Originally Posted by ExpertFlyer Voice (Post 20044867)

Flight numbers only have numbers in them, not letters. The GDSs are built upon that assumption. When you try to add a letter into the flight number, it breaks the request...

Originally Posted by Keter (Post 20056006)

Thanks! Then just for my understanding: if Air France calls the new flight number AF256A (or AF256B) what is actually present in the system? Now we have 2 flights from SIN to CDG on 17JAN both are shown under AF256 number. But if I try to get a seatmap EF only returns the seatmap of a 'genuine' flight which departs in the evening and not the seatmap for the morning flight which was rescheduled from 16 January.

Originally Posted by Keter (Post 20056016)

One more question, did you manage to understand what causes inaccurate availability even if the request is for a single airline (which in theory shall return the accurate 'airline direct display')?

SQ, AZ are some cases in point.

Originally Posted by mgcsinc (Post 20089972)

My suggestion is to permit users to request daily (or weekly, or every 4 hours, etc.) emails containing the results for a particular fare or availability search.

Originally Posted by mgcsinc (Post 20089972)

I'm a newbie, but it looks like I'll be a subscriber until the cows come home now that I've seen the info that I can get from EF.

I did have a feature that I wanted to suggest, and this seems like the best place to do it. It could be that this has been suggested before, or that it is technically infeasible -- sorry if that's the case.

My suggestion is to permit users to request daily (or weekly, or every 4 hours, etc.) emails containing the results for a particular fare or availability search. To give an example, since I fly very frequently between NYC and LA, I like to do frequent unvalidated fare searches for NYC-LAX and EWR-LAX to see what the fares look like. That way, if a lower fare is published at some point, I can look at various possible travel dates in the future, and see if there's any availability. It would be nice if I could just wake up to an email with an email with that info in the morning.

Similarly, let's say that I'm holding off on purchasing a JFK-LAX flight on a given day in the future, and that I'm pretty open to different itineraries that are available on that day. Let's assume that all of the fare buckets for many of the flights that day have 9+ seats available, and I'd like to hold off on purchasing until it starts looking like inventory is getting snatched up. Of course, I could set separate flight alerts for the various possible itineraries that day, but that's a bit obnoxious, and I imagine that it also triggers more GDS inquiries, increasing your costs of business. What I'd really like is for you to automatically do the availability search for me once a day and send me the results.

I think the feature could be implemented in a way that is not overly costly -- for example, users could be required to "reconfirm" a daily update every once in a while, and equivalent requests could be aggregated and only done once. (I imagine I'm not the only one looking for daily updates on all published fares between NYC and LAX, unvalidated by date.)

So, that's my idea. If others think it's a good one or a useless one, I encourage them to chime in.

Originally Posted by anabolism (Post 20090370)

This is the EF Help Desk thread, so I suspect not the right place for new feature suggestions. I do like the idea though and agree it would be handy.

Originally Posted by SQ421 (Post 20098414)

Trying to look up Circle Pacific (DCIR22) fares ex-HKG and a fare search displays all the circle/rtw fares ex-HKG except the DCIR22.

When specifying an airline, however, DCIR22 is displayed.

A bug, perhaps?

Originally Posted by ExpertFlyer Voice (Post 20090661)

Thank you for your feedback mgcsinc. We do have the "less than" alerts for Flight Availability results, but they are flight specific. We do no have Fare Information alerts at this time however it is a suggestion that we have received before.

Originally Posted by anabolism (Post 20105060)

I think mgcsinc was asking for periodic email summary of a search, as opposed to an alert. (E.g., a daily email with the results of a fare search query, rather than an alert when a particular fare appeared or vanished.)

Originally Posted by MSPeconomist (Post 20105102)

When I search on EF for DL upgrade space (using SWUs, into business class BE, which is currently inventory code Z), I can see non stops and some connections listed, but the connections tend to show only whether space is available on the domestic connecting flights, not the important long TATL/TPAC segments. (There's some comment on the screen about connections not being supported, which I'm not sure I understand.)

Is there an easy way to do a single search for all TPAC upgrade inventory on any DL-operated nonstop long haul flight or to do a single search for all TPAC westbound (respectively eastbound) inventory on DL-operated nonstop flights to (respectively from) NRT, for example?

Originally Posted by MSPeconomist (Post 20111849)

I'm not sure you understood my question. To find DL TPAC upgrade space, I have been searching (separately) MSP-NRT, DTW-NRT, ATL-NRT, JFK-NRT, SEA-NRT, PDX-NRT. SFO-NRT, LAX-NRT. Is it possible instead to do these searches all at once, for example by asking for *-NRT or (blank)-NRT on DL to show all TPAC nonstop possibilities at once, in one step?