Feb 14, 2015, 12:53 pm
Last edit by: 747FC
The ExpertFlyer support by email is at [email protected]
This is a community-maintained wiki, it is not necessarily endorsed by ExpertFlyer.
--------------------
Searches currently not working:
To search AA upgrades:
This is a community-maintained wiki, it is not necessarily endorsed by ExpertFlyer.
--------------------
Searches currently not working:
- Upgrades - AY, BA, EK, EY, IB, QR, VS
- Awards - AY, BA, IB, EY, QR, VS
To search AA upgrades:
- Use the Award & Upgrade tool
- Only search for individual segments (set the "Connection Preference" drop-down to "Direct/Non-Stop only"). Flight results that are part of a connection won't show the upgrade version of C or A inventory because AA only files upgrade inventory as individual, not married, segments. (Married segments show revenue inventory instead of upgrade inventory.)
- To avoid confusion, check the "Exclude Codeshares" box, as AA awards and upgrades are not valid on codeshares.
ExpertFlyer.com Help Desk Thread
Dec 23, 2014, 12:14 pm
#811
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Programs: DL, AA, UA, SPG Gold, HH Gold, IHG Platinum, Marriott Silver
Posts: 471
Dec 23, 2014, 4:27 pm
#812
Left Expert Flyer 4/23
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 2,741
It's up to date, not all airlines share their award data with 3rd parties. In the case of LH it is only available thru an airline.
Dec 26, 2014, 2:53 pm
#813
Join Date: Sep 2014
Programs: AC SEMM
Posts: 1,379
Feedback from a new premium service user
Just bought one year premium service subscription and overall I am pretty happy with it.
There is one slight disappointment though. I created some flight alerts for upgrade space availability. I found that they seem to be seriously delayed which rather reduces their effectiveness.
As a specific example, I had created one for R space reducing below 4 on AC 8, 9 Jan 2015. At T-15 days (0650am EST, Dec 25th - the point where the upgrade availability window opened) it was still showing R4 and I successfully booked an upgrade, as apparently did a few others. It dropped immediately to R1. I did not get an alert until 1202pm that day - 5 hours and 12 minutes later. If alerts are to be useful they really need to be more timely. I had experienced similar delays with other alerts but did not record the precise details.
I do appreciate that polling the database frequently for data about which alerts are set can be somewhat resource intensive but >5 hours delay is rather too much I feel.
Also, why does point of sale on Flight Availability searches include only US and UK? This seems rather nonsensical for, as an example, Canadian domestic flights.
Thanks for listening.
There is one slight disappointment though. I created some flight alerts for upgrade space availability. I found that they seem to be seriously delayed which rather reduces their effectiveness.
As a specific example, I had created one for R space reducing below 4 on AC 8, 9 Jan 2015. At T-15 days (0650am EST, Dec 25th - the point where the upgrade availability window opened) it was still showing R4 and I successfully booked an upgrade, as apparently did a few others. It dropped immediately to R1. I did not get an alert until 1202pm that day - 5 hours and 12 minutes later. If alerts are to be useful they really need to be more timely. I had experienced similar delays with other alerts but did not record the precise details.
I do appreciate that polling the database frequently for data about which alerts are set can be somewhat resource intensive but >5 hours delay is rather too much I feel.
Also, why does point of sale on Flight Availability searches include only US and UK? This seems rather nonsensical for, as an example, Canadian domestic flights.
Thanks for listening.
Last edited by Geoflying; Dec 26, 2014 at 3:04 pm
Dec 26, 2014, 10:04 pm
#814
Left Expert Flyer 4/23
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 2,741
Just bought one year premium service subscription and overall I am pretty happy with it.
There is one slight disappointment though. I created some flight alerts for upgrade space availability. I found that they seem to be seriously delayed which rather reduces their effectiveness.
As a specific example, I had created one for R space reducing below 4 on AC 8, 9 Jan 2015. At T-15 days (0650am EST, Dec 25th - the point where the upgrade availability window opened) it was still showing R4 and I successfully booked an upgrade, as apparently did a few others. It dropped immediately to R1. I did not get an alert until 1202pm that day - 5 hours and 12 minutes later. If alerts are to be useful they really need to be more timely. I had experienced similar delays with other alerts but did not record the precise details.
I do appreciate that polling the database frequently for data about which alerts are set can be somewhat resource intensive but >5 hours delay is rather too much I feel.
Also, why does point of sale on Flight Availability searches include only US and UK? This seems rather nonsensical for, as an example, Canadian domestic flights.
Thanks for listening.
There is one slight disappointment though. I created some flight alerts for upgrade space availability. I found that they seem to be seriously delayed which rather reduces their effectiveness.
As a specific example, I had created one for R space reducing below 4 on AC 8, 9 Jan 2015. At T-15 days (0650am EST, Dec 25th - the point where the upgrade availability window opened) it was still showing R4 and I successfully booked an upgrade, as apparently did a few others. It dropped immediately to R1. I did not get an alert until 1202pm that day - 5 hours and 12 minutes later. If alerts are to be useful they really need to be more timely. I had experienced similar delays with other alerts but did not record the precise details.
I do appreciate that polling the database frequently for data about which alerts are set can be somewhat resource intensive but >5 hours delay is rather too much I feel.
Also, why does point of sale on Flight Availability searches include only US and UK? This seems rather nonsensical for, as an example, Canadian domestic flights.
Thanks for listening.
The POS options are the only ones available to us as we would need a business presence in a different country to get a POS for that country. That being said, a Canada and USA POS are usually identical.
Dec 27, 2014, 4:49 pm
#815
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Mar 2013
Location: London
Posts: 17,007
The ITA Matrix is able to query availability from arbitrary cities, so do you really need a business presence?
Dec 27, 2014, 4:57 pm
#816
Left Expert Flyer 4/23
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 2,741
The airlines give ITA (and the GDSs) the multi-POS availability because of the services that ITA provides to the airlines (such as fare shopping for their respective websites). However that doesn't mean that ITA or the GDSs can sell all POS information to 3rd parties at their discretion, that's not how they are designed to work.
Jan 9, 2015, 10:26 am
#818
Left Expert Flyer 4/23
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 2,741
At this time the mobile site can run previously saved queries from the full website but not save any.
Jan 12, 2015, 11:18 am
#819
Join Date: Aug 2013
Posts: 63
We wanted to give everyone a heads up. US Air made an IT change on their host system last night that had the unintended side effect of erasing the changes that were made to allow ExpertFlyer to see the US O,I,X award classes. Of course, because it's the Friday before the holidays, they have a code freeze in place and won't be able to apply the fix until the first week in January. As a result O,I,X on US won't be available in ExpertFlyer until then, however J class upgrades are still viewable.
Our AA/US contacts have asked us to pass along their apologies. Thank you for your understanding.
Our AA/US contacts have asked us to pass along their apologies. Thank you for your understanding.
Jan 13, 2015, 7:34 am
#820
Join Date: Apr 2014
Posts: 78
Jan 16, 2015, 8:27 am
#822
Join Date: Apr 2014
Posts: 78
US Air awards do show up now. Thanks for that.
However I found ExpertFlyer unhelpful for the trip I was trying to research and book. Maybe you can tell me if this is due to the information available from the airlines or if it simply can't be done on ExpertFlyer.
I was looking into a flight from Philadelphia to Auckland NZ using AA miles, in mid-March. On the American site there were many options that came up for this, depending on dates, obviously going first somewhere in the western US (LAX, SFO, PHX), then either going through Australia on Quantas, or through HNL on Hawaiian. The AA site showed most of the continental US flights as being on US Air, no problem.
Going via Hawaii obviously meant the least time in the air so I was looking at that. However on ExpertFlyer I could not get award information for the Hawaiian legs to come up, at all. On Hawaiian an Economy award codes as 'T' so I put that in, also 'X' as that's commonly used, but I get an error message that 'you must select at least one Award or Upgrade Class'.
This search didn't work, either asking for US Air, connecting through Hawaiian (it would show Hawaiian flights but no information on seats) or simply searching for Hawaiian.
I was putting various options on hold through the AA site, but the apparent availability changes day to day--even minute to minute--so I was hoping ExpertFlyer would actually give me some transparency as to what flights and seats were *really* possible.
I finally just booked a good route, US Air to SFO, Hawaiian to HNL then to AKL, same on the return.
But please let me know if I was doing something wrong or if it's simply not possible to do a useful search this way, a problem with the Hawaiian information or whatever. This is the kind of thing I subscribed to ExpertFlyer for.
However I found ExpertFlyer unhelpful for the trip I was trying to research and book. Maybe you can tell me if this is due to the information available from the airlines or if it simply can't be done on ExpertFlyer.
I was looking into a flight from Philadelphia to Auckland NZ using AA miles, in mid-March. On the American site there were many options that came up for this, depending on dates, obviously going first somewhere in the western US (LAX, SFO, PHX), then either going through Australia on Quantas, or through HNL on Hawaiian. The AA site showed most of the continental US flights as being on US Air, no problem.
Going via Hawaii obviously meant the least time in the air so I was looking at that. However on ExpertFlyer I could not get award information for the Hawaiian legs to come up, at all. On Hawaiian an Economy award codes as 'T' so I put that in, also 'X' as that's commonly used, but I get an error message that 'you must select at least one Award or Upgrade Class'.
This search didn't work, either asking for US Air, connecting through Hawaiian (it would show Hawaiian flights but no information on seats) or simply searching for Hawaiian.
I was putting various options on hold through the AA site, but the apparent availability changes day to day--even minute to minute--so I was hoping ExpertFlyer would actually give me some transparency as to what flights and seats were *really* possible.
I finally just booked a good route, US Air to SFO, Hawaiian to HNL then to AKL, same on the return.
But please let me know if I was doing something wrong or if it's simply not possible to do a useful search this way, a problem with the Hawaiian information or whatever. This is the kind of thing I subscribed to ExpertFlyer for.
Jan 16, 2015, 12:20 pm
#823
Left Expert Flyer 4/23
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 2,741
US Air awards do show up now. Thanks for that.
However I found ExpertFlyer unhelpful for the trip I was trying to research and book. Maybe you can tell me if this is due to the information available from the airlines or if it simply can't be done on ExpertFlyer.
I was looking into a flight from Philadelphia to Auckland NZ using AA miles, in mid-March. On the American site there were many options that came up for this, depending on dates, obviously going first somewhere in the western US (LAX, SFO, PHX), then either going through Australia on Quantas, or through HNL on Hawaiian. The AA site showed most of the continental US flights as being on US Air, no problem.
Going via Hawaii obviously meant the least time in the air so I was looking at that. However on ExpertFlyer I could not get award information for the Hawaiian legs to come up, at all. On Hawaiian an Economy award codes as 'T' so I put that in, also 'X' as that's commonly used, but I get an error message that 'you must select at least one Award or Upgrade Class'.
This search didn't work, either asking for US Air, connecting through Hawaiian (it would show Hawaiian flights but no information on seats) or simply searching for Hawaiian.
I was putting various options on hold through the AA site, but the apparent availability changes day to day--even minute to minute--so I was hoping ExpertFlyer would actually give me some transparency as to what flights and seats were *really* possible.
I finally just booked a good route, US Air to SFO, Hawaiian to HNL then to AKL, same on the return.
But please let me know if I was doing something wrong or if it's simply not possible to do a useful search this way, a problem with the Hawaiian information or whatever. This is the kind of thing I subscribed to ExpertFlyer for.
However I found ExpertFlyer unhelpful for the trip I was trying to research and book. Maybe you can tell me if this is due to the information available from the airlines or if it simply can't be done on ExpertFlyer.
I was looking into a flight from Philadelphia to Auckland NZ using AA miles, in mid-March. On the American site there were many options that came up for this, depending on dates, obviously going first somewhere in the western US (LAX, SFO, PHX), then either going through Australia on Quantas, or through HNL on Hawaiian. The AA site showed most of the continental US flights as being on US Air, no problem.
Going via Hawaii obviously meant the least time in the air so I was looking at that. However on ExpertFlyer I could not get award information for the Hawaiian legs to come up, at all. On Hawaiian an Economy award codes as 'T' so I put that in, also 'X' as that's commonly used, but I get an error message that 'you must select at least one Award or Upgrade Class'.
This search didn't work, either asking for US Air, connecting through Hawaiian (it would show Hawaiian flights but no information on seats) or simply searching for Hawaiian.
I was putting various options on hold through the AA site, but the apparent availability changes day to day--even minute to minute--so I was hoping ExpertFlyer would actually give me some transparency as to what flights and seats were *really* possible.
I finally just booked a good route, US Air to SFO, Hawaiian to HNL then to AKL, same on the return.
But please let me know if I was doing something wrong or if it's simply not possible to do a useful search this way, a problem with the Hawaiian information or whatever. This is the kind of thing I subscribed to ExpertFlyer for.
Or (it's unclear based on your post) you were trying to look for a class code that isn't supported such as T on HA. T isn't listed for Hawaiian because it isn't published and therefore not shown on ExpertFlyer. Just adding the class as an Other to the Award search won't do anything.
Jan 17, 2015, 7:04 am
#824
Join Date: Apr 2014
Posts: 78
It sounds like you were trying to use AA award classes (T/U/Z) with US Air operated flights which doesn't work. When you select US Air in the Award/Upgrade search, the US Air award classes are presented to you (O/I/X) and those are the ones you should choose from. The award classes are determined by the operating airline, not the airline whose miles you are redeeming.
Or (it's unclear based on your post) you were trying to look for a class code that isn't supported such as T on HA. T isn't listed for Hawaiian because it isn't published and therefore not shown on ExpertFlyer. Just adding the class as an Other to the Award search won't do anything.
Or (it's unclear based on your post) you were trying to look for a class code that isn't supported such as T on HA. T isn't listed for Hawaiian because it isn't published and therefore not shown on ExpertFlyer. Just adding the class as an Other to the Award search won't do anything.
The code for economy award ticketing on Hawaiian is 'T.' I am quite sure of this as I've already got this flight and there it is on the itinerary. I entered that in 'other' as the only choice to auto-check is First Flex.
If you simply don't have this information from Hawaiian that's understandable, if disappointing. I hoped that it would be possible to search for award ticketing that involves multiple airlines in an alliance, evidently not here.
(edited because tl;dr)
Last edited by chicagoal; Jan 17, 2015 at 8:46 am
Jan 17, 2015, 7:07 am
#825
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Mar 2013
Location: London
Posts: 17,007
Thanks for the quick reply. Sorry I was not more clear.
I searched for this route (PHL-AKL with HNL as a connection) through both US Air and Hawaiian, and it would not show me award seats on Hawaiian in either case.
Through US Air I'd at least see a possible route (though nowhere near what was really available) including Hawaiian flights but nothing about seats on Hawaiian.
Searching just under Hawaiian I got nothing at all, just that error message 'You must select at least one class...'
'X' shows economy award seats on US Air and that worked searching through US Air. The code for economy award ticketing on Hawaiian is 'T.' I am quite sure of this as I've already now this flight and there it is on the itinerary. I entered that in 'other' as the only choice to auto-check is First Flex.
If you simply don't have this information from Hawaiian that's understandable. But this was my first use of ExpertFlyer as a subscriber and it's a bit disappointing.
I searched for this route (PHL-AKL with HNL as a connection) through both US Air and Hawaiian, and it would not show me award seats on Hawaiian in either case.
Through US Air I'd at least see a possible route (though nowhere near what was really available) including Hawaiian flights but nothing about seats on Hawaiian.
Searching just under Hawaiian I got nothing at all, just that error message 'You must select at least one class...'
'X' shows economy award seats on US Air and that worked searching through US Air. The code for economy award ticketing on Hawaiian is 'T.' I am quite sure of this as I've already now this flight and there it is on the itinerary. I entered that in 'other' as the only choice to auto-check is First Flex.
If you simply don't have this information from Hawaiian that's understandable. But this was my first use of ExpertFlyer as a subscriber and it's a bit disappointing.
Unfortunately, HA don't publish their award availability publicly, so EF cannot see it.