Just for the record: I never doubted it.

Try CX HKG as well.

I too am a bit confused...

My situation is as follows:

I have boked an AONE3 ex. TPE. Got all flights I wanted except the LHR-HKG flight. EF shows A4 on flight CX252 (8/9/07). AA RTW desk told me that CX252 is not available, and I would have to take a later flight.

Maybe I should try calling CX directly? Any help is gladly accepted.

Calling CX won't hurt, but you may still get waitlisted. Have you tried BA?

So much of what used to be normal A/D availability/unavailability issues has suddenly been made into POS issues.

If a particular flight isn't available but it's available the next day, or a later flight is available, that's very likely just a fact of discount-fare life and has nothing to do with POS control. Learn to live with it. Book the best available seat and ask to be waitlisted for what you want.

If that doesn't work for you, you bought the wrong fare.

Sometimes airlines can't see each others' availability so it doesn't hurt to call the operating carrier to ask for the seat. Sometimes it will cost you a booking fee, of course.

Expert Flyer doesn't know everything and can be quirky. Unlike other services that will be very "helpful" it seems to ignore any flights before the starting time, so I always set it to midnight. And I've seen numerous instances when, if I specify the carrier, it specifically skips that carrier, so leaving that blank may be a good thing.

None of that probably relates to your circumstance, and in fact this morning EF is reporting A0 for the flight that AA told you wasn't available. Looks like they were simply right.

Thanks for the info, it is a strange system with lots of quirks.

When I check EF, I get F4, A4 for CX252, but seatcounter shows F0, A0. Maybe EF isn't working properly for me.

When I check CX252 for August 9th, 2007 I see F4 A4 as well on EF. I even checked Sept 8th 2007 in case we wre flipping months and days that's F4A4 as well.

Odd.

Steve

Indeed, the flight is zeroed-out in those classes:

[KVS Availability Tool 2.8.2/Platinum - Apollo: ITN/US-ARL]
[KVS Availability Tool 2.8.2/Platinum - Sabre: ITN/US-AXC1]

Speaking of quirks, I could have sworn I posted this follow-up a couple of hours ago:

I rechecked availability on EF and indeed saw F0 A0 again. Note that this was without typing CX into the airline-choice field. I backed up and did it again, this time specifying CX, as you may have done. Guess what - availability (presumably incorrectly) becomes F4 A4.

Also, the a/c type was 744 for the first case (typing nothing in the airline box) and 74A the second time.

As I mentioned above, I'd previously noticed problems with typing in an airline designator. Among other things, I was looking for avail on a CX HKG-PEK flight and since there are a zillion others, I put CX in the box. No CX flight!!! Erase it, and the CX flight appears, you just have to search diligently to find it among the chaff.

I think if you were to email EF about this you'd be doing all of us EF users a favour, becase what you describe is a major flaw.

Done, I'll report any feedback. It may be a difficult problem for them - I first mentioned the PEK thing in a thread they had had an input to, so assume they scan FT and would have seen it. The problems aren't transient - I could easily reproduce the HKG-PEK error days later.

I also asked about the issue where if you leave the look up time at 5AM, an earlier flight won't be listed.

Well, EF sent a reply very quickly. Give them points for that.

Unfortunately they told me that the issue of flights or availability disappearing or changing when you enter an airline code is a "feature" that they know about. Ditto not showing flights earlier than 5 AM (or whatever starting time you change it to.) Neither is EF's fault, but the fault of whatever GDS they're drawing data from.

The email struck me as less than customer-friendly, and they seemed annoyed that the issue had been mentioned in a public forum. I understand that a whole lot of expensive programming would be needed to actually build a highly-accurate picture of airline fares and availability - just acquiring the data reliably from a variety of arcane airline computers that still talk in ALL CAPS is probably agony enough. But in the absence of that product, I think the site needs to be much more candid about its limitations. If they need to use a GDS that regularly misreports availability for some good reason, the customer needs to know that, and needs a button that skips that GDS.

Agree. EF is often quite touchy when it comes to negative 'press' here in FT, and too inclined, IMO, to put the blame elsewhere. They might not be the guilty party sometimes, anyone can understand that, but they are responsible for what they sell, a concept they find, again IMO, hard to accept.

EF website is prettier than before but in terms of the stuff I value the content has gone downhill in the last few months, and I'm not just talking about the show stopper JohnAx has reported.

Our apologies if our email response sometimes are less than friendly. I assure you it is out of frustration with our inabaility to sometimes give the required response than annoyance with the issue being raised in the email.

We rely on, and pay for, information from sources that we do not control, are inconsistent over time in data accuracy and scope of content and have little or untimely support when we raise issues with them. And while we acknowledge our responsibility to our subscribers, in some situations we cannot fully understand or get explanations why data does or does not appear or appears only under certain conditions, especially when those conditions change without notice or have no explanation. Believe me when I say that nothing would please us more than to have the ability to deliver comprehensive, accurate information on a consistent basis. To that end, we are constantly looking for new sources of information that we can legally access and integrate into a seemless presentation.

Many times questions or issues about EF are debated within FT forums, and that's just fine with us, good and bad. That's one way we learn. But, sometimes the details of the issue are never emailed to customer service at EF and we have no way of fully understanding the problem and either resolving it, carrying on a dialogue with the user through email to dig deeper, or at least explaining its cause properly. We appreciate JohnAx's email to us in this case, but you might be surprised how often this is not done. And, as is the case with the problem the JohnAx brought to our attention, if there is a problem we can fix we will do so as quickly as possible.

One last comment. I sometimes get PM'ed here at FT to report and troubleshoot a specific and timely problem on EF. While I do not mind PM's, I am not the person to report timely operational issues to. This will only delay our repsonse to you and the issue. Just email [email protected].

Thank you again.

EFV

EFV, EF is an important tool to many members here, and so it's natural for us to talk among ourselves about issues with it. On one hand, we realize that we're fallible and may simply be doing something stupid; on the other, we want to help other FTers by making sure they know of EF limitations that might otherwise be very frustrating. And handling issues privately by email deprives the community of useful knowledge.

I'd hate to be the guy assigned to scan ALL of FT every day for EF mentions, but if I was marketing a product like EF, I'd be darned sure someone was assigned to do it. (Disclaimer: I know squat about marketing, so maybe it's not as important as I think.) You could make your job easier (and help all of us in the process) by talking Randy into enabling 2- and 3-letter searches, a glaring limitation in a forum full of 2- and 3-letter acronyms.

But imho the first thing EF should do to assure customer confidence is generate (and maintain) a page of known issues with a prominent link. No customer should have to discover for himself e.g. that typing in an airline code can be fatal to a search.