I cancelled mine two weeks ago (due for renewal this week). About the only thing I can use it for now is AA award availability a week at a time, but the enhanced AA website has that functionality now. I might do a monthly subscription later in the year when I'm looking for AA upgrade availability with systemwides, but really can't see the need to keep the subscription year round now.

This email was from Feb 4th:

Thank you for your email. We are waiting for our connection to our primary information provider to be fixed which shouldn't be more then 2 weeks tops, probably a lot sooner. Thank you for your pertinence and understanding in the mean time.

Well, we have learned our lesson on this one. It is still our intention to bring back lost features (i.e. QF Z/U) but different elements of this industry are quite unpredictable and effect our ability to legitimately access information. However, we are continuing to work on this issue.

Having said that, we will soon be announcing new features and access to new information which we are confident our subscribers will find of value to them as we continue to improve the service.

We thank you for your continued support.

EFV

What's the real reason? Are people at Qantas or Sabre or wherever the info comes from pissed off at Expertflyer or want much more money than is reasonable to access the data? I'm really grateful that I found z seats on expertflyer before the cutoff as I never would have found them without paying for EF. But I'm puzzeed how the KVS tool can have it, and EF can't. Is it politics and/or money?

I believe usage of the KVS tool is not as widespead as that for Expert Flyer.

This is mainly because it is not as convenient to use. For a start E/F can be accessed from almost any internet connection while KVS requires a client to be loaded onto a PC, then gets licensed for that PC only. Also, to effectively employ KVS, one needs a little training as well as awareness of the different reservation systems that may need to be use for different airlines. E/F does this automatically.

These days there are issues around with bucket availability search software, which when taken to it maximum, could be set up to search for and actually book award flights on your behalf while you are otherwise occupied (e.g. Sleeping). This would make it nearly impossible for those who do not have access to such software to book these same awards for hard to get routes/classes.

The sole reason I subscribed to EF was to find premium award seats on QF and others. I succeeded in doing so 330 days out, but now have faced challenges (from TN specifically) and EF is basically useless in trying to salvage my return flights on QF/CX etc. (Not that I expect to see anything available, but U0 Z0 info would be helpful.

Will this ever be resolved?

I am considering subscribing to one or other of the Expert Flyer options and after reading the above just wondered if the issues described were ever resolved.

What are current opinions of EF on the QF board? and, which subsciption level is necessary? (I plan to use mostly to check D class availability to plan DONE4 and other itineraries, and perhaps check for awards).

Thanks,

tb

The business award buckets haven't come back yet. I work around that by using the Award checker on QF site for domestic.

I still subscribe to EF as it is useful for me to see what flights have seats available, rather than ringing to check. Also useful for international if you want to gauge how full a flight is when applying for an upgrade.

Thanks jk.

Do you use the Basic plan or the Premium for that?

tb

I use the premium, something like just over $10pcm.

USD10 per calendar month or USD99 p.a. for the premium service.

Compare here: E/F Rates

I have the annual premium subscription. I really really wish they would bring the QF awards back. That was one of the main reasons I signed up originally. However, I sill use it very regularly for checking availability and published fares.

I'll bump this thread again, hoping that EFV gives a detailed description of the problems with seeing QF U/Z.

I was quite excited to get the email this week regarding seeing award seats on EF, but equally disappointed to see that the QF premiums still aren't there.

Is this a dead issue?

Oh, and while im in the complaining mode- what is the story with UA awards on EF?

thanks!

I had an email response from the EF team which indicated the QF awards visibility problem is not going to be fixed any time soon .