I set up a flight schedule change alert and received EF notice this morning. Per the EF alert, my flight LAX-MIA leaves an hour earlier, but still arrives at same time. That seemed odd. Checked the AA app and website, and they show no changes. I'm going to call AA and verify, but for now, this seems like a false alert or else EF is an outstanding resource and well ahead of AA.com

The schedule change alert is based on the Flight Details results which in turn come from the schedule the airline publishes in the GDS. If you need further help please email us the details.

An EF related topic has come up in the Qantas forum, please see here for details:

What would make the seat map unavailable?

I cannot put into words how many seat map errors I get for AA.

Does anyone else have the same issue?

Given the importance of words in facilitating communication here, that's unfortunate. You really haven't given us enough for anyone to know if they're experiencing "the same issue".

What is the nature of the error(s)?

Is this a new problem, or something that's been going on for weeks or months?

Does every attempt to view any AA seat map fail or only for particular aircraft types, cabin classes, routes, operating dates...?

Here's the error I get after requesting the seat map from the button after doing a flight availability search: The requested information could not be retrieved or is not available. This is likely due to invalid input criteria or lack of access to the information from the airline. Please revise the search parameters and try again.

I cannot figure out a rhyme or reason as to what makes the error occur. I'd say it's been happening quite frequently for the last week or so. Usually if I resubmit the query enough times it will work. Other times I get part of the flight (i.e. missing one more cabins).

If you're not going to post the flight specifics here you should email us direct at [email protected] so we can see for ourselves what the underlying error we are getting back from the reservation system is.

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!

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:-

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.

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

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!

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.

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.

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