This is a good question.

The various engines, assuming you mean GDSs, have their origins in the days of text based terminals tied into a giant mainframe over a telephone line. Although the GDS industry has in recent years introduced web based services based on XML command/response strings, even these enhancements still are just reformatted extensions of the old text level command strings.

The result of all this is the information must be asked for piecemeal with responses that are also fragmented. For instance, you can ask for availability of all buckets for a flight or just one bucket, but in one command you can't ask for all business class buckets only. So, for a service provider to allow you to ask for only business class availability might take a series of 4 or 5 queries being issued to the GDS or very intelligent software to filter out just the requested inventory from general request.

So, third-party services try to do the heavy lifting and translate what the you the user want to see, and how you want to see it, into a series of queries to the GDSs and then aggregate the responses into one screen reponse. The problem with this is that it takes a lot of communications time with the GDSs and not all GDSs and airlines speak the same "language". There is also proprietary software that must be written by the service provider to take this data and simplify it in a manner appropriate for their customers.

Hope this helps,

ExpertFlyer Voice

I suppose that is possible, however with 200+ supported airlines and their periodic booking class 'shuffles', maintaining an accurate record of which booking class is which, would be a very time-consuming task. Most users, who require access to specific award/upgrade booking classes, probably already know those classes by heart (or have them written down for easy reference).

As EFV has already mentioned, there are a number of technical limitations that need to be dealt with, and multiple queries would also hurt the performance, making the user wait longer to get the results.

Furthermore, information from multiple GDS systems can be different, even for the same flight. So, for example, if Sabre says J7 C6, Amadeus says J6 C6, Apollo says J5 C4, and WorldSpan says J9 C8, what should the 'aggregate' result show?: J7 J6 J5 C6 C4 C8? Hardly a simplification, is it?

So, the bottom line is that the Tool is meant to be powerful enough to get a lot of information that has been traditionally accessible via the conventional GDS interface (which is best suited for masochists), yet simple enough not to require a 3-month training course and 550 page command manual.

However, some amount effort is still required on the user's part, and if someone feels really strongly about this issue, then perhaps they should look into hiring a Travel Agent to do this work for them, or booking through the dumbed-down booking engines, which provide "user-friendly" descriptions of booking classes...

It would probably be best if you asked this in the UA forum. You may also wish to include the availability data shown by the Tool in your post...

Problem with 2.4.0?
 

I installed version 2.4.0 because of persistent errors today with ver. 2.3.1.
But now with 2.4.0 I'm getting timeout errors on Apollo and Sabre.

ITN Down: 04 Oct 2006
 

ITN servers went down, as of a few hours ago (this is being discussed in the UA forum, as it also brings the United.com booking functionality down: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=609088).

In the meantime, please use Amadeus or Galileo to check availability.

Update: ITN Servers appear to be back to normal...

I've been getting "Datasource error - No fares found" for sometime now in the "Sabre: Fares/DotRes" method when using Euro as a currency "ES-EUR". Do you know what the problem might be?

Yes, I am aware of the problem and it will be resolved in the next version. For now, just switch to the US-USD POS for DotRes fares to ensure uninterrupted access.

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:-: :-: :-: Looks like this will be post number 1000, and the thread now has 150 000+ views! :-: :-: :-:

I think the tool is great. No question about it. Aggregating all the information in one interface saves a lot of time.

But there are situation where it doesn't help.

My main issue is that I don't know no dumb down engine available to see the availability of *A awards and the available options are not so great.

- I can call Lufthansa and ask them (takes 5-20 minutes dependin on complexity of routing and wait time in the call center)
- I can use my Awardplanner membership (excellent service!) and ask them to call Lufthansa for me (takes 2 minutes to fill out the online form, but days to get an answer)
- I can try the various booking engines in the KVS tool (but most of them don't show award availability)

So I thought perhaps there is a possibility to use the KVS tool to get an accurate view on the *A award inventory.

Unfortunately, I have no way of 'forcing' the airlines to publish their award availability.

LH, for example, used to provide all of their award booking classes via Amadeus, but then came the 'black Wednesday': http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...er#post3916826. Since then, their award availability sporadically appears, but it is no longer reliable...

See also: The list of classes shown (by airline): http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showp...74&postcount=2

Yeah, same with AU-AUD setting.

I haven't tried it myself, but I've read on FT that the ANA site, once you sign up for a free account, shows *A availability. It might be worth seaching the *A forum here.

Dr. PITUK

The [AU-AUD] and [CA-CAD] POSs of the Fares/DotRes method are no longer functioining and should not be used...

Version 2.4.1 Released
 

Be sure to upgrade to the latest version (V2.4.1) to ensure uninterrupted access to Amadeus & Sabre Fare methods:

• This will resolve any "Data Source Error" and "HTTP to HTTPS on redirect" issues.

Will this be corrected in future versions KVS or is this perminant?