For some unknown reason, when I type in my departure airport (usually SFO) it no longer opens the little box that names the airport in detail. It still does open the little box for the arrival airport. Don't know if this is a new feature or a (very minor) bug. I'm using Firefox 6.0.2.

We're using FF 6.0.2 as well and aren't seeing this problem. You should email us with more specific information so we can help you.

How often is Expert Flyer "down"?
 

I got a notification from Expert Flyer that a desired seat had opened up.

I called AA and tried to get the seat, only to hear it was not available. I went to ExpertFlyer, where I am paying monthly for the "premium" service, only to see the site was down for maintenance. It would have been great to be able to confirm that the seat was gone as I was talking to the AA phone reps.

The maintenance note said it would be down until 8:30 pm (Eastern) today (10/25/2011), then shortly after 8:30, the note was changed to 9:00 pm.

Is this common?

Is it possible I lost the seat because of the site maintenance and a delay in the email notification?

Sorry to hear you were unlucky this time around, but IME, no, it is not common.

Our apologies, we are in the middle of migrating from one hosting provider to another, so no, not common to have this length of downtime (first time in 7 years). We're almost done.

As for your specific question, please email us: when you received the email and the name of your alert so we know who you are and what alert you are talking about. The Seat Alerts are accurate, if there is a difference it can be because too much time has passed and the seat was taken by someone else.

It's good to hear, thanks.

Should I send the note to an email address on the site? It's still down, so I can't go and look. Is it in a "Contact Us" type section?

I called, literally, within a minute of receiving the email. I was actually looking at my email when it came in, and I picked up the phone right away.

I fully understand that someone else might have snagged the seat before me. I am new to Expert Flyer and it's frustrating when the ONE TIME it alerts me to a desired seat, the seat is gone and the site is unavailable. I have no way to "prove" to the airline CS rep that there is truly a seat available.

[email protected]

Understood, our team is working to get everything transferred over and up. We will post here when it's done.

OK, I just sent the email. I will check back later tonight.

A little warning ahead of time would have been nice! :rolleyes:

Not exactly a happy camper but I guess I can sympathize as it's partly out of EF's hands...

Just to update everyone, we figured out the solution to a problem that came up during the migration. We are now applying the fix and we should be ready to go in another ~30 min. Our apologies again for the delay, we expected to be done 2 hours ago.

I encourage you to reserve your judgment of Expert Flyer QueenOfCoach. In my experience, Expert Flyer pays for itself many times over each year from finding awards, snagging open exit row seats, and scoring SWU upgrades for long trips. It is especially good for AA flyers.

EF is occasionally down for maintenance but this is rare and is usually only for 30 minutes or less. Todays "outage" was indeed long and very unusual. Customer responsiveness (the few times of I've inquired) has been excellent. Definitely worth $99/year IMHO. YMMV.

Ok, ExpertFlyer is back up. Again we apologize for the extended down time, it was over 2 hours more then anticipated due to problems we encountered while moving our services to a new data center. Thank you very much for your understanding. If you encounter any issues or have any questions, please feel free to email us.

As it turns out, a small subset of users were sent a false positive email which was caused by the problem that delayed our downtime tonight. Everything has been fixed and reset, and your alert is still Pending. Our apologies for the false alarm.

Thanks, EFV, for your prompt response and detailed reply to my email.

Why do searches have to be for a specific time?
 

Nice to see everything working again. In my darkest fears, all airlines would release all upgrades and whatever I am looking for precisely when EF was down, but luckily that didn't happen. :)

One question I have nursed for a while:

Why do fare/award availability searches have to be for a specific time? Unlike ITA or booking portals, EF seems to give no "All Day" options.

I understand that it is good to provide this as an optional filter, but often I really don't care about a specific time and being forced to make a false choice ia an unnecessary stress. Sorta like if we were forced to choose a specific connecting airport in advance.

Can't we have a "whenever" option too?

Thanks.