Thankfully the FT community is full of people who are more knowledgable about both systems who guided me to the right outcome through persistence. No 'regular' passenger would know what to do though. Sigh...guess AC and the like have no real incentive to 'fix' this.

Has anyone else noticed a decline in the frequency at which availability searches are performed for saved alerts? Today, around 9AM, I happened to check on a flight that I set an alert for (travel about two weeks from now), and found that inventory was available in the specified fare class. I had not received any emails from ExpertFlyer. I completed my purchase, and then continued to watch my inbox. I didn't receive the EF alert until after 3PM.

The alert frequencies have not changed. Depending upon when the next scheduled check is in relation to when inventory was released and when you checked manually it could seem faster or slower, but the frequencies haven't changed.

If you want us to look further, please email us directly with the alert info so we can look it up.

What does the following mean?
YC BC IC UC FC CC NC AC JC EC HC KC MC LC RC VC SC XC ZC TC WC QC OC PC DC GC

If I click it says "this class, and its waitlist, are closed". The flight is in two days so what does "closed" mean for an upcoming flight?

Can you please advise what flight this is?

Flight VY6736 on March 3rd, FCO-DBV

It means not available, equivalent of 0 inventory on the booking class and there is no wait list.

it is showing as all zeros for me:

VY 6736 FCO 14:55 → DBV 16:15
Y0 B0 I0 U0 F0 C0 N0 A0 J0 E0 H0 K0 M0 L0 R0 V0 S0 X0 Z0 T0 W0 Q0 O0 P0 D0 G0

which seems to indicate sold out. They are offering no seats on the flight on their own web site, so seems to be the case.

That's odd. It's still showing Cs for me, not zeros. I have seen zeros many times in the past and I know it means sold out but I thought perhaps Cs meant something else particularly with the virus in Italy I was wondering if the flight was being cancelled.

C is "equivalent" to zero - what is the difference between Cs and zeros then?

Thank you

They are different. C means waitlist closed while 0 means sold out. You can usually waitlist, with eligible fare, for zeroed out flights. IOW, 0 means sold out but there is still a chance. C means waitlist is too long already and airlines don't even accept new waitlist requests.

Ah, got it! Thanks for the clear explanation.

Zero means that the airline cannot offer you a confirmed reservation at this time.

However if you have a ticket that allows waitlisting (which are rare these days even in the full fare bucket), you can have yourself added to the waitlist. If a seat opens up, or if revenue management decide to shift things around, you may be confirmed from the waitlist. You may be aware of the concept of "stand by" travel in North America; essentially, being on stand by means you are on a waitlist, although typically a revenue passenger holding a full fare ticket will have priority over a staff ticket.

In the old days with paper tickets, it was a lot more relevant because the disconnect between a reservation and a ticket was more obvious.

C means that the airline will not accept people from the waitlist, the bucket is closed to waitlisting.

A flight that is all C looks set to be cancelled to me.

Darn, that was my fear. I hope it's C because it's very oversold (hence it's not zero) but sounds like you think it's more because of an upcoming cancellation.

Is it possible to search for multi city itinerary and check if a fare is available on all flights ?
For instance, I have a ticket that is flexible and would like to add a stopover (permitted in the fare rule) but would like to check availibility before calling to make the modification.

thx!

You would do separate one-way searches.