blahter

Ah...that makes more sense. It's been a long day.

blahter

Some Updates

• Gateway search has now been replaced with multi-origin/destination on the regular search page
• More restrictive filters

jerryhung

I guess the filter works more as expected now
Unchecking AC = no AC at all

Did you look into [swapping Origin & Destination]? should be an easy button/feature to do, yes? would be much appreciated
I ask because that's the fastest way to do a Round-trip search since we don't have R/T search

Thanks again, keep up the good work

ninegoodthings

First, thank you for this tool. I was excited for this when you first announced it, then didn't have much award searching to do, but now coming back I'm really impressed by how well it works.

The multi-origin/destination function that was just rolled out is also incredibly useful. Thanks for this.

A few bug reports/feature suggestions:

Bug: At the moment (for me) AC is not working. It logs in fine, takes forever to the go the search page, and then the search page throws errors. It looks like there was no flight information submitted before the Search button was pressed. Take this with a grain of salt, as AC is not working very well for me in Chrome either, and is atrociously slow in general. But NH works fine for *A.

Feature requests:

- Make submitting login details optional if possible. Maybe a user could login in a separate Chrome windows and then the app can use the same session? I created fake logins for a few services to add to the app, but you will get much better adoption if you could allow users to log in with their actual information without needing to add it to the app.

- As the searching happens, eg with NH, it would be great to always have the date being searched for in the progress bar. So with NH, when it says "Navigating to advanced search" you could add "(July 13, 2015)" so that we always know how far along in the process we are.

- It would be great to have a tiny bit of help come along with the interface. Right now the only information about how to use the tool is in the Help section; even a tool tip when mousing over the airports ("Enter multiple origins or destinations separated by comma") would be good and easy.

- For airlines that don't report the number of seats available, indicating "1+" would be friendly for people who are copy/pasting this info into spreadsheets

- Finally, linking out to some free tools based on the information the user is searching for could be really helpful. For example, when I'm searching for SIN-NRT flights, if I could click a link and be sent here http://www.milez.biz/en/list_rates.php?f=SIN&t=NRT it would be really quick and helpful. If you'd like some more examples of tools like this that would be useful to include I'd be happy to provide.

These are a lot of suggestions, but all small things - what you put together already is very solid and extremely useful. Thanks again for sharing it with us.

blahter

I keep forgetting about this. I'll put it into the next release.

Could you send me (either here or PM) what you were searching for? With AC, the app is actually filling out the form behind the scenes through hidden inputs so you won't see the form being filled out. It seems to be working for me but AC is a little finicky and they like to change around quite a bit.


This can kind of work but it won't be a normal Chrome window since apps have no access to regular browser windows. The way it could work would be moving each of the iframes you see when in debug mode and creating a separate window for each of them but that might get unwieldy really quick. I can understand not wanting to add credentials to the app but I'm not sure if this trade-off is worth it, especially if it spawns 2-3 windows each time.

It actually already does this



Now that I reread your question, I think you're saying to include the date in every progress message?

I've been meaning to do this but never got around to it. I'll include it, hopefully in the next release

That's actually a very good idea.

This is interesting but I don't really want to have to manage updating the links when the authors of these tools change the inputs/urls/etc but I'll think about it.

Thanks!

jerryhung

on a separate note, how does one force a Chrome app update?

I tried it on 2 computers, opened Chrome & Award.Flights app, multiple times, no auto-update
On computer #1, I had to remove & re-install to get the new version (0.60), but all login info & Saved Search are lost
so I haven't done so on computer #2

JJonahJ

The app's AC interface works. The back-end AC website/engine is another story. It often is down or undergoing regularly daily maintenance after midnite, Eastern time. Open Aeroplan.com in your briwser and then you'll see the reason why the app is stalling.

Jerry, forcing all apps/extensions to manually update:
chrome://extensions/
> click ON "Developer Mode"
> "Update Extensions now"

ninegoodthings

Can't remember exactly what I was searching, but it works now. At the time I don't think I was able to search AC in a normal Chrome window either. I also had a wifi issue that I hadn't realized yet... so, like I said take it with a grain of salt. Probably no need to address it.

Got it. I don't think this solves the credentials "issue" anyway, but it's not the end of the world. Personally I would prefer to have a separate windowed iframe for each search as it happens, but that's a preference and that might very well cause memory issues for Chrome.

Really, it's fine as it is.

Can't see your image, but I think you get what I'm talking about. Sometimes I'll have a large search to run (multi-origin/destination and multiple days) and it's hard to know how far along I am if the progress message only says "Navigating to advanced search page". "Navigating to advanced search page NRT-SIN 08-26-15" would be more helpful".

I should note that sometimes searches take a long, long time for me. Like 10 mins to search 10 dates. So for many users this may be less of a concern.


Great! I think it would be really helpful for newbies.

Thanks! Of course if the user was searching 2 passengers I guess you would indicate 2+.

Yep, completely understand that.

Thanks for the quick response! It's great to use tools that have responsive developers.

jerryhung

Just to add opinion on the credentials
If one is super paranoid, just use a dummy account with dummy password to search

ninegoodthings

Turns out my issue with searching on AC was that I was using a city code, which AC doesn't accept.

That would be a great tool tip - "We recommend using multiple airport codes, rather than a single city code, because not all engines recognize city codes."

blahter

It's a little tricky. Some carriers want airport codes, some want city codes. JL likes city codes: NYC instead of JFK/EWR, CHI instead of ORD/MDW etc. NH used to as well but I actually haven't checked if their new site allows airport codes instead of city codes.

The ones I've handled:
JL

• JFK/EWR/LGA -> NYC
• ORD/MDW -> CHI
• LHR/LGW -> LON
• CDG/ORY -> PAR

NH

• NYC->JFK/EWR

ninegoodthings

I didn't realized that you'd hard-coded some - that's a great addition.

jerryhung

Some new thoughts
- can we default to Economy cabin pre-checked?
- I prefer "Restrictive" option pre-checked
- I prefer the Filters section to always show instead of hidden and click-to-expand
* maybe above 3 can be made an option in Settings so we can check the DEFAULT options we like. For me it's Economy+Restrictive+show Filter. Some may want Business+Restrictive+hide Filter

Another few
- Is it possible/easy to break down results by Date?
It gets hard to separate if I'm looking at 10 days at once. Even worse if each day has 2-3 options, and I look at both AC + BA
- Possible to add [+] button to expand/collapse each search engine?
e.g. If I search AC+BA now, they show all results at once without anyway to hide either one

thanks

BostonFlyer1624

did you make updates? they are good, much easier to search multiple cities

jmvnice

Thanks for this update! And for fixing AP search