The NZ award inventory is accurate and reflects what other airline search engines show. For further help please email us the flight specifics to [email protected].

That's not the case. Once you select the airline, the Quantity option is shown if the results will be Yes/No, as such we would need the Quantity to search for. If you need help with a specific search email us at [email protected]

No, it's partner award space.

Right after I got the 7 email alerts, I called United agent, she said she didn't find anything available. I hanged up and called again, different agent said the same thing, nothing was available, then I immediately tried to search the (I) availability from Aeroplan and United websites and got nothing, after that I tried Award Nexus, NH found all the (I) available as exactly what ExpertFlyer found. I think it's a computer glitch from NH, so that's why I asked you if ExpertFlyer got the information from NH. Now everything gets back to normal, none of the (I) seats are available when I've searched from ExpertFlyer just now. I really got excited for nothing when I got the emails from ExpertFlyer.

Expert Flyer -- Useless?
 

I apologize in advance if this ruffles anyone's feathers -- I'm honestly just frustrated.

After constantly getting references on all of the various travel blogs about how useful Expert Flyer is for finding award seats, I finally took the plunge and decided to subscribe to a Premium membership. I was hoping for something like Matrix--a powerful search engine that would allow me to search for exactly the combination of flights/airlines/etc. that I want--only with the added bonus of showing award availability and setting up alerts....except the site is so clunky and has such limited functionality that it's mostly useless.

(1) No multi-city/open jaw search. The first search I tried was for an upcoming trip to Colombia. I want to go from SNA to Bogota and Cartagena for about a week sometime in February. I don't care about the dates, and I don't care which city I visit first; I'll just do an open-jaw--fly into one city, fly out of the other. If I just wanted to price flights, one Matrix search would give me all of that information. Expert Flyer, however, can't even do a multi-city search. I have to first search one-way SNA to Bogota, then one way Cartagena to SNA, then one-way SNA to Cartagena, then one-way Cartagena to SNA....and I can only search for one airline at a time. It's actually EASIER to find award availability on United's or American's or Delta's site than it is through Expert Flyer.

(2) Max of +/- 3 days. On Matrix, and on most of the airlines' websites, you can scan award availability/pricing over the course of a month. Expert Flyer only allows you to search for a max of +/- 3 days....basically a week's worth of flights. For my Colombia trip, that means I not only had to do the four separate searches listed above, I had to multiply that by four -- one for each week in February.

(3) Alerts. The "alert me when award availability opens up" function is so limited it's also laughable. What would be useful is just to be able to give it a city pair, and have it alert you whenever new saver awards open up for that routing. Instead, you have to save an alert for every individual *segment* of every flight, for every day. Another flight I'm looking for is LAX-->JFK in the fall, on either Delta or American. Delta and American each have something like 6-7 non-stops to JFK every day. So, to check award availability for (ex:) November, I have to set up (a) a separate alert for each individual Delta LAX->JFK flight on Nov. 1; (b) a separate alert for each individual AA LAX->JFK flight on Nov. 1; (c) a separate alert for each individual Delta LAX->JFK flight on Nov. *2*; (d) a separate alert for each individual AA LAX->JFK flight on Nov. *2*; (e) etc., etc. Even Premium members only get 30 alerts; which means that at best, I could cover the first four days of November.

Am I just trying to use Expert Flyer for the wrong purposes? It seems like it's only really useful to check award availability on a couple of specific flights at a time, and that's just not worth $120/year, it seems.

For me, the plus/minus 3 days enables me to search a week at a time (without clicking back and forth from the calendar to see the details as no, I don't want some crazy routing with long layovers even if it is available for minimum miles) and more importantly to save those searches so that they can be redone with just a click. I'm comparing EF to delta.dumb here, although I do very much miss the ability to search for upgrade space on DL using EF.

EF is also a great way to see fare class availability, for example if you want to SDC from a coach ticket on DL, or when trying to construct your own ticket by picking individual segments that have the fare class you need.

With the latest DL "enhancement" to not show seat maps for other cabins unless you do a fresh dummy booking, it can be quick and easy to check seat maps (for example, as a very imperfect way to assess upgrade odds) on EF rather than delta.dumb.

With practice, you'll learn the things that EF does well and the things where you can get the needed information more efficiently from other sources.

Welcome to FlyerTalk. I'm going to move this thread to our Travel Tools forum, where you'll find more the most members who are familiar with Expert Flyer.

chgoeditor
co-moderator, Info Desk

I have a question about searching expert flyer for award space. If I'm looking for, say, MCO-ATL-ICN and want to ticket the DL segment and the KE segment all through KE (b/c want 5x J on KE flight), where do I look for the segment availability? I'm assuming it is possible that I'd find the DL segment available looking at DL and, perhaps, AF availability, but not KE. And KE availability is lacking on DL in general. I guess the basic question is this: where to search when using two airlines that don't 100% share their availability but are in the same alliance?

In reading the FAQ, it says that one should search the carrier operating the flight. In this case, I'd search DL and KE separately. I see availability. I go to DL and try to pull up the award: no dice. I go to KE and try: no dice. They won't pull that availability from the other carrier in both cases.

Okay, well I did see somewhere that KE won't award ticket mixed DL and KE. But even when I find availability on DL for all segments, I still can't book on KE. Maddening.

The award inventory we show for both DL and KE is partner level award space. We can't control if an airline will ticket mixed carrier awards, however the inventory ExpertFlyer shows is available to partners.

Is there a way to force multiple airports in the connection box or to force 3 or more connections? Currently restricted to 1 airport each in the 2 connection input fields

Should mention this is for regular priced tickets in the Flight Availability Section

The reservation system accepts either 1 (A-B-C) or 2 (A-B-C-D) connection airports. At this time you can't give it a list of different 1 connection airports to try, if that's what you mean.

Flight missing from EF "Flight Status"
 

I wondered if any of you Expert Flyer people could enlighten me on something I have noticed...

I am tracking the BA297 service LHR - ORD to monitor possible cancellation. I went to check on flight status today and the flight is totally missing from the EF status enquiry. It isn't saying scheduled or cancelled but there is no listing for it at all. The flight does have a listing for tomorrow and the day after but not the day after that (EF status only lists 3 days forward anyway).

What do you think is going on there?

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/attac...1&d=1502159555

I'll move this EF query over to the FT Travel Tools forum, where there's additional EF support.

Many thx.

I didn't realise there was a Tools forum :)

Just heard from EF support... they don't know why this is happening :(

To clarify, what we said was that our vendor is not returning information for that flight. As you can see, BA must be having an issue disseminating information for that flight as FlightStats is missing it as well: http://www.flightstats.com/go/Flight...ate=2017-08-08