ckpeter

You should be able to. My experience is that AC web site sometimes hide available flights (which NH found for you in this case), but if you call, you can book it. Please give it a try (and do report back if you experience otherwise).

thyeri

Wow, really nice work!
I wonder how come I only found this website now...

I can't wait to use it for my next trip!

^^

mtimmer

I've been using the tool for the past couple of days for research on a *A trip in October (LAX-somewhere in Europe). It's been a delight to use compared to the ANA tool, which is clunky in comparison. I haven't found my flights yet, but searching has sure been easier! Good work!

cheltzel

One thing I have noticed it that you do a great job of multi-threading.

If I kick off a search and notice I am running low on points, I can request points and than rejoin the search in progress.

Way cool! @:-)@:-)

Would it be difficult to include a way to cancel a search? I realized this would be a good thing when I accidentally repeated a very expensive and time consuming search.

ckpeter

I thought about it, but the two systems are separate and there is currently no easy way to cancel a search that is underway. I did add some double-submission detection code, so that should at least reduce double-submission tying down the system.

yesitshere

Hi,

I like your site, but found an availability on Oct 10, IST-NRT in F, with ANA, whereas Nexus didnt find it.

I looked specifically for this leg.

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I also looked at your chart, but there a lots of quirks as you call them, which I didnt see pointed out.

In my opinion (don't get fooled by my few posts), there are 2 families withing the *A award search.

Family 1: ANA and Aeroplan

Family 2: BMI and Continental, and US Airways

There might be more families, or family members, but thats the ones I use often.

Family 2 might have problems finding a hkg-fra-bru (where fra-bru) wouldnt be available unless they do a point to point search.

Family 1 might have another issue, where says, hkg-ist will show as unavailable, but hkg-ist-muc will be available.

Obviously in both examples we talk about the exact same flights.

Using qantas, CX will show much less than its real availability on long hauls.

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Tried using from my BB, both the with the regular and opera, but I dont succeed. a shame.

ckpeter

Thanks for trying Award Nexus.

Can you give me the exact flight number that you found with F available? I did a manual search on ANA and I saw J/Y availability for TK50 on Oct 10, 2010, but F does not appears to be available.

That is an interesting model, although I do not fully understand it. It seems like part of what you are describing may be married segment constraints on award (where one award flight is available, if and only if you are connecting to or from another flight).

In contrast to paid tickets, where I see that all the time, I only have heard of award married segment logic, but I have not seen it in action. If you have a specific example, please do share.

As usual, with award differential, it pays to be very precise about where the discrepancy is at. From CX's side, I have often seen extra awards that are only available to its own members.

As far as on QF's side, do you have a specific example, where you found that other Oneworld airlines (e.g. AA, BA) can book a flight, but QF.com is not showing it? I do not have any report of this before and this will be a very valuable report that I would like to add to the tips section.

Unfortunately, at the moment, ANX does not work on most mobile devices, including Black Berries - the javascript it uses for data display is just too heavy.

yesitshere

thanks for your reply.

The F on turkish stoped being available a short while later, I guess nexus has a prophecy algorithm of some sort...

I will with pleasure note the discrepancies that I encounter, but you would need to act fast to catch them while alive.

I was told that CX does not attribute more award seats to its own members (reliable source), but I know that one should check (even over the phone with an agent to) every leg separately.



You wanted an example, here I have one:

10/10/2010 HKG-BRU (1 pax) and I want upper class)

if searching on kvs (via ana) it will give me via FRA with LH 739 only Y

if searching on kvs (via ana) just HKG-FRA, it will find F and Y

if searching HKG-BRU with nexus, with all *A options it wont bring up anything (filtering on biz/first, as fra-bru is only biz).

if searching with nexus just HKG-FRA, its AC that finds this LH 739 F, whereas ANA doesnt find anything.


I made this search in your honor, and the first one seemed bullseye.

I know where the sensitive parts are

ckpeter

Interesting. I have had personal experience with multiple HKG-JFK CX flights that are showing as available on CX's site, but not accessible to other Oneworld partner airlines (phone or web site). Looks like this situation may be route dependent.

Thanks for the detailed example. I followed up on all of your searches, including making a call to CO to check availability, and this is what I found:

As you said, LH 739 in F is not available as part of HKG-FRA-BRU, but interestingly is available as standalone HKG-FRA (this seems like some kind of reverse-married segment constraint). I verified this behavior with CO's phone agent as well (she also could only find LH 739 in F if searching for HKG-FRA only).

I was, however, able to obtain the same result with Award Nexus as ANA or KVS. Take a look at the search here (account login required). Make sure you set the filter control to limit to NH searches, as there are a lot of engines/segments in that search.

It looks to me like Award Nexus is reporting the same info as all other sources. If you don't see the same result with your search on Award Nexus, please let me know.

NC Flyer

So much quicker than a day-by-day trawl of the ANA tool. Found two pairs of F on OZ and LX in a fraction of the time it would have taken. Congratulations.

The interface is clear and uncluttered - no need to make it look glam.
A filter to display only particular airlines, or exclude the ones you wish to avoid, would make scanning the results easier. The search could include them giving you the option to quickly display all if your favourites didn't have availability.

ckpeter

Congratulations to you too, for scoring 2 x F on OZ and LX.

I used to have airline filters in there (see the demo pages), but I took it out in a subsequent revision, because the left panel was getting cluttered. At some future interface revision, I would like to find a way to integrate that back into the view settings.

ctownflyer

Award nexus is showing 2 seats available JFK-LHR on AA in F on 12/20 via QF.

In actuality when searching directly on AA and QF only 1 seat is available.

ckpeter

Thanks for the catch. Looks like there was a bug with ANX not setting the number of passengers on QF, thus doing all searches with the default 1 passenger.

It has been fixed.

yesitshere

It would be nice if the flight info (of the flights found), wouldn't just be a popup on click, but something that could stay open for comparison (with the other flights found by nexus) and for ctrl+c/v purposes.

Cheetah_SA

I'm afraid it was a sample of one and now that I have taken 2 award seats on that flight it is probably fruitless to pursue it further.

In the other direction (i.e. seats showing on ANA but not visible to other airlines) I have been monitoring *A availability for SHA/PEK and often get F flights on FM's first and last flights of the day. But BD can usually only see economy and if they try to book them suddenly they get a "waitlisted" message.

Likewise BA only ever shows the first 2 flights of the day on KA for PEK/HKG. That's all that shows on their web site and all their agents can see when I call. Yet CX will usually have availability throughout the day.

BTW I am still getting that message about attempting to do things I shouldn't have. It happens whenever I have logged into and out of my work VPN - even when I was logged out of Award Nexus at the time. The first attempt to log in gives the message, the 2nd works fine.