Have you tried looking for flights on which the relevant booking class is available, and pricing the itinerary to see whether not the fare is valid for the itinerary? There are many reasons why a fare that is published and visible on EF cannot be used for a specific trip.

The reservation systems will return the best flight options first. You may try to force a particular connection to show by specifying connection citie(s), an airline, or a departure time of day.

I've tried this, but I cannot for the life of me get it to show the itinerary that I described above. Would it be possible to add a bit more control over the flight options returned?

Yes, unless I am doing this wrong which is a real possibility. I see this:QHN5T1B5AAB Round-Trip529.00(USD)E12/13/1912/23/19V / 6M50 https://www.expertflyer.com/include/images/details.png
https://www.expertflyer.com/include/images/routing.png
https://www.expertflyer.com/include/images/c.png


And on flights that day:


AA 480DFW
12/20/19 5:00 PMCDG
12/21/19 9:05 AM788
Daily
85% / 29mJ7 R7 D7 I0 W7 P0 Y7 B7 H7 K7 M7 L7
G0 V7 S7 N7 Q0 O0
https://www.expertflyer.com/include/...xclamation.png https://www.expertflyer.com/include/images/details.png https://www.expertflyer.com/include/images/seat-map.png


So there are B tickets available, correct?

A quick play on ITA suggests that it is not enough for that fare to be valid for there to be availability in B class. There must also be availability in (presumably) Q class, and there isn't. But there is availability in N class. That seems to be why, when I price a trip with that as the outbound flight and a randomly picked flight back on 27 December, ITA uses NHN5T1B5 to price that part of the itinerary. If you switch off the ITA availability checker, you will indeed see NHN5T1B5 being used ot price the outbound half of the trip.

I haven't read all of the rules published on ITA, but dual inventory fares like this often don't make it clear which other classes need to be available. However, I think that in this case the above behaviour, taken together with the first letter of each fare basis, gives a reasonable basis for thinking that QHN5T1B5 requires availability in both B class and Q class, and NHN5T1B5 requires availability in both B class and N class.

Thanks for the reply.

Im syre EF is great for those looking for reward seats, but so far it really hasn't been very useful to search for fares, especially if there are all these random rules that can not be sorted out.

They're not random rules. They're just rules of which you were previously unaware - we've all been there at some stage. Every day is a learning day.

EF basically provides to the public information which was previously the domain of expert travel agents. To get the most out of EF, you therefore need to learn much of what an expert travel agent knows. The word "Expert" in the site's name points to that. Like everything in this business, there are no easy shortcuts.

I agree that much of this is opaque. But this is nothing to do with ExpertFlyer. These are the industry's rules, and EF is just reporting to you the information that is provided to it, in the same way that an expert travel agent would be provided with this information. EF doesn't pretend to be here to digest and explain the information; you have to spend time learning what the information means and how to make the most of it. If EF wasn't here, you wouldn't even have known what you didn't know about these fares; you'd simply have gone to the airline website and been presented with a take-it-or-leave-it price. The overwhelming majority of the flying public has always worked on that basis and continues to do so: you only need to see the number of complaints about how air fares appear to be randomly picked by airlines. They aren't - as you and I know - but almost nobody out there has much idea how it works, and I doubt that any regulator is going to require airlines to be any clearer about this than they are.

I don't agree that the dual inventory rule doesn't make sense. It's very simple to understand and apply: For the fare to be valid on a particular flight, there must be available inventory in one booking class and also available inventory in another booking class. The EF listing of these AA fares at least tells you (now that you know how to read them) that you need availability in the booking class corresponding to the first letter of the fare basis code (Q or N in this example), and you need availability in B class (as listed in the EF fare ladder). There are actually airlines which give you no clue as to which other booking class is required.

Moderator's Note: Topic Drift
 

Folks,

This forum is on the topic of Travel Tools, that is tools, services and software used to optimize the travel experience. It is not about fare rules. This particular thread is about using Expert Flyer; it is not about fare rules.

While some limited natural deviation form the subjects of the forum and thread is obviously fine, please keep in mind that this forum and thread are not about fare rules.

Per FlyerTalk Rule 5, Stay on Topic, please try to confine your comments as closely as possible to the subject areas of this thread and forum.

If you wish to discuss fare rules, please do so in the relevant airlines and alliances forums, Mileage Runs Deals forum or Travel Buzz.

Future off topic remarks will be summarily deleted without further notice. Repeat offenders may be subject to discipline.

Thank you for understanding,

TWA884
Travel Tools moderator

I seem to get errors at the moment looking for LH O (First Class) award availability in EF.

For example, FRA-BLR / Lufthansa / O / 1 ticket / departing 11-12-13-14 March / direct

We are not seeing that error. All technical issues should be reported via email to [email protected]

I've had my EF account locked a couple times over the last year, including right now, for what I can only guess is EFs assumption that I am scripting searches. I am an individual and I dont use scripts. It's a major inconvenience to have my account locked and then have to email in. Might I suggest you guys advance your detection technology a bit to reflectthat someone can fairly quickly do repeat searches manually? Or make something more prominent in your TOUs and I'll make a decision about whether you are the right product for me or if I should just splurge and get a proper GDS subscription.

The system only locks accounts when it sees a search velocity that is too fast to be done normally and actually look at the results requested. It works properly and our policy against data mining is in our TOU.

I often find myself being locked when at the end of a trip and I am manually deleting saved queries using a browser on the lean smartphone expertflyer site.

I can't delete more than about three in thirty seconds without this occurring.