G Rodricks

Very new at using points and miles so any advice will be much appreciated. Just used up a lifetimes wort of accumulated Aeroplan to book a mini RTW business class trip for wife and myself from Toronto to Goa, India and back in March 2020. Going via Europe with Stropover in Istanbul and several long layovers returning with a Stopover in Singapore. Got confirmed bookings all sectors except EVA TPE-ORD on BR 56 on 3rd April 202 is Economy. I am monitoring Aeroplan for BC availability on EVA but somehow they do not seem to have released any BC seats for that period on any of their flights. Any suggestions on how I can monitor and upgrade this one sector when BC seats are available? Even one seat upgrade will be appreciated since it s 15 hour flight and I have already paid the points for BC all the way.

ExpertFlyer Voice

If you are using miles, you would just set a Flight Alert for the Business class award inventory (I class) for that flight and let ExpertFlyer monitor it for you.

Globaliser

I'm looking for some AC flights between BOS and YYZ in mid-November 2019.

Until the end of northern summer 2019, these flights are all operated by AC mainline using three-digit flight numbers in the AC5xx series.

From the beginning of northern winter 2019/20 (ie 27 October 2019), AC, ITA and Google Flights show a mixture of AC5xx flights and Air Canada Regional AC7xxx flights.

However, EF's flight availability display is only showing AC7xxx flights from this time, and the EF display doesn't match what is shown by the other channels.

Taking 15 November 2019 as an example, all sources show seven of the AC7xxx flights. However, EF additionally shows AC7621, which the others do not show; and the others show AC523, AC525 and AC531 which do not appear on EF.

More curiously, EF will return seat maps for AC523, AC525 and AC531 if the details are input manually, even though the flights do not show up on the availability display.

Is there any obvious explanation for this odd mismatch between sources, and between different EF displays?

LyfeSaver

ExpertFlyer is showing 0 availability for premium economy award (Z) for QF 55 BNE-LAX on Mar 7, 2020.

Searches made directly on QF (and validated by AS) indicate availability on this flight for premium economy. Why does EF show 0?

I have just paid for the premium account and made a substantial set of individual flight alerts for business and premium economy availability for multiple dates and am starting to feel not confident about the EF results. Can you please advise?

ExpertFlyer Voice

As before, we show what the airlines publish into the reservation systems. When they correctly publish their inventory, it will be reflected in EF. The reservation system schedules are separate from the seat map requests which go directly to the airline host.

ExpertFlyer Voice

If you look at the BA website it shows no PE and 4 Economy awards for that flight, same as EF. The EF inventory is direct from the reservation system whereas the AS website is known to be incorrect at times. You’ll notice the AS site is even missing the economy award inventory which shows you it’s out of sync. The QF website it self has also been known to be incorrect, even with QF’s own inventory.

Globaliser

Thank you particularly for this, which explains the most puzzling aspect.

ExpertFlyer Voice

No problem, yes no two searches are quite the same and not necessarily sourced from the same place.

Traveler Dave

ExpertFlyer Voice

Edit: This has now been fixed, thank you for your patience.

There is an issue with the EK data source and the vendor is hoping to fix it in the next couple days. We will post back when it's fixed. Thank you for your patience.

dl19

Hello,

I have been digging around for days trying to understand how to find availability of the best fare basis in Expert Flyer.

An example: I looked for the lowest price fare basis for 12/23-12/31 ORD-NRT RT UA PE on Expert Flyer and find fare basis RLX47BNS but when I look on United's website I see fare basis RLX47BNS and RKX08JNV being used. How did I find when a specific fare basis is available on a certain day? Also I've read through the rules and seem to be following them all.

Also, how do I price out a PE ticket that is mixed cabin on some segments? Example STL to ORD to NRT in Y then PE.

Thank you for your help! If I missed a crucial detail please let me know.

Traveler Dave

Globaliser

Welcome to FT, dl19I think that the place that I would start looking for the answer to your question is ITA.

For example, if you search for a round trip ORD-NRT, specifying extension code "F UA..RLX47BNS" in both directions, this will only return results on which that fare is being used to price both halves of the trip. If you're looking first to find dates on which the fare is valid, regardless of availability, switch the availability checker off (uncheck the box for "Only show flights and prices with available seats"). If you're a bit fed up of looking for specific dates, try using "See calendar of lowest fares", specifying (for example) 20 December and then a "6-10" night stay.

However, a quick look suggests that this will also return nothing using that specific fare in both directions. The reason is that as far as I can see your dates aren't permitted by the rules of RLX47BNS. That allows travel on Monday to Thursday only in both directions. In addition, around the time that you want to go, outbound travel must be from 25 December to 1 January, there is a minimum stay of 7 days, and inbound travel cannot be later than 31 December.

So you can't use RLX47BNS for outbound travel on 23 December. And if you use RLX47BNS for outbound travel on 25 December, then 31 December is too early to satisfy the minimum stay condition.

This is probably why you're being shown a different fare in one direction.

To bring this back to the topic of this thread, while EF is great for identifying fares that might be valid for your travel, it's not the best resource for checking the next logical step, the one that you're trying to check. That's why you need a different tool for this - and ITA is very good for this.

luv2vacay

Is there a way to search for award availability for Korean Air flights?
Right now they only have one Prestige seat for the MLE to CMB on 4/28/20. (there's only one flight KE474 I think)
Not sure if they'll ever open 2, but was wondering if there was a way to get alerted (other than painfully checking KE's website every day).

ExpertFlyer Voice

Yes, that's what our Flight Alerts service does. The list of supported airlines for Award & Upgrade searching/alerting is on the Help/FAQ page: https://www.expertflyer.com/expertflyer-support