.

Individual flights are not displayed, just destinations.

Sure, lots of people here willing to help you with that; just start a new thread, give us some details about your plans/wishes, ask whatever question(s) you have and we can take it from there.

Tooling up
 

It would be useful if you could enter LON as the starting point and it would then tell you if it was served out of LHR, LGW, STN or LCY as these all fall under the LON banner.

Yes we have Venice here at LGW.

Looking forward to using to tool shortly.

For the ex-NRT thread, look forward to helping you. Need to know your mileage and status requirements with 1W, cities you would like to visit/avoid or just change at, Class of travel and number of continents. Are you interested in culture, miles only or status only? If travelling on DONEx or AONEx then probably not NRT to start from a price point of view or are you not price sensitive/cannot be bothered to buy elsewhere.

Ask and we shall try to help.

Spotwelder

Website duly updated, now I'm back on land after NRT-LHR today. If anyone has problems with the link above (using frames), the direct link (though this one may change if I change ISP) is:
http://www.derivative.uklinux.net/award/award.htm

New Version posted - 0.3
 

I've posted a new release of the OWE validator. (I'm going to have to get my own webspace this week - sorry to those of you who aren't Yahoo members and can't try the tool out!! :( )

I've added the ability to use city codes like LON,NYC,WAS etc in the itinerary validator. The actual airport will be displayed below in the segment list. Eg. CAI-LON-VCE-LON-NYC will show in the list as CAI-LHR,LGW-VCE,VCE-LGW,LHR-JFK. Also added support to disallow transiting departure city (LHR-MAN-LHR-XXX is not allowed) or multiple departures from the originating country (MAN-CDG-LHR-XXX is invalid). Also the Nigeria/Ghana Africa rule should be fixed (is LHR-JNB/ACC-LHR-XXX valid? not sure on that one).

I've also added support to show all flights to/from a specific country in the Planner tool. eg. show all flights from France, use 'fr' in the From: field. The codes are the ISO two-digit country codes. Be prepared to wait if you choose 'us' as one of the values. :)

This does look good and will no doub be very useful for planning my next OneWorld Explorer. Great work ^ .

Just one minor glitch. You may like to check the QF SC's for a business class flight 5000-8750 miles. It is coming up as 120 SC's, but I think it should be 160.

oops.. so it is.. Fixed it to 160 pts. :)

Very cool tool, thanks.

Question: how to show land portions? For example, we're planning XXX-SYD-CHC|AKL-MEL. I've tried inserting /, |, or a line break, and it doesn't recognize an airport called "CHC/AKL". No biggie, I just mentally subtract the miles and segments, but maybe there's an easier way.

Thanks again.

Use a comma to denote open-jaws.

XXX-SYD-CHC,AKL-MEL-XXX

Great, thanks.

Feature Requests
 

This is great! Thanks Hauteboy!

In the OWE Planner, how about adding a new column for "continent"?

And, since the timetable is right there in memory anyway, how about adding another column for days of flights like "1234567" for every day, "1-3-5--" for MWF flights only?

And how about a column telling us how many classes (1,2,3) are on the flight?

And how about sorting the table automatically by miles, most miles on the top?

And can you populate the "Airlines" column?

Adding the ISO county as an option to OWE Planner was brilliant! How about letting you type in "Continent" there as well?

You show an example of: LHR-JFK-LAX-SYD-HKG-LHR. Why not add an open jaw with a comma in the example to show the open jaw option.

Great resource hauteboy ^ , thanks.

Let me add my voice to the chorus of praise - hurrah for hauteboy, a magnificent effort. Now for me just to get the next RTW going (ohhhhh, too far away! :D ).

The validator doesn't like either of these RTW itineraries:

yyz-ord-anc-dfw-lga,jfk-syd-akl-mel-hkg-nrt-hkg-sin-hkg-lhr-dxb-lhr-ist-lhr-yvr-jfk,lga-yyz

bos-dfw-anc-dfw-sju-lax-lhr-dxb-lhr-rom-hel-hkg-nrt-hkg-jfk-bos

Are they valid? And if so, can they be used to diagnose the difficulty?


Also, do you need a way to designate transit-only segments? And if so, perhaps > or = could be used to note a transit-only segment that would otherwise violate a ONE rule.

I also recommend allowing remarks or comments in the sequence for the validator to ignore, but the human to be able to see. Perhaps square brackets [could be used to make remarks] in the string to be validated.

It looks like the tool is [incorrectly] considering USA-Puerto Rico and USA-Canada as international travel.

Yeah, that's one of the bugs I need to work on.. Canada/US/PR/VI? and Denmark/Sweden/Norway are considered the same country so it shouldn't trigger the multiple entry/exit rule.

Ok.. Version 0.4 released.. fixes the us/ca/pr/vi and dk/se/no 'same country' rule.. so the following are valid itins:

yyz-ord-anc-dfw-lga,jfk-syd-akl-mel-hkg-nrt-hkg-sin-hkg-lhr-dxb-lhr-ist-lhr-yvr-jfk,lga-yyz

bos-dfw-anc-dfw-sju-lax-lhr-dxb-lhr-rom-hel-hkg-nrt-hkg-jfk-bos

osl-arn-lhr-hel-hkg-jfk-hel-cph

Transit rules still aren't checked.. they're a bit trickier
ie. I was able to ticket JFK-SCL-(LAX-JFK)-SYD as a valid transit.

Would HKG-(FRA-LHR)-ACC-LHR-DXB be considered as transit?
How about LHR-(NRT-HKG)-AKL-HKG-KHI? or
JFK-HKG-NRT-MEL-AKL-(HKG-SIN)-LHR?

I plan on using the ()'s to denote the transit segments if and when I get this working. :)


The LAX-JFK might be a special case as it was domestic flight.
I am guessing the other examples would NOT be allowed. :(

I don't know of any 'transit only' segments that wouldn't violate a rule.. or were you referring to my JFK-SCL-LAX-JFK-SYD example?

Great Tool.

How about adding totals to the OWE QF status columns.

This is an excellent tool, hauteboy! ^

I just wanted to point out a bug which refers to this rule -

J)WITHIN AUSTRALIA - ONLY O N E NONSTOP/SINGLE
PLANE SERVICE IS PERMITTED BETWEEN THE FOLLOWING
POINTS:
BNE/CNS/SYD-PER;
MEL/SYD-DRW.
EXCEPTION: NO RESTRICTION BETWEEN SYD-PER FOR
PASSENGERS ORIGINATIING IN PER WHEN IN
CONJUNCTION
WITH TRAVEL TO/FROM AFRICA.

I initially had a SYD-PER and DRW-SYD segments, and the tool accepted it.

You should be able to do both no worries, the semi-colon separates them into two separate restrictions. So as you successfully managed, you can do that (so SYD-DRW-PER-SYD is legitimate for instance). You just can't do SYD-DRW-MEL or SYD-PER-BNE for instance.

That's correct.. SYD-DRW-PER-MEL is allowed according to the rules. Incidentally the longest routes in Australia are now SYD-BME-SYD-BME-SYD.. though involves staying over in Broome overnight. although the wording in the rules does tend to be ambiguous sometimes!
A few minor updates, I've been working on adding support to the planner tool to show what fare classes are offered on that route.

Ah! Excellent! I can go back to my original itinerary then -
SYD-DRW
DRW-ADL
ADL-PER
PER-SYD

Instead of doing PER-MEL and then get an extra ticket for MEL-SYD.

Thanks, GibSpmuh! ^

So, assuming SYD-BME-SYD-BME-SYD is the longest in Australia, what is the longest in all of SWP? Surely there must be a longer routing. For example, does MNL qualify? Or some other SWP airport?

Unfortunately, both Africa and Australia are pretty slim when it comes to long segments.
PER-BNE is actually the longest segment in SWP.. but because of the restrictions to PER, SYD-BME-SYD-BME-SYD is probably the longest possible routing. MNL is considered part of Asia.

There used to be a PER-AKL flight (a BA extension to their 744 service LHR-SIN-PER I think). But that stopped quite a few years back. SWP (from a OneWorld perspective) only covers Australia, New Zullund, PNG and the Pacific Island ports of Noumea, Suva, Nadi, Apia, Port Vila and Papeete. However, some of these Island ports are only accessible via codeshares on a Global Explorer fare and not on a OneWorld Explorer fare.

Anothefr good earner is PER-CNS, but it also falls under the same segment restrictions as PER-SYD and PER-BNE.

We can still live in hope that there'll be a PER-AKL direct flight one day (like NZ has already) - or in the even remoter hope that QF actually returning some of their own metal across the SWP to the likes of PPT, but for the moment I certainly wouldn't be holding my breath on that ever happening (or if it does it'll almost certainly be under AO instead of QF *sigh*).

I decided to go for comfort over miles. Heresy, I know! I've got SYD-AKL-SYD on LA in first booked on my upcoming RTW. It's a 3 class plane with 3 class service - rare in SWP.

I just checked the Qantas website, and there's no direct service between SYD and BME, it's all via PER, so that routing above is invalid. :td:

Try QF1040 operating on Saturdays. Dep SYD @ 13:35, Arr BME @ 16:45.
And QF1041 operating on Saturdays. Dep BME @ 13:15, Arr SYD @ 19:30.

However, note that these flights cross, so no way to do SYD-BME-SYD without spendina week in BME or travelling one way via PER.

Unfortunately, it looks like the direct SYD-BME service will only last until the last Saturday of Oct 2004, after that you have to go via PER. I was thinking of doing the OZ legs next year :(

I susepct it may be seasonal and the Sydney folks like to use Broome as a getaway from their winter. Don't be surprised to see it back next winter (but no promises or inside info from this end :cool: ).

On the downside I wouldn't be at all surprised to see it make a comeback as a Jetstar flight though, given they've identified Broome as one of their future destinations. At least the QF MEL-BME flights still appear to be flying.

It's now available at http://jph.bytestacker.com/award.htm
The only update is calculating old/new Qantas SC earning for segments.

Can you pl let us know where the tool is located nowadays? Yahoo gives me error that I am not part of the group when trying the link above

You just missed it, one message prior to yours: :)

http://jph.bytestacker.com/award.htm

I know I've been away for a long time. Would you mind me continuing to host this, with a pointer to your original, or would you prefer I just took down the old version I had on my webspace?