dkerr

I think all this EF bashing is a little unfair. I have been a subscriber for more years than I can count and still renew. To me the highest value is not finding award availability. Yes that is useful, but the true value is access to detailed information like all the fare buckets and how many seats are available for sale. And the seat maps, and the alerts.

It really comes into its own during IRROPS, just this morning LH canceled a dozen plus flights from MUC including one I was on to LHR. While the agent in the lounge searched for alternatives, I was doing the same with the EF mobile web page... and seeing lots of zeros :-( but I could check routes to LHR/LGW/LCY and help the agent. Same thing during one of BA's epic meltdowns last winter where I was on one of 3 (yes count them three) flights from JFK to London that got canceled... I was able to suggest alternate routing (through KEF) which got me to my final destination earlier than my original through LHR (or the alternate the booked us on through LGW until that flight canceled as well!).

And the class of service data... monitoring that gives you an indication of how full the flight is going to be. If there are multiple flights a day to somewhere and some are J0 / J1 but others are J7/J9 then you know that your chances of an upgrade clearing are going to be a whole lot better on the J7/J9. The same applies to days of the week... some days are lighter than others, but which? Depends on route... and the class of service data can inform for that too.

And the seat maps... I love that I can monitor that -- in some cases right up to flight time (depending on airline and/or class). A little secret... when airlines start to process the upgrade list, that often frees up prime economy class seats that I can grab.

Yes the user interface is getting a little old, but the current design is actually a strength. Remember, the word Expert is in the name... and the attempted redesign a couple of years ago dumbed it down way too much.

EF is what it is. I think it is terrific... there is no other site out there that provides anything like it. And I do hope that it does not shut down as that would be a significant loss.

DAK.

hurnik

Whilst I have a support ticket open, I'm more curious as to if others have ideas/thoughts on how to track or be notified of the following scenario:

AA seems to be the worst offender of this (this is definitely my 3rd, maybe 4th time seeing this issue):
Let's say flight #1234 is departing 5/1/23 from AAA-BBB at 9:00 a.m. and arriving at 11:05 a.m.

AA seems to have a nasty habit of "cancelling" (my term) the flight so that flight #1234 is either still operating with the same times, but completely different city pairs (XXX-ZZZ)
OR
if I'm lucky, the times will change (along with the city pairs) so that I can at least get a schedule alert from expertflyer.

Obviously you can see the issues:

1) If the first scenario (city pairs change, but all else remains the same), I get NO alert from Expert Flyer. And AA is infamous (in my experience) for sending the alert email as well, so unless one babysits the reservation constantly, you can be very unpleasantly surprised.
2) If you're lucky and the times change your Expert Flyer alert will trigger, and give you the new times, along with the city pairs, but of course, this comes up as a "schedule change" alert, and (although always possible I'm in the minority) it's easy to skip/glaze over the city pair change and focus on the times changing.

If there's a way to have expert flyer deal with the first scenario (preferably the 2nd with something more obvious that schedule change since the alert itself is based on TIME, not city pairs--at least when constructing the alert, that's your only threshold for triggering), I'd be very appreciative to know what that is.

If expertflyer cannot handle this, is there another site/software/service that can?

lopinc1

The EF schedule change alert alerts on either time change or city pair change and must be created separately from any other type of alert. If the Flight Details data changes, you would get an alert.

Andre182

Why can’t I search for reward flight availability for BA? The only option showing is “Economy Gold Elite Award (V)”. No “First (Z)” or “Business (U)”.

scubadu

Because BA award inventory (and several other airlines) is no longer supported by ExpertFlyer and has not been for quite a some time.

Regards

Andre182

Thank you. Are there any other tools similar to Expert Flyer which have the capability of showing BA award inventory?

Tocsin

Seat Spy is one (Reward Flight Finder is also available, but has an iffy history...) - all depend on BA's IT though

jf4nathan

I'm trying to find an award flight FCO-LAX or CDG-LAX on AF/FB. I am new to ExpertFlyer and just bought a premium subscription. Based on my initial searches and reviewing results and prices, it seems as though EF isn't able to distinguish which dates have the lowest fare of 80k miles for one way in J.

Here's what I mean.. for example, there's availability for the low 80k fare on Aug 2, 2023 (CDG-LAX) when I search directly on the AF website, but EF tells me there's no O availability on that day. Am I approaching this incorrectly? How would I be able to set an alert if I don't know what to search for?

Thanks for your help in advance

lopinc1

The AF/FB award inventory EF shows is for redemptions by FB partner airlines. For FB members the price is variable and not inventory controlled.

jf4nathan

Can fare classes overlap? For example, on LH I see "F5 A5". There aren't ten first class seats on the flight, so how do I interpret that? Does that mean all 5 first class seats are available for upgrade (or whatever A means)? Compared to "F2 A0" which means there are only two straight cash fares left?

Learning more day by day, thanks!

supine

Both are cash fare buckets.

F5 A5 = There are 5 seats available and they can be ticketed under either an F or A fare.

F2 A0 = There are 2 seats available and they can only be ticketed under an F fare.

First class aware/upgrade space on LH is O but you will rarely see that these days.

jf4nathan

Thanks for all the replies! Another question I have is, how frequently does ExpertFlyer check for space? Since it seems like LH releases award seats at specified times of the day, I'm wondering if it is worth it for me to set alarms for that so I can manually check or would ExpertFlyer alert me as soon as it happens?

RobOnLI

Data feeds to EF have been down for over 12 hours now. Is EF dead? Unfortunately I never looked for this thread in the past so didn't see the note from April from an original EFV member but also that the site in general was in a precarious position.

-RM

alany611

"An error has occurred while communicating with the airline reservation system. The support team has been notified of this problem. Thank you for your patience and understanding."

Anyone know if this is impacting search results? Not sure if there are just general issues going on with Cerberus/IATA/GDS/whatever, but recently I've been looking for award availability on ANA and EVA 1 year out. I know there's a lot of demand and it's normal to see availability go in and out, but I'm seeing multiple routes over multiple days about 350~ days out all going in and out of availability every 6-12 hours. Seems unlikely to me that all of these flights are getting booked/unbooked at the exact same time for the exact same time periods.

Curious if anyone else has noticed anything going on with award searches? Thanks in advance.

cesco.g

Flight search completely down.
No word from EF except the note on the site. Wondering what is going on???