ExpertFlyer Voice

There is an issue with how the schedule for those flights were loaded into the USA POS GDS. We have contacted them and will fix the issue, please email us directly with any missing flight issues, thanks.

iadp

Searching for J seat maps in Q1 2015 for AA153 ORD-NRT. Some of the maps are returning maps no problems. Others through up the following message :"There was an error message from the airline when trying to retrieve this seat map: DTE"

Any thoughts on what DTE is? Also saw a message about an equipment change on the same route for 25 Feb 2015 but can't reproduce that same result.

ExpertFlyer Voice

Date. It means that the date is invalid for the flight/city pair you entered or you put in a date more than 331 days into the future.

AirD0c

Back in November TPG wrote about the limited *A on EF now. Indeed, the listed airlines (LH, SA etc.) are no longer on the award search drop down menu. However, I just noticed this morning that I was able to create a flight alert for SA (I - biz award) by manually inputting the flight info myself. It seems to be active, and it accepted SA as a carrier. TPG's article mentions that alerts set for the listed *A carriers were set to expire and don't count against your 30 alerts. However, these SA alerts seem active and are counting. So what's the deal?

ExpertFlyer Voice

Hi AirD0c, first to clarify, there are still several Star Alliance airlines supported for Award searching and alerting on ExpertFlyer:

Air Canada
Air China
Air New Zealand
AVIANCA
Brussels Airlines
COPA
Shenzhen Airlines
SWISS
Turkish Airlines

Second, what you are referring to was a one-time manual change in the status of existing affected alerts that existed as of November 1 as a courtesy to our members because of the change. We allow you to create any alert for any airline, as Flight Alerts is not just for Award and Upgrade alerting, but can be used to alert for a standard fare class as well, which would be valid for any airline. This has always been the case. Since you now know that SA awards aren't searchable/alterable since Nov 1, don't create alerts for them.

dapperdanguy

Given the fact that ExpertFlyer allows award seat availability alerts for AA, does that mean one can use it for US Airways Award availability too indirectly? As in, is the AA award search and alert on EF only for AA metal award seats or all airline seats that show up when one searches award availability on AA.com?

My primary purpose is to find a service that sends me an alert when the low points awards for PWM-DCA and back on US Airways open up for certain dates during the weekends as I fly this sector every couple of weeks and like to book them through BA Avios now that it's possible.

Which might be the best tool for this purpose, if not Expertflyer. I know KVS Tool can search US award availability, but what I require are alerts so I don't have to constantly keep checking.

ExpertFlyer Voice

Award searching and alerting is for the flights operated by that airline. US and AA are still separate operating airlines. In the future we may have US award inventory as well.

joepubli

Hi,
I am a new subscriber. Can someone please help with how to search fares for open jaw itinerary? - it only seems to allow for simple round trips.

Also, is it possible to search for fares on a combination of airlines.
Thanks
Joe

Globaliser

As a general rule, if you want to fly an open-jaw itinerary from A to B and then back from C to A, you need to look up the round-trip base fare for A-B-A and the round-trip base fare for A-C-A. Add them together, then divide by two. That gives you the base fare for your open-jaw itinerary.

Argonaut1000

Is anyone else experiencing "account locked" ? Was doing quite a few searches earlier today and suddenly the account became locked. Have emailed EF but no reply yet and just wondering if others are having the same issue.

ual902

So I'm new to expert flyer, question for dummies to check for an award space for EK F Suites LAX >DXB in Expert flyer I will be using AS miles for this award do I check under:
1. Awards & Upgrades?
or
2. Flight availability?
3. Both?

Thanks

ExpertFlyer Voice

Award Searches are done with the Award & Upgrade search. Select the airline that is operating the flight.

Mountain Trader

What this seems to mean in my experience is that AAdvantage awards shown on AA.com that include a US Air flight will not show-up on EF. Is that correct? If so, combined with the lack of US Air award availability, EF will only show a small portion of the awards available to AAdvantage members.

ExpertFlyer Voice

You can search for the AA operated flights independently of the US Air operated ones, just search for the AA operated segment only. Since there are more AA operated flights then US operated flights, you will see the majority on ExpertFlyer.

We are attempting to add the US operated segments for award searching today, however all American flights will be available in the future when US and AA combine operations.

Mountain Trader

I don't think I made my point. There are now AA awards that have:

1. AA flights only. EF shows those.

2. US flights only. EF does not show those.

3. AA flights connecting with US flights. EF does not show these as it can not see (or at least does not report ) any US award flights.

Whether #1 is a majority of awards available or flights is sort of a definitional issue. The bottom line so that there are numerous awards to be potentially had with AA miles that EF can't find and I assume can't handle alerts for either.

I'm glad this issue is recognized as important and I hope that, as reported, it will be corrected soon.