ExpertFlyer and United Differ on Availability
 

I have an ExpertFlyer alert on for TAM LHR-GRU D class on 24th July. No e-mail from them for over 17 hours, but when I randomly called United Reservations to check on this for me, they said that they can confirm me on LHR-GRU D class on TAM.

When I told United that this is conflicting with my source (ExpertFlyer), the CSR said that it just opened. Which I find difficult to believe (a random opening while EF still says D0)

Does Expertflyer show all revenue inventory fare bucket availability? What could be the explanation?

Many reasons are possible with one of them being POS.

So did you get the seat?

Did you check EF while UA was saying it was available?

EF notifications are not real-time. They run the query every now and then - more frequently as the query date gets closer - so it is entirely possible that the seats did open up between the last EF query and when you called.

If you are referring to TAM flight 8085, then the problem is that UA doesn't directly codeshare that flight, therefore we don't display UA's view of availability for that flight. Looking at the TAM view of availability isn't really valid since you're making the reservation thru UA and not TAM. UA's view of D inventory may be different. Please email us if you have any other questions at [email protected]

I got the seat.

EF Voice - I will e-mail EF when I get a chance as it is important for me to not have to spend a lot of time calling United's desk to check on seat availability. But if this is always a possibility, I'll always be wondering if EF is giving me dependable information.

Thanks,

Anuj

Glad to hear you got the seat. It's not an issue of dependable or not, it's an issue of applicable or not. As mentioned before, UA's view of the inventory classes is not necessarily the same as TAM's. We'll look at it in more detail when you email us. Thanks.