Speaking as someone with a degree in computer science and several decades of experience in technology, I can confidently say that if you wanted to implement this function (searching/returning multiple departure/arrival airports in one search) you could do it. It may take some work or be expensive to implement, and so you may not want to from a business perspective (totally understandable), but from a purely technology perspective it is absolutely possible.

If today I can manually enter:

BOS - MCO, PVD - MCO, BOS - TPA, PVD - TPA

and execute this search 4 times, then it is entirely possible to modify EF so that I can enter:

BOS,PVD - MCO,TPA

And then EF will execute the four searches behind the scenes and then return the results to me on the screen in one grid.

I'm happy to discuss this further offline and offer technical advice if you're at all interested, although I'm sure there are plenty of other people who are more competent in this area than I am.

Question on ExpertFlyer alerts
 

Hi all - quick question on EF alerts for Aeroplan award bookings. Unsurprisingly, I've been having trouble finding availability for summer 2023 travel ex NYC to Europe on UA/LH/LX/OS/etc in J. Before I commit to paying cash fare, I just wanted to know if it was possible to set up EF alerts on partner airlines for award availability in J. For example, could someone please provide guidance on how to set up an EF alert for JFK/EWR to ZRH on LX metal, if it's even a possibility? Thanks!

Since this is a fairly generic EF question, I'm moving this to the Travel Tools forum.

Adam Smith
AC Forum Moderator

Connecting from Australia. It appears to be working this morning (Sat, 17 Sep 0938 AEST). It think it was a glitch at Expertflyer's back end.

QR inventory error
 

I'm getting the below error when searching award space on QR. What will be the ETA for fixing this? Thanks.

"QR 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."

Award searches for multiple Oneworld airlines have been intermittently or completely unavailable for many, many months now.

I have a question regarding Qatar Airways and American Airlines. I assume it's probably been asked before, and tried to search this thread but I don't think I've found what I need.

I understand QR can't be search; however, does that also apply if I'm trying to search for code shares with AA? Here's my example: looking at JFK to DOH award availability tomorrow (9/20), there is business class availability on both AA flight and QR flight:
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...0f2057310e.png


On ExpertFlyer, I can successfully see U2 for the AA120 flight, and I would have expected to see U1 for AA8116 - the Qatar flight with 1 seat available. Isn't it how it's supposed to work? Or can it not find QR award inventory at all even if it's through AA? Hope my question makes sense!

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...a51dfec5d7.png

Award inventory isn’t valid for codeshares, only by searching the operating airline can you see the award inventory for that airline.

With regards to QR awards specifically we thought we had a solution however it showed expanded award inventory that wasn’t available to partners. As such we’re working on a different solution and will post when it’s ready.

Greetings. Having some issues using the United search tool (ie no *A availability) for business class and decided to try Expertflyer to see if I could find anything better but my results on expertflyer actually appear even worse than they are on United. I think from the quote above the answer is that due to dynamic pricing of rewards expertflyer only shows available space in I and not JN or ZN (which can't be searcher for as it only allows a single letter class code). Is that correct?

Yes, also if you are looking for award inventory on an airline other than UA you have to choose that airline from the list. Selecting UA will only show UA operated flights.

I'm looking at AA award travel WAS-LHR. That's not a route AA serves nonstop, but I do want to travel on AA metal. (Crazy surcharges on BA, and higher redemption levels when redeeming AA Business Extra points.) Lots of ways to get there via one connection -- JFK, PHL, BOS, CLT, RDU, ORD, etc. The EF beta's "Create Route Alert" feature could be perfect for this -- monitor all those routings in one fell swoop. Will EF check all of those? Or just the top few? How to know which it will check? The EF Beta shows six results on its award search result page, whereas old EF typically shows up to 8 results. For me, for this purpose, the deeper search is that much more useful.

The route alert does the same search and will see the same results that you see, however the reservation system will normally return connection options with inventory in the requested class before flights that don't have it. Both the current and beta site use the same back end data engine, so you'll see the same amount of results. If you have further questions please email us with specific examples.

Hi, if I am on a Flight Availbility page looking at availability for a specific flight, can I jump across to the Seat Map page for the same flight without having to go to Seat Map Search and manually re-enter the flight details? (Or vice versa.) Thanks.

Look to the right of each result in the Flight Availability Search:

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...b0ed978669.png
the 3 buttons are (1) create a flight alert (2) show flight details (3) seat map for that result.

If you are using the mobile version, tap on the + to expand each result and use the links that appear.

Thanks!