I believe KVS finds BA availability by running a "hidden browser" that visits ba.com and does a large number of searches. In the industry this is called "Scraping". This is the reason KVS is a computer program - it runs code on your machine that talks to ba.com (and other airline sites, travel agents, etc). But you surely know all this as a KVS user.

The BA.com terms of service
http://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/...rms-conditions

states
Now it's entirely possible that BA have given KVS their express written agreement, however as you are the person running it that doesn't help you. As such, running KVS and doing a search for BA appears to be in contravention of their terms of service.

Sadly BA.com do not advertise their revenue codes (Z, U, P, X) via the standard method (GDS) that they use for F,A,J,C,D,R,I,W,E,T,Y,B,H and the lower classes. They did for a while, about 14 months ago, and availability came up on legitimate tools like flightstats or expertflyer -- tools that pay for the data and access it legally. I made great use of this to bump my SEA CW return to a SEA F return using expertflyer's email notification service.

The fact the the KVS mobility companion appears to only offer access to data that can be legitimately bought on the open market, and doesn't instead run the code the KVS tool runs, implies to me that the person running the servers is actually concerned about the legality of the scraping tool, so he doesn't use it in a situation where he can be more easily traced.

If you are in a library soon, you may want to see if you can find Decoding Air Travel: A Guide to Saving on Airfare and Flying in Luxury - By Nicholas Kralev, who metnions KVSTool and Victor (aka KVSTool), and the fact that airline officials have complained about it.

KVSTool claims to be a browser, however it masquerades as internet explorer, rather than have it's own "Signature", that legitimate webbrowsers have.

The last time a guy <deleted by moderator> tried to sell me something seemingly useful down the pub, for a "donation", I said no, I wasn't worries it was broken in it's fall off the back of the lorry, or that the police might get me for handling stolen goods, it's the morality of such a thing that turns me off.

Indeed, there is definitely I (CS) Class Availability on that flight, which can be confirmed via SQ.com:

http://i.snag.gy/1C7c9.jpg

Travel Agents cannot see I Class Availability.
You may wish to contact SQ directly to find-out the actual reason why your Upgrade is not going through ...

If KVS did a large number of automated searches and saved that data, I would agree with you in calling it a scraper. But it doesn't. I use KVS for only one search at a time, similar to my activity when I use Internet Explorer to view the website. KVS simply presents the data to me differently than IE.

Incredibly, the terms of service require the user to have BA's express written agreement to access their website using any browser.

There is nothing in the ... that changes the meaning of this extract.

I don't see anything here that prevents me from accessing their website with KVS any more than accessing it with IE. (In fact both violate their ToS.)

Yes, KVS behaves badly here by not identifying itself as the user-agent. It breaks convention. But that does not make it illegitimate or illegal, it just makes it badly behaved.

You should search a definitions of "computer program"... KVS Availability Tool is a computer program, Internet Explorer is a computer program, Firefox is a computer program. Basically everything on your computer is a computer program since it runs code on your machine as you say...

That's where you are wrong. In many cases, KVS queries either various sources or one source repeatedly before presenting aggregated results. I can prove that KVS indeed stores data in volatile memory before presenting them...

To be fair to KVS, KVS is not the only culprit here. You should do more reading before saying "It breaks convention"... AFAIK, "user-agent" does not say "who I am" but is says to whom I am compatible with... So for example, Opera uses "Mozilla/5.0"...

I have done more reading recently and interestingly, I found that in my own country (Australia), the Spam Act 2003 makes harvesting of e-mail addresses from websites illegal... I know, it is different from what KVS does, but I am going to do more reading about tis...

Can we please stop clogging this thread with posts about the legality of this tool, it's been going on for months and it's BORING. If you don't want to use the tool because you feel you are committing a crime, fine, that is your choice. You have the Wiki post on this thread so be happy with that and lets leave this thread for KVS tool support.

Which is exactly what the sources of that data are trying to prevent by establishing TOSes that prohibit this. This is a civil issue, not a criminal one.

It's not a KVS owned thread for "support". It's a FlyerTalk thread. @:-)

Moderator's note:

Does KVS work to pull CX award availability using AA miles? I know it stopped working many months ago

What stopped working?

KVS shows CX award availability via any of the 4 OneWorld methods available. Whether or not AA will confirm what any of them show is another matter.

The JL-OneWorld method appears to be the most reliable with showing CX award seats available to AA customers. It one of just many great features that KVS offers.

That is correct.

Indeed, the [Awards/JL-OneWorld] Method is the authoritative source for Partner Award Availability on CX flights:

http://Help.KVSTool.com/#CX

If CX Award Availability is shown via the [Awards/JL-OneWorld] Method, then an Award seat can, most definitely, be booked using AADV miles, subject only to the competency of the Agent.

Indeed, there have been no changes in that regard.

We're glad you are continuing to enjoy the benefits of your KVS Tool Membership.

It has certainly been documented and tested on other threads that JL can give different results depending on whether the JMB account is registered in the Americas, Europe and Oceania zones etc. In what sense then can you be 'most definite' about it?

Weirdly, any search from NYC airports (only) on the Awards/Upgrades tab yields:

Error Requesting Data [RD-1]
Error 12002: Timeout
The request has timed out.
Disconnected (30s)

Error 35756: Unable to complete request/MSIE off-line mode activated disconnected

What's going on?

+1, been going on for the past week - assuming you're using Awards/BA-Oneworld?

Looks like you can't use NYC anymore, just JFK or EWR