To be fair to EF, I think that the other sites work on a different basis. AIUI, they're interrogating an API which only provides day-by-day availability information, and it is cached information so it can be out of date. In contrast, I believe that EF interrogates live availability for each specific flight at the time of your request, in the same way as for non-award inventory. So it isn't difficult to see how the other sites can continue to work, using the mechanism that they use, even if EF's access to its (different) data source has been interrupted or terminated.

Thank you for the technical explanation for which I've been looking for a long time. "Different data source" explains a lot. Now it's for EF to explain why it's been broken for (literally) months.

We already mentioned that EF and the other sites you mentioned use a different data source back in this post: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/32842827-post2248.html in November. Also like we said before, the different data source is what's broken. Also like we said before, we will let you know when it's fixed.

Fixed. Apparently, after a few years of having ZUTW classes show in the clear, AA re-hid them. We just had to flip a switch on our end to get them as hidden inventory classes, so now they are available again via the Award & Upgrade search, but won't be seen in the general Flight Availability search.

Thanks. Is there any reason that you can not have them show up in general flight availability searches as well? It was helpful to see all the inventories on one screen.

Because AA no longer returns them in the general flight availability response. This is the way it always was up until a couple years ago, then the award classes started showing up in the general flight availability response. Looks like they fixed that "bug" today. However that is why we include 3 "Other Classes" fields in the Award search, to add in revenue fare classes to the Award response.

Can anyone provide an update as to when EK award availability might be back up and running? Getting the error: EK award inventory is temporarily unavailable due to an issue with our data provider. They are actively working to fix the issue. Thank you for your patience.

I'm sorry but we do not have an update at this time.

BA Award Search Restored
 

The BA award search is now working again, please test it out and email us directly at customercare@ with any issues you may encounter, thank you.

We are waiting on BA to fix the USA POS issue for Flight Availability from their end (GDS/host issue) and EK award searching is still being worked on.

Thank you for letting us know. It's great to have that facility once again. I've just tried five different award routes; each search took about 70 seconds which is painfully slow. At least it's working again, but maybe, in time, something can be done about the speed. (NB I use a 300mps connection, so I'm sure the delay is not at my end.)

We're seeing searches happen in about 35 seconds, however it could take longer in some cases for different routes or search types.

Just did some random searches. The long haul routes in First would appear to take longer - all from LHR:

Z SFO 84"
Z LAX 70"
Z HKG 66"
Z JFK 47"
Z ORD 37"
U FCO 34"
U CDG 30"
U ARN 27"
U DUB 25"

To have a true comparison you need to do the same exact search in Z and then not Z. Your examples are all for different routes, which doesn't control for class as a lone variable. If you do that, and then see consistent discrepancies, please email us your searches, thanks.

That's exactly what I did. I alternated between Z & U, but using different locations. I simply listed them in descending order of duration to clearly show the differences.

The US West Coast seems to be particularly slow.

Right that's the problem, you used different locations. You should do the same exact search (date and city pair) for Z and U (as separate searches) then compare between them. This way the only variable in the search is class, not class and city pair, so then if there is a meaningful difference in search time, you know that the only difference is class requested. If you find meaningful results after doing that, please email us the specifics directly, thanks.