KVS Tool is the only one of the 2 tools/services in question that supports BA award availability anyway.

Sorry if I seem dumb but I'm not understanding your reply. At least I think I'm not.:confused:

Are you telling me that there is a way of creating the multi-date alert? The link you've provided in answer simply tells me that KVS supports BA redemptions which clearly I of course already know. Was your intention to provide a link to a method of creating a date-range alert?

Please clarify.

The KVS tool doesn't have an ExpertFlyer like alert notification feature for award availability, multi-day or otherwise. It just allows you to search for BA award inventory manually, as you are already doing.

The solution to your problem is to look at AwardNexus.com. Not only does it have BA award searching, but unlike KVS, it allows you to search for multiple city pairs and multiple dates in one search. It also has a feature that will email you the results from a daily automated search that you save.

They also have a list of supported award availability classes on their respective website, which can save you the trouble of trying to set-up alerts for unsupported airlines ;)

Features comparision
 

My subscription to KVS Tool lapsed recently and I'll soon be subscribing, either back to KVS Tool or to Expert Flyer. I'm not sure which to choose so I've been trying to compare features, which is not as easy as I expected... at least not when it comes to fare classes.

You might be interested in how I think the tools compare functionally from an unbiased viewpoint. What have I missed? What have I got wrong? I'm part way through the detailed charts on awards and upgrades but will need to revisit these after the weekend.

Any comments? Would you like to see more on here?

(Updated - see below)

Interesting chart. Looks like it took some work to put it together. A few things I think are missing:

* ExpertFlyer has an "Annual" subscription option which lowers the cost to $8.34 per month ($99.99/year). Perhaps there should be a third column for this showing the same feature set as Premium.

* Under Premium > Functionality > Mobile Access, the Flight Alerts and Seat Alerts functionality are also available, which are exclusive to ExpertFlyer.

* Under Premium > Functionality, you left out a major feature of ExpertFlyer which is Saved Queries which is also available on the Mobile Access version.

* I just did a quick check and it looks like ExpertFlyer does show flight availability for Premium Economy for BA. I didn't check the other 3 airlines you list.

* ExpertFlyer just did a new release last night. It now includes for "Reference Information", MCT and MPM for both Basic and Premium.

Deleted

Thanks inlaniki, it didn't take that long to do and it appeals to the tireder Friday afternoon part of my brain!

I'll keep an eye on the thread and make whatever changes are necessary after the holiday weekend here in the UK. The award and upgrade lists will be guaranteed to have some mistakes...

Thank you Lux for your efforts! Unfortunately it's already out of date as we released a bunch of new features last night: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/16458160-post451.html There are some other omissions, but I'll PM you the info.

I use both KVS and EF (and used to use awardnexus, but that's way out)

EF has this cute automatic flight search option to tell me when something opened up. (I was never that lucky, so I keep on trusting other people that one day it will work.)

The mobile edition of EF is way more powerful, and for some airlines I cannot use KVS, such as LY.

However, as much as in your chart they seem pretty much equal, I found KVS to be way more powerful, and in my day to day searches >20 searches a day, I will choose anytime kvs, aslo due to the shortcuts, which speed up the process.

Thanks very much for putting this together. But I'm confused: For upgrade availability and award availability the chart says "See full table." What do you mean by that?

Thanks for taking the time and effort to put this together.

Following the format of your chart, we have created a feature summary table for the KVS Tool and will be sending you a link via PM shortly.

As Lux had mentioned in his OP, the Award/Upgrade comparison/summary chart is in the works.

In the meantime, please see http://Help.KVSTool.com/#Classes for a detailed listing of Award/Upgrade Booking Classes, supported in the KVS Tool.

Based on the feedback on this thread, including from the tools' creators, I've updated the functionality chart and provided a first take on class availability (see subsequent two posts, separated for ease of reading). If you wish to create your own charts or do other whizzy things with the hand-jammed data, here's the spreadsheet it's drawn from.

Please read and understand the caveats on the second chart. Also:

- I know that AwardNexus should probably appear on this chart and it does provide complementary coverage to Expert Flyer. However I don't have much experince of it, it seems to me that it <could> be expensive for extensive or regular searching (although it's good for wide-window searches which undermines this argument), and - again - I don't have any experience of it

- There is functionality in each of these tools that I haven't covered here. I'm presuming that any user of these tools is aware of their key differences (GDS versus screenscraping; alerts; airline coverage) and, like me, is mostly interested in how the coverage of each tool overlaps their own miles and travel. For example I have heaps of miles in BA, BD and EK so I'm between a rock and a hard place, or a EF and KVS...

Delighted to receive further feedback. I'll seek to maintain this if/when there are major changes.

(Edited to add that Expert Flyer has pointed out some updated information, which I will change on the second chart soon:

CA - upgrades as well
SN - upgrades as well
CZ - upgrades as well
FM - upgrades as well
OK - upgrades as well
TK - upgrades as well)

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5262/...68234e08e8.jpg
Expert Flyer versus KVS Comparision Chart (1)