daffstarring

Hi! Just wondering if anyone knows why some seats would be showing as available on ExpertFlyer, but not when I log in to Manage My Booking (Virgin Australia)?

The flight is VA7, BNE-LAX on Dec 10, 2019. I would dearly love 34A, B, C & D, or G, H, J & K, but they’re not listed as available on Virgin’s seat selection like they are on ExpertFlyer.

Cheers!

Globaliser

I've seen a few spurious schedule change notifications too. On these occasions, the new "schedule" has been obviously implausible. When I've reset the alert, a further notification then comes back on the next reporting cycle showing the schedule going back to the original times.

I know that EF faithfully reports that which the GDS says, but is there perhaps a problem with the underlying data source that EF is using?

Here's one example of this, notified last week. NB: The 2310 departure and 0450 arrival were always the correct times. The "1620" arrival was clearly implausible and wrong, so this notification was immediately identifiable as spurious. But not all such notifications would be.

The first notification said this:-The second notification said this:-And here is another example that dropped into my inbox this morning. Spot the implausibility:-

ExpertFlyer Voice

The data source is the largest GDS in the world, so I don't know what to say other than forward it to us ASAP when it happens and maybe we can catch the bad data live. I'm sorry we don't have a better answer.

Globaliser

That's as good a suggestion as any - thanks!

TEDisgone

Hello there,

There's been some discussion over on the Alaska forum about the information discrepancy of premium seats on Qantas according to what the Alaska website shows and what Expert Flyer shows. I have an example:






I have a ton of alerts set up to let me know when Business or First Class seats become available but when I searched manually on the Alaska site I found seats myself! So I guess the question is from what database is Expert Flyer drawing to get these results that differ from what Alaska shows? There are other dates where Alaska shows seats but Expert Flyer says no. Please help!

ExpertFlyer Voice

Did you search other sites? You'll see that BA shows the same as ExpertFlyer. We are getting the results direct from the reservation system, which is what Qantas is publishing. BA is seeing the same.

TEDisgone

I searched BA and they do match what Expert Flyer shows but AA matches what Alaska shows. I don't have a QF account to see what they show but none of that really matters if I'm using Alaska points as my currency. So now my question is from what database is Alaska drawing on and how can we use that to track seats? I did try searching for my example route in EF using Alaska as the airline and it could pull up Economy seats but U (which is what Business on Qantas codes as but First Upgrade on Alaska) shows 0 so I don't know what special code to use to find either Business or First seats that seem to be available to Alaska and American but not other partners.

GFrye

Or it's simply phantom availability.
Are you able to book the seats on the Alaska site?

TEDisgone

I thought so too when I first discovered the discrepancy but then I booked it on Alaska and it ticketed. These are not phantoms.

Globaliser

I've recently had a similar experience when booking QF seats using AA miles. The availability to AA was different from that which was shown on EF. One possible cause was QF's use of married sector availability (obviously, that's not relevant to the example that you've given), but it also seemed possible that QF was making private inventory available to AA that was not being published to the GDS. It was also interesting that some inventory that was published to the GDS was not bookable by AA, which simply could not see it (actually, the AA agent said that she couldn't see the flight at all).

Because married sector games aren't relevant to your search, I would tend to suspect the latter possibility. That is also supported by the fact that for your date, what AA shows to me is matched by what QF shows to me, and what BA shows to me matches what EF shows.

And if that is the cause, then there is no alternative but to search the relevant airline websites yourself. If it's not published to the GDS, EF can't help.

MarJon

Good Morning... Is there a way to do a Flight Status Search for a flight that occurred several weeks ago? Thanks!

funflier

What info are you looking for? "Flight status," as in departure arrival info??

ExpertFlyer Voice

If you mean the exact times a flight took off and landed, that only goes back 7 days. The airline noted comments is available only a couple days in the past at most.

funflier

Flightaware.com will show you two weeks, more if you subscribe.

Xeno

Where do I go for a seatmap when EF cannot display because the flight in question is ‘under airport control’? In this case, this is 36 hours prior to departure.