qbrain

Thanks ckpeter. I don't have an award coming up, so I am putting in my asia trip from this year as if I was to take it again next year. This is MUCH faster than using asia miles and BA and AA searches. Sadly, there is also much better availability in F next year than there was for my trip. Maybe I will have to make the trip again

I am a miles neophyte, so maybe I am getting more benefit from the basic interface, but it took about 10 minutes to put together my trip from last year which took about 2 days before I was ready to call the award desk.

Seeing all that CX F availability... so tempting.

zlc

Saw this thread today, just went to the site, I noticed on the registration page, the password is not masked and the page is not encrypted.

I have never built a web page myself, so don't know how hard it is to have the field masked as well as using the SSL on that page. I am sure it would make the site look much more professional.

malgudi

First off, great job in putting this site together.

I agree with the comment re: password. I almost didn't sign up

ckpeter

Good to have you, qbrain! Thanks for leaving the link to your trip report. I remember reading it a few months back. I am sorry that Brooke fell ill in the middle of the trip.

Your words were a little unclear to me, but I think you mean that, the trip that took you two days to plan last year, took 10 minutes to search on ANX? I am sure this is an extreme case, but it is, in general, the kind of usage data that I am looking for, as one thing I want to find out is how much time ANX saves other people compare to manual searching.

ckpeter

I have been wanting to tell about my design decision. Allow me.

AXN does not collect sensitive data now and I assume that you are not signing up at a public computer with strangers right next to you (login page has masked password).

The original sign up page had masked password and a double password confirmation. I cut the confirmation and made the password field clear, to speed up the sign up process for everyone.

When more sensitive information is collected in the future, I will deploy SSL and other security measures, commensurate with the sensitivity of the information collected.

Thanks for the comment. I don't see you signed up as of now, so come on in.

qbrain

Someone read my trip report

Yes, you translated what I wrote into what I meant rather well. Tracking down CX availability in asiamiles is/was a slow process. The AA side of things was easier, but still not as easy as AXN.

iolairemcfadden

Minor suggestion, for the multi-route search's second and later date pop-up -> make it default to the date selected in the first data area. I'm sure that will be hard to do - but... Maybe set a cookie with the selected date each time the data picker is used and use that as the default date the next time the picker is loaded.

ckpeter

Can you clarify what you mean?

The date picker currently already defaults to whatever the previous date was. If you pick 12/1 in the first segment, the second segment is automatically filled as 12/1.

Are you asking for something else, or may there be a bug that causes the auto-fill to not work for you? (check your browser version, as older browsers often have issues).

moondog

Suggestion:

Perhaps you could tweak your filters to NOT show results for C/F searches, in which the longest sector is in a lower class of service.

For example, when searching for SFO-MNL using ANA box checked, many of the results are Y to ICN and C on the second leg.

I think very few people would entertain the idea of spending C mileage for such a routing. Of course, the reverse (shorter leg in lower class) is a different story.

ckpeter

Thanks for your suggestion, moondog.

Have you tried using the Hide mixed cabins checkbox? It hides those mixed cabins and allows you to focus on mono-cabin options.

It's a little tricky to hide the lower class by distance, because the scripts on the client browser does not have access to distance information (plus, it is variable to each individual as to how big of a ratio of the trip that they are willing to take a voluntary downgrade).

I did just added a new "Show as actual cabin" view option, so that you can at least, at a glance, see what kind of cabins are available.

Let me know if these options are not powerful enough for your needs.

P.S. While most people would not pay C to fly a long leg in Y and a short leg in C, it is possible that, as a strategy, they would take a voluntary downgrade, waiting for C to become available. I designed ANX to return as many options as possible, so that these situations can be supported (and rely on the filter controls to help you manage the heaps of flights found).

moondog

For the programs in which most of us deal, *A tickets are pretty hard to change.

i.e. if you don't see C upon booking, the chances of scoring it are minimal.

-but, Y on the shorter leg is often okay
-displaying all mixed class itins in a different color would be a good short term solution

ckpeter

Try using the new "Show as actual cabin" view option. It shows distinct mixed cabin, so you can tell at a glance which flights are mixed cabins.

moondog

Thanks. I will try that.

Since you've drawn me back to this thread, here's another question: is your BA search set to include partners? I ask because I ran a few US-Asia searches today (n/s CX/JL routes), first checking the BA box, and second using CX/JL where appropriate. The BA searches returned nothing (and took 500 seconds), while CX/JL were pretty good. As long as the latter results are roughly the same as the former, I see no reason to click BA at all, but if the discrepancies are great, it might be useful to adjust the BA search so it checks partners by default. BTW, it's entirely possible that you're already doing this and BA was in a bad mood today.

ckpeter

Yes, the BA engine is set to include partners.

BA.com is known to occasionally not show partner inventory online, but which are available if you call BA. It is also much slower than other engines (partly because, in the backend, it searches 7 days at a time, so if you do a +2 days search, you are still going to have to wait for the search for 7 days).

Due to the slowness and occasional inconsistency, my current suggestion is to use QF for all Oneworld airlines and JL for JL flights (MX is about the only one that you need BA for).

Check the tips page on the site for more information.

As far as I know, BA is always in a bad mood.

moondog

Thanks for your tips; I will make good use of the advice.

I just checked for a specific flight I knew was available on BA.com and your site found it this time.

I used ba.com to plan my last trip to Asia and got used to its quirks, to the extent that it isn't on my hate list.

That having been said, I really like the fact that anx can search for 4 flights at the same time: e.g. SFO-NRT, LAX-NRT, SFO-HKG, YVR-HKG. If I do the above once for biz and once for F, I only need to perform one more search to get a feel for the connecting flight situation (mostly 2-class flights so F and C are the same).

Since this requires ~12 minutes, while my previous approach sucked up a solid 40 minutes, I like it.