But that doesn't mean the specific class that you searched for has non-zero availability. Also the F award class is only available to Elite Flying Blue members.

I really hate to rain on the parade, but I just finished a free trial of EF, and I don't think I will be buying a subscription. I did a lot of searches, but I found that using EF was much more work than using individual airline websites. EF may well be just great for some people or some uses, like notifications regarding an existing reservation, I wouldn't know, but for making a new one that's the least bit complicated, I just gave up. The problem is that AFAIK, an EF search must be on a specific airline. In my case, I want to go SFO-BKI (Kota Kinabalu)-HKG-SFO using miles. First of all, how do I even know what airlines go SFO-BKI? I trot over to Expedia and Kayak to get some ideas, but then how do I know what miles I can use on each? That takes a trip to each airline's website, for me anyway. Then, how can I find good routings/connecting flights that take me all the way for a reasonable amount of points? I couldn't investigate any of this on EF. In particular, there was no way to select, for example, "Star Alliance" as the airline, nor was there any way to avoid selecting a specific airline.

What I did was ask UAL for the outbound, and they came back with nice award tickets on OZ that worked fine. I also checked BA, Delta, and AAL but came up with nothing. But there in 4 website visits, I'd checked all the major airline partnerships and awards-sharing networks, and I found my answer. Total time was less than I'd spent on EF.

Actually, even those four visits were a lot of work for me, so I'm using an awards agent for all the remaining flights BKI-HKG-SFO and probably for anything complicated in the future as well.

But if I did something really wrong on EF, I'm quite confident that at least one of you will point out how I could have done things much better and easier, so thanks in advance!

I can't see why this should be much of a problem. You don't have to specify an airline for a normal search. And you can specify an alliance without specifying a particular airline. That would then give you an indication of which alliances (if any) would be able to take you from SFO to BKI, plus which airlines would be operating each sector. Then you should have enough clues to use the award search function.

Cathay Flights
 

Hi there

I have a problem with CX inventory. I am on class R on CX134. When I search for Flight Availability for the date I want to go, I can see that the flight has availability (R2).

However when I call Cathay and ask them to change me over to that, they claim that there are no seats available in class R on that flight.

I obviously have no way to counter argue this and have to go with what they telling me.

So I wanted to know if there is any nuisances to way ExperFlyer shows CX availability?

Thanks

Guessing here... maybe Point of Sale (different inventory can be available depending upon where you are buying the ticket). I don't know what EF defaults to, I would guess either departure airport or USA. matrix.itasoftware.com lets you specify the sales city, but they don't return the inventory detail like EF.

Another guess would be married segments... are you trying to connect on to another flight from HKG? Different inventory can be available for itineraries terminating in HKG to those connecting through HKG to another city.

DAK

When are U flying ?
If U fly alot to BKI the I would suggest Asiana Airlines. They fly from SFO-ICN (Seoul) - BKI.
They are in the Star Alliance

EF defaults from USA. U can change it to the UK

EF defaults to US but you can change it to UK. I just did a search using UK and availability (R1) was lower than when compared to US (R2)

so there is some difference, but both still show availability when CX helpdesk on 2 occasions have claimed no availability.

You can also change your own default by changing the settings. So for me, EF defaults to UK but I can change it to US if I want.

If the UK is showing R1 and the US is showing R2, then it is entirely possible that in other markets, it is R0 (or RC or whatever).

It can be even more extreme than that. I have occasionally booked flights (on another airline) where the airline's default market for the itinerary showed I0, but availability being shown to the UK market was I9.

ExpertFlyer Incorrectly Not Showing Space
 

I'm new to ExpertFlyer. Has anyone had experience with ExpertFlyer not showing space in a fare bucket that actually is still available? I was searching BNA to TVC for January. ITA Matrix was showing Q space available on every flight, bringing the cost to $300. AA website showed the cheapest price as $428. ExpertFlyer showed Q2 for the outbound segments, but Q0 for both return segments. It was like that for every day I searched; Q2 on outbound, Q0 on return. I called the EXP desk and was quoted the price I saw at aa.com: $428. When I gave the agent the specific flights I found on ITA Matrix, she instantly came back with the price I was expecting: $300.

With both aa.com and ExpertFlyer seemingly saying the same thing (that I wouldn't find the $300 price point), I was expecting ITA to be incorrect and was pretty surprised to actually be able to book it. Any experience with something like this?

this is a great question. I have seen this issue before. Perhaps some F T members can shed some light on what is going on

As this is an ExpertFlyer question, it belongs in the ExpertFlyer Help Desk thread in the Travel Tools forum. We will move this thread there so it can be merged into the EF Help Desk.

/Moderator

Expertflyer, help pls!
 

What exactly does this mean,

How could I book it? Is it $342 ex taxes etc?

Have searched Kayak, China Eastern and Google flights

V FARE BASIS BK FARE TRAVEL-TICKET AP MINMAX RTG
1 QPRKRS Q‡R 342.00 D30JN - -/ 1M EH01
PASSENGER TYPE-ADT AUTO PRICE-YES
FROM-SEL TO-SYD CXR-MU TVL-19JAN16 RULE-E530 IPRPG/8
FARE BASIS-QPRKRS SPECIAL FARE DIS-E VENDOR-ATP
FARE TYPE-XEX RT-REGULAR EXCURSION
KRW 400000 0020 E12NOV15 D30JUN16 FC-QPRKRS FN-99
SYSTEM DATES - CREATED 11NOV15/2223 EXPIRES INFINITY

PUBLISHED RTG SEL-SYD/MU20 /TAR-TGRG EF-12NOV15 DIS-INDEF

/WITHIN THE EASTERN HEMISPHERE/
DOM ROUTE VALIDATION APPLIES WITHIN ORIG/DEST COUNTRIES
MAP CONSTRUCTED LEFT TO RIGHT AND RIGHT TO LEFT
1. SEL-MU-NKG/SHA/TAO-MU-KMG-MU-SYD

yep its just a class of fare that may never have any availability ever..
Will work it out

It is a directed route for a particular MU fare on SELSYD. Intermediate points in the route may be omitted, but other points may not be introduced and the order may not be changed. If a carrier is specified, it is the marketing carrier on that flight segment. The fare rules and the booking codes table also govern the validity. The price shown is absent of taxes, fees and surcharges, and the currency depends on your point of sale.